Whispering Pines Blue Diamond

Several years ago, we were wondering why we didn't have any fine fleece moorit ewes in our flock and we set out to change that. We had a few nice brown-based ewes, but they weren't as fine and uniform as we had seen elsewhere. That summer, I brought in Blue's Clues, and F2 Jericho ram, which really made no sense since he was a grey katmoget. Not only was he a grey katmoget, I had no reason to think he even carried moorit (or even spots for that matter). But his fleece was so gorgeous, I figured, it made sense, in spite of our goal of adding moorit.

Well, this was the first lamb (if I recall correctly) that we got out of him. Although she is a katmoget, she is both brown-based and moorit. More importantly, up to that point in our Shetland journey, I hadn't seen another spotted ewe with a fleece like this. She is superfine, with a two year micron test of 24.9, with great density, softness, and crimp. Her mother is Constantinople. For some reason, this ewe ended up finer than both of her parents. So, it works both ways with Shetlands. They tend to throw back to coarse and primitive, but once in a while they throw back to finer offspring several generations past (although, I haven't seen that happen very often). In this case, you've got Salicional and Blues in the pedigree, which is about as good as it gets.

Any hoo, this is a really nice ewe that has produced really nice offspring. Kiyah is hers, for example. She hasn't produced her fleece type yet in her lambs, but all of them have had nice fleeces, with outstanding conformations.