Whispering Pines Irish Rose

This is another really nice ewe out of Bond and Constantinople. Great conformation on this ewe, to go with a super fine, consistent fleece.

 

She’s finer than her mother was at this age, but only time will tell whether her fleece holds its fineness over time. As I've said before, most of them don’t. When we are able to find spotted sheep like this one, we generally hold onto them because they are so rare. This one has luster to go with the other properties that we like. And when I say "like", I mean this is what I like to see in a Shetland. You don't want a flock of coarse, straight fleeces. Those are not Shetland traits. We don’t have many spotted sheep, but we like this one. Rose also has a fantastic bloodline to go with her outward appearance.

Irish Rose is also a good example of the type of Shetland that Constantinople throws. Her lambs always exhibit fantastic conformations with fleeces that have nice length and fineness. This one also happens to be very silky.

Whispering Pines Pearl

This ewe is out of Wintertime Itasca and Wintertime Bond, and is clearly our finest ewe. Her two year old fleece tested at 22 microns with an even lower CV.

 

I would characterize her as a medium- size ewe, with a fleece that is very crimpy, fine, and dense. I have always liked Bond’s head, and this ewe has it. Just a gorgeous ewe. She’s a little petite for my liking, but it’s a very elegant look. Shetlands are supposed to be fine boned, and she is. This is another ewe with a fantastic bloodline to go with her visible characteristics. That’s very important to me because I feel a solid bloodline increases the odds of producing outstanding lambs. You might get lucky now and then with a crappy ewe throwing a really nice lamb, but you can’t build your program around that. And if you don’t have an outstanding ram, you can pretty much forget about that strategy. But sometimes, the second generation lambs are better than their parents if you know what you are doing.

Ewe Flock - Sheltering Pines Constantinople

We have been doing our ewe-a-day posts for many years, and I find it useful because it forces me to write down exactly what I like about each flock member. Each year, our ewe roster has improved, and I think this year’s is better than last year’s. We still haven't produced exactly my ideal Shetland, but we've come close enough to leave me encouraged and excited about the future possibilities. The more high quality sheep that we have, the better our odds.

So without further adieu, here are our ewes for this year.

This grey katmoget is our largest ewe at about 100 pounds. She’s a little taller than the rest of our flock as well. But proportionally, she is absolutely perfect. She has a nice, long body that she has passed on to her daughters and granddaughters, which is why we keep her in our flock.

Conformation-wise, she is dead on. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating; she looks a lot like Sheltering Pines Salicional, who is her mother. Salicional was the Grand Champion Shetland at the 2011 WSWF, which was an incredible honor given the competition there that year, and the fact it was one of the few times Shetlands in this country have been judged by certified Shetland Sheep Society Judges. Not to rail on the Shetland judging in this country, but it’s bad. When you take a breed from the UK and change both it and the rules around what it should look like, you shouldn’t be surprised about what has happened to the breed in this country, but some people still seem to be. Anyway, I found the 2011 WSWF to be a good way of calibrating myself against what the breed is supposed to look like, and what it does look like in the UK. Constantinople would not win in a show against Salicional because her fleece is not as fine, but you would instantly recognize that they were related.

In addition to her conformation and overall appearance, I also like Constantinople’s head. To me, it is very Shetland, and a trait that I want to reproduce. You can see the wool on both the cheeks and poll, and that is probably a small thing, but it is the ideal we are striving for.

I also like her fleece, but on the surface, it doesn’t stack up to the rest of our flock. It would probably rank dead last in terms of overall quality, but it is still very nice. Her fourth fleece averaged 27 microns, which is exactly where it tested as a lamb. Most Shetland fleeces do not hold like that. So, given that we want to produce Shetlands with fleeces that hold their fineness well into adulthood, it seems logical that we would make her a building block for our flock to see if we can develop this.

Overall, she’s one of the better ewes in the country even if she isn’t the finest. But her overall type is outstanding, and her fleece consistency and uniformity is excellent as well. A top notch ewe for sure.

Lambing Concludes

The latest lamb to report is out of Whispering Pines Siena. I rarely hope for ram lambs, but if there was one ewe that I was sort of hoping would have a ram it was Siena. Again, she is on our short list of keeper ewes this year because she has many of the Shetland qualities that we like. She has a nice frame without being too heavy in the bone, and her fleece is both dense and super fine. When she was born, I thought she was the nicest overall lamb that we have ever had here. She is out of Pompey Magnus and Cor de Nuit.

This lamb is the result of careful planning and the crossing of several bloodlines that I think a lot of. We bred Cor de Nuit with Pompey because we thought they complimented each other pretty well. Not to mention the fact that I like the way both lines produce. Siena was the result of that work, and also the first ewe Cor de Nuit gave us. I hadn't planned on breeding her last fall, but elected to do so late. So, to get a lamb at all was a nice bonus. To get one like this is a double bonus.  I think this guy is…the nicest lamb we’ve had born here.

He looks very much like Siena did as a lamb, but given that my expectations increase each year and I still feel that way, that tells me he could be something special. Maybe or maybe not, but he’s as promising as any that we’ve had this year. He should be fully polled as well, which is something that he has that Blue Sapphire’s ram does not.

Another thing I like about some of these lambs (including this one) is something pretty unique, but that probably only matters to me. Some of them have a little horizontal wrinkle across their nose. We’ve never seen that before, but their father has it as well. I like this ram’s father a lot and I think, if nothing else, he’ll have his head. I’ll take that.

Lambing Almost A Wrap

We brought in Sommarang Idelle last fall for three reasons: her structure, her fleece, and her bloodlines. But mostly, I liked her structure. Her conformation is right up there at the top of our flock. As I’ve said before, I won’t bring in sheep unless I’ve seen their parents and I think they are nice. I’m not one for sheep that are aberrations in their bloodline. In my experience, those sheep don’t produce well. Well, Idelle’s mother might be nicer than she is, and her father was nice as well. So, when I see a Shetland that is 20 microns (as Idelle was last fall), I want to know what she is out of. Idelle passed that test.

What I had hoped to do with her was breed her to a super fine ram and see if we could get her great conformation with a fleece that we liked even more. Her moorit ewe lamb this year has that potential. It’ll take some time to determine what she will look like, but she looks promising. Sorry about the pictures, but her mom just doesn't like her near humans when they are out on pasture.

What I can tell you is that she is moorit and spotted. I don't know how fine she will be, of course, but she is quite soft.

It’s no secret that Wintertime Itasca is one of our favorite ewes because: she has a very nice fleece, has nice Shetland type, and throws exceptional lambs. We had her on our initial sales list this year because we had to sell something to get our numbers down, and we felt that we have enough good ewes now that we could do without her. Well, this little moorit ewe lamb is making us think twice about that. When you breed Itasca to super fine rams, she produces. I just love this lamb! She is very feminine and refined. I especially like her head. I think most of our ewes have typey heads, but this one is just what we are after, and it's an attribute that we continue to refine in our program.

Just a beautiful beautiful lamb, who I think will only look better when she fills out.

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.

Lambs

Lambing has started here at Whispering Pines, and so far, so good!

This moorit krunet ewe lamb is out of Madonna.

I like this lamb a lot. It looks like she will have a fantastic, crimpy fleece at this point, and we can certainly use more moorits. This is the first pure moorit ewe lamb we’ve had born here in quite a few years. I’m not sure yet which lambs we will keep, but this one is a possibility. And I especially like the fact that both the mother and father are very fine with fleece types that we are after. Madonna’s two-year old spinning fineness was 25.0 with an average 26.0 microns. Her father’s two-year old micron average was 25.6 with a CV of 14.4. I always pick type over numbers, and this lamb looks like she might have both.

Blue Sapphire is one of our favorite adult ewes and we were really anticipating something nice out of her this year. We were disappointed that she only had a single, but this ram lamb is pretty close to what we would have wanted. Sapphire is not a poll carrier, so I would anticipate that this ram will be scurred, but he looks promising thus far. I’ve always said that I don’t consider us a polled breeder because we typically opt to breed with the best Shetlands we can and not be concerned about color, spots, and horns, but we will choose polled if all else is equal.

This guy will be retained for now to see how things develop. We do like his fleece, and we are hopeful that it will be like his mother’s. Her fleece is the most like her dad’s (Blue’s Clues) than any of our other flock members, and we’d like to reproduce it in all of our flock eventually. Her two year-old fleece tested at a spinning fineness of 23.5 with an average of 24.7. I like our spinning fineness numbers to be much lower than the averages.

This ram lamb is an F4 Jericho, which isn’t a large percentage of one of my favorite Shetland rams, but it’s a bloodline that I like a great deal. His father is super fine, so we are hoping this guy is as well, and I think he will be.

I also like his very dark chocolate moorit color. I’m a sucker for dark grey katmogets, but I also like those rich, chocolate moorits as well. Maybe that’s because we have so few of them.

Constantinople is another one of our favorite ewes. Her mother, Salicional was the top Shetland at Jefferson last year, and I have always thought Connie looks very much like her (except taller). Connie has the best Shetland head in our flock, and has thrown some great ewe lambs for us that capture her essence. Both Blue Diamond and Irish Rose are her daughters. So far, we have kept all of her ewe lambs because they are so similar to our vision of what a Shetland should be. I was almost (and the key word is almost) looking for a nice ram from her this year that would allow us to pass her traits on to our flock in a more widespread manner. Well, we didn’t get a son, but we’ll take two more daughters.

The larger one was the first one out of the chute on Sunday with her smaller spotted sister arriving about 30 minutes later. Both are katmogets and we think they are going to be really nice. Fantastic fleeces on both. I guess you don’t really know how lambs will progress, but we like how promising all of this year’s lambs look so far. And, to be honest, we like all of the yearling ewes that we kept from last year’s lambing. Last year’s lambing was a good step forward, and I like how this year’s looks as well.

Constantinople has a very nice grey katmoget fleece. Her four-year old spinning fineness was 26.5 microns, which is right smack in the middle of the fine category. Her average was 27.2. The funny thing about her fleece is that her yearling test was in the low 27’s and it hasn’t increased much in any year since. I’ve found that the majority of Shetland fleeces increase in micron about 10% per year until they plateau at some point. I like the ones that hold steady. These lambs will be finer than their mother by quite a bit. All of Connie’s lambs have been finer than her, but then, we’ve always bred her to super fine rams.