Little Buckaroo

Here is a very promising fawn katmoget ram out of Persia and Todhill Jericho. When we elected to do AI last fall, I had hoped for two nice ewe lambs out of Persia. What I didn’t think I would get, however, is a scurred, moorit-based ram lamb! I was looking at the database, and only located two moorit-based lambs out of Jericho. I think Buckaroo is the only poll carrying ram. He’s the only scurred Jericho ram lamb that I’m aware of anyway. Which means Persia is a poll carrier (information I did not have when we brought her in). I did know that both Persia and Jericho carried moorit, but I just didn’t expect to pull that out of them. Anyway, we did, and I’m excited to see how he will produce.
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I’ve liked this guy from birth! He is just solid, with an awesome set of legs. The spacing is excellent! I also love his fleece! It’s very uniform and crimpy, and has a wonderful handle! It really is as uniform as it looks in the picture. He has the lowest standard deviation of any Shetland we have ever had (3.7 microns). I have seen that type of consistency from other Jericho offspring, so perhaps that is a characteristic of that line. His fall micron test average was also in the low 20's. I don't generally put very much stock in fall micron tests on lambs, but at least it gives us an idea about where the fleeces might head. And, to be honest, I wasn't expecting a super fine lamb when we selected this breeding pair. I was expecting incremental improvement over his mother, while reinforcing some attributes that we really like. I think we achieved that. His mother is really nice, however, so it was difficult to project exactly what we expected to get. I think that's how it is when you cross bloodlines with which you lack experience. You can feel pretty good about the odds of getting something really nice, but you don't know exactly what it will be.

It’s tough to fully evaluate rams at such a young age, but I think Bucky is going to be a good one. Will his conformation end up being as nice as Pompey’s? It’s hard to say, but I like his leg set better already. Quite frankly, his legs are the nicest we've had in a Shetland. The only ram I've seen with nicer legs would probably be Theresa Gygi's "Apache". His potential to improve our flock is too great to get caught up on the negatives. To be honest, we don’t have another ram with some of his important attributes. We may never have again. Who knows? He is another sheep with a fleece that you just want to sink your fingers into.

Buckaroo is 68.75% UK.