Winter Sky Khan

Last year, I felt our ewes were of sufficient quality that I could try harder at bringing in some brown based lambs. I had been thinking about getting a moorit ram for a little while, but just didn’t see anything polled that I really had to have. I saw some really nice horned rams, but that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go (although it was tempting). Scurred would’ve been fine as well. Finally, at the last minute, this ram became available, and I felt like he was what we needed. He was polled, moorit, super fine, and I just really liked how he looked. In fact, I liked him as a lamb as well, but never really gave much thought to it since we had plenty of good rams at the time (can you have too many? Yes, you can).

 

 

Khan is a Black Forrest son. Black Forrest is known as one of the finest Shetland rams in the country (although Pompey is arguably as fine). And as you look at some of the finer Shetland rams in the country, most of them seem to trace back to Forrest. Certainly, not all of them, but a lot of them do.

Khan’s two year old micron test was: AFD: 22.5 CV: 21.3 CEM: 8.0 CF: 95.7% SF: 22.0 CRV: 93.9. I don’t know much, but I think that qualifies for super fine status. His average will surely creep up on his third fleece, but I still think it will be less than 25.0 microns. If you aren’t into numbers like I am, what does all of that mean? A comfort factor of 95.7% is pretty darn good. A CRV of 93.9 is pretty special as well. I like to have as many fine fibers as I can get without giving up other fleece traits that we like.

He has most of the things I like in a ram such as level topline, long body, nice tail, and what I think is a really nice head for a polled ram. I don’t care for some of the heads on polled rams. I do think the horned Shetland rams are more handsome and majestic looking, but I really like Khan’s head.

His ewes this year are:

Genoa

Pearl

Siena

 

 

It’s a small group, but what it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for with quality.

I’ve not played around much with Black Forrest genetics, so I really don’t know how they will cross with these ewes, but they have the nicest fleeces in our flock, and they are some of our top overall ewes.

Theresa told me once to just breed the best to the best, so that’s what I am trying to do. I think these ewes are the right ones for him. In fact, I did breed Siena to him last year, which is how we ended up with Barenfang.