Sunday, March 7, 2021

Successful shearing day and lambing has begun!

 We had a great day for shearing our sheep.

With many hands helping.....I appreciate all of you!!

We have many fleeces still available, all of these are quality fleeces for handspinners.
The sheep have been coated and the fleeces are very clean.
many colors available.. brown based colors, brown and white, black and white.

White and black and many grey.  All clean and ready to be spun!

The last few years I've made a list of all the sheep, along with their names and micron information if available.  I've also listed the sire and dam of each one.  I like to keep this in the barn as we shear
so we can at a glance see the micron date or genetic lines.

This has been helpful to us as well as our guests, handspinners, in making their selections.

There is much preparation that is done prior to our Shearing date.  So we were busy cleaning our area that is used for shearing the sheep because our round bales of hay would normally be in this spot.

I didn't get any photos while we were shearing this year, I just didn't think about it.

We did have our first lambs born on Monday, March 3rd.

#161 Troyana delivered Twins, black ram above and grey katmoget ewe below.  The sire is Two Tone.  We repeated this breeding.  I really liked the lambs she had for us last year.
This little ram lamb was born Friday, March 5th.  he is a dark brown (moorit).
His dam is #201, Lark, his Sire, is a black and white spotted ram, Hoyt.
#203 Ophelia delivered twin ewes on Saturday, March 6th, on our Shearing day.  The sire, Moogega, a spotted black and white ram.  

This ewe is #1547 Lilly, a flecket, I just love all the body spots!  She was bred to Moogega.  A ram that was born here last year and also has this same pattern.  I was really hoping to get this pattern by breeding them together  and success!
We got this cute little ewe lamb.  She looks like she has a big head....but she doesn't.  It's just the angle that I took the pic...it makes her look a little funny!

From what I understand this body marking isn't considered a pattern according to the breed association, it is just called flecket.

But, I tend to think that if a consistent "marking" can been repeated... that it is a pattern.
...just my thoughts on that one.


So the shearing is done and on to the lambing.  Many more lambs to come.

If you are looking for nice clean spinning fleeces shoot me an email to 
make arrangements and check out our fleeces.



2 comments:

  1. The dalmation “spotting” is referred to as ilget or “ticking”. It’s not an agouti pattern like the other patterns- but it’s a pattern at a different location.

    The Head, socks, and tail spotting does have a heritable aspect to it, as there different types of Ss/Ss spotting. I’ll have to find resources for you that explain these better.

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  2. Thanks for the input Danny.
    I'm not up to speed on all the different patterns. I just enjoy the variety within the breed and we definitely have that.

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