Thursday, January 25, 2018

2017 Breeding Groups - Mr. Darcy

Mr. Darcy
Darcy is a Canterbury son out of Genoa. He is the darkest grey katmoget we’ve ever had and it’s something we would like to have more of. He is insanely fine, with nice density.

Darcy is a pretty rare Shetland. There's nothing rare about a grey katmoget, but we've never had one this fine and dense. As a two year old, his SF is 18.8 microns. It's exceedingly rare to find a lamb that fine. His father (Canterbury) is even finer. His four year old SF is 17.8 microns. That's probably the bottom end of the Shetland fineness spectrum. I'll have to declare that we've reached the summit on that particular trait. Everytime I think we are done using him, I put my hands in his fleece and have a change of heart. I wasn’t going to use him this year, but as I put the groups together on paper, I realized he completed a complex genetic gap that we had. Plus, Jen made me.

Elinor – really nice grey katmoget out of Egyptian Autumn and Pearl. Egyptian Autumn is out of Egyptian King (who goes back to Bond), and Blue Sapphire. I would’ve liked to put her with Nitro, but this could work (I had very little say in this group). Nitro is technically a better ram in terms of overall structure (conformation), but there aren’t many rams as fine as Darcy. Ultimately it came down to Darcy being black-based.
English Garden – Hey, I did pick this one! English Garden (AKA, Jumpy) is out of an F1 Jericho ram that we had and Itasca. She is a really nicely built grey katmoget who had two really nice black-based lambs last year out of Darcy (we kept both of them). I expect good thing here again this year.
Edith – A fine black ewe out of Itasca. I think this is a promising paring as well.

Sarin – A nicely built black ewe that is very fine. Mr. Darcy is even finer, and I believe there are nice possibilities here.

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