Curbstone Valley H Galene

Galene was actually sold, and I had no intention of retaining two Neira daughters from this litter. Through no fault of her own she found herself staying here a little longer, and she kept catching my eye.

Her dam, Neira, has always been a personal favorite. Hands down the easiest kidder in the herd. For the last two years she has stood up, eating hay, barely pushed, and popped out quads, and then quints the following year, in rapid succession. We’ve learned to be ready to catch!

While Neira has had some structural areas to improve she has great width throughout, and her udder has been capacious, with well placed plumb teats, a strong medial, and area of attachment. She has one of the strongest positive PTAM values of any of Ocean’s daughters.

Galene excels in general appearance, an improvement over her dam, and is longer in body than her sister, but retaining capacity. By around seven months her teat length was noted. The most beautiful plumb, large teats, we have seen on a kid. With the mammary genetics behind her, how could she not be retained? She echos her sire’s dam more than her dam in general appearance, but teat length she certainly takes after her dam. Somewhat lacking in capacity as a first freshener, having kidded with twin doelings, but the structure is there! 

Unfortunately, while waiting for our appraisal to be rescheduled in 2022 after our appraiser was taken ill unexpectedly, Galene herself, along with some other does and kids in the barn, scared us when they abruptly went off feed. Complete rumen stasis, and Galene (along with Amanita and Raven) all but dried off. One of the hardest hit, it was almost ten days before Galene finally turned the corner. I continued milking her, in vain, in the hopes she could recover enough production to be appraised. The culprit was something in some new grass hay we had just brought in from a local farm (needless to say that hay was quickly disposed of). By the time our appraisal was scheduled at the end of October, Galene had recovered some production, but her udder just didn’t look as good. The appraiser could tell she had been off, wishing she had more mammary capacity that day, and was only frustrated because she has the makings for an E in mammary system. She excels in dairy strength, and earned near perfect scores across the structral categories, with E’s in shoulder assembly, front and rear legs, back, and rump! Obviously this is a doe we are very anxious to reappraise after her next freshening!