Lamb Update

We haven’t had time to do much blogging this spring, so I thought I’d try and do a lamb update to catch up.

This little ewe is out of Sommarang Isla. She is a fine moorit with some nice bloodlines. Isla’s mother was Reserve Champion ewe in 2010, and her father was Grand Champion ram last year under the SSS judges. As I said before, it’s nice to have moorits again. I’ll get better pictures soon (I hope).

This ewe lamb is out of Blue Diamond, one of our top ewes. I also like this little girl a lot. Both her parents are super fine, which certainly doesn’t mean she will be, but I like what I see so far. She was just born the other day, so we’ll update the blog once she fills out some.

Cor de Nuit’s ewe lamb is a very dark brown at this point. Cor always has top notch lambs, and we hope this one will also be. She is a totally different Shetland type than her mother, however. In the past, Cor’s lambs have always had her genetic imprint on them, but this one seems to be more like her father, who is super fine. This is the only picture I could get of her because darkness was descending rapidly. I was checking her over again last night, and I do think there is much potential there now that I've seen her grow for a week.

Constantinople’s ewe lambs. Both are developing nicely. Here us the spotted girl.

Here are both of them using their mother as a jungle gym. That's Madonna's ewe lamb getting in on the action. And yes, Constantinople is the matriarch of the flock, if you couldn't tell. She pretty much decides what goes and what does not.

Here are both of her lambs.They are two of our favorites so far.

Blue Sapphire’s ram is the flashiest we've had in some time. I think I’m going to call him a brandet, as he is the closest I have ever seen a Shetland resemble the color and markings chart. I might change my mind about that.

And this moorit ewe lamb has matured into something I really like!

Only four more ewes left to go. I am a little surprised at the number of singles we’ve had this year, but I don’t really have an explanation for it. I tried some different things last fall to increase the twinning rate, but I can’t say it paid off. We’ll wait until all of the lambs are here before we provide stats and stuff that only people like me would care about. I will say that we are happy to be getting some spots again. We haven’t bred with a spotted ram in quite a few years, and didn't last fall either, so that’s a bit of a surprise. We're not getting flashy spots (Blue Sapphire's aside), but, in reality, it’s just nice to be getting moorits and not so many katmogets. I love the kats, but we needed more shades of brown. Now we could use more blacks.  I'd like to have  two or three black ewes heading into fall.