Lamb and Fleece Evaluations

I wanted to share some of my assessments of this year’s lambs before time gets completely away from me. We did the final round of CDT shots on Saturday, and that gave us a chance to evaluate each of them more closely.

I decided to break them down by sire, which seemed as good of an approach as any.

First, the Little Buckeroo lambs.

This one is easy since we only have two ewes left and both are out of Itasca. These lambs are F2 Jerichos, who is one of my favorite UK rams.

The first one is Itasca’s fawn ewe. I really like this ewe. She has an excellent conformation, nice fleece length, and luster up the ying yang. She has a bolder crimp, which really shows off the luster. I don’t know if others have noticed this, but the larger crimp seems to really reveal the full amount of luster. The tightly crimped lambs don’t seem to do that. I suppose if I stretched them out and compared side-by-side, I’d see it, but the fingers really glide over this fleece. I think it’s a bit early to predict micron values, but I think this one will be 26 microns as a yearling. It’s probably close to that now and might possibly increase by one or so by next spring. Who knows?

Her sister is a grey katmoget with a different style of fleece. It should be around 3.5 inches next spring, but it will definitely be finer than her sister’s. I would say between 22 and 23 microns. It’s just a beautiful fleece on an outstanding ewe lamb!

That’s it for the F2 Jericho ewes.

We still have one ram left from Buckeroo and I will do my usual lamenting on how I wish he was a ewe. Actually, I don’t. I wish he was polled. It’s a fleece that we really like. I think it’ll be 4.5 inches and fine! And I don’t see much tip either, so the CV should be pretty darn low as well. It’s just very soft with tons of potential. But, he’ll be wethered. There’s nothing wrong with a good fiber animal – the gift that keeps on giving. I just wish we could’ve used him in our program.

He is out of Irish Lace.