More Fine Fleeced Whispering Pines Lambs

The weather hasn't been great here at Whispering Pines, but the lambs have been. You never really know what to expect each year when you put two sheep together in the fall. We spend a lot of time each year evaluating our flock to determine the gaps between our vision and where we are at that particular point in time, and then we put sheep together that have the highest probability of closing those gaps. It's more art than science, however, as much as we try to bring science into it. At the end of the day, you really never know what is going to happen each spring. It's never, however, about colors, spots, or patterns. It's about improving the quality of our flock each year.

Irish Rose is a case in point. She is a Wintertime Bond daughter. Her fleece is fine and soft, but it's her conformation that I have always liked. Last fall, we elected to do a linebreeding on Bond by breeding her to Egyptian Autumn, who is a Bond grandson. I felt it was the best option when I looked at their pluses and minuses. That choice resulted in these two yuglet fawn katmoget lambs (a ram and a ewe).

The ram looks to have all of his mother's pluses with a few of his father's thrown in. He has a nice long body, with a great head. He also has lots of presence.

The ewe is also extremely nice. She is a tad darker and smaller, but most of our ewe lambs are that way. In every case this year, when we have had twins, the ram has been the larger of the two. Both look to be keeper quality at this point, but with 20 plus ram lambs, clearly many of the keepers won't be kept. Still, it's cool when a vision pays off like this breeding did.

 

Blue Sapphire is a flock favorite, and we put her in with Stonehenge las fall because we thought his fleece was most like hers and it's something we want more of. What this breeding choice produced is two katmogets (no surprise there). The ram is spotted, and the ewe carries spots and is grey. We are always excited when we get black-based lambs at this point. We have so few of them.

 

The ram is a fawn smirslet with white socks in the back. He's a pretty striking young man!

His sister is very nice as well. I like that Stonehenge is throwing facial features like his mother's. She has a very unique look about her, and several of this year's lambs have that as well.

Here is the ram again.

Here are both of them together.

 

Whispering Pines Kiyah is also a Bond grandkid. She is out of Blue Diamond, and is arguably the best daughter we have had out of her. Last fall we put her with Egyptian Autumn in hopes of doing some linebreeding that might pull out the fleece characteristics that we want. Egyptian Autumn is out of Egyptian King and Blue Sapphire, so it looked to be a good linebreeding on paper (and on fleece).

 

I think the outcome was great! She had two really nice lambs (ram and ewe), that are fawn katmogets. This time the ewe is spotted!

We have found it really difficult to get spotted sheep with nice fleeces, so we are always excited when it happens! It's not our top priority, but it's nice to get it once in a while.

Sommarang Isla had a spotted fawn katmoget ram and a moorit ram this year. Both will have very nice fleeces, and both a really nice! I think the spotted ram will have a full set of horns, which is something we haven't had around here in a while. Egyptian Autumn who is a half-poll with small scurs is the father. Isla does not carry the polled gene, so we knew what we might get with this breeding, but the quality of the parents was too good to pass up, and I had a lot of confidence in the outcome that we ended up getting.

 

I will get better pictures when weather and time permits. Trust me though, they are really nice!

 

Yes, we have been having a disproportionate number of rams this year, but they have all been really nice, so it gives us a large pool of quality to select keepers from. True, the six adult rams we already have will be tough to top, but I feel confident that several of these lambs will do that. There just aren't any culls in the bunch, which is amazing given how many ram lambs we have had this year.

 





 

2014 Lambing Continues

We're not done with lambing yet, but we have had quite a bit of activity since our last post.

Whispering Pines Siena had twin moorits (ram and ewe) out of Khan. Both look very promising. This combination continues to deliver for us.

Below is the ewe lamb. She is the one in the back in the above picture.

This is a better shot of the ram.

Below is the ewe lamb by herself. I finally got a good day to get the lambs out on pasture.

Whispering Pines Genoa also delivered this past week, giving birth to a single ram lamb with similar facial features to his mother. He is a grey katmoget. We were surprised that she only had a single since we have  been having so many twins this year. Everyone has twinned except Genoa so far.

Whispering Pines Blue Diamond also delivered twins this week - both rams. These lambs are out of Egyptian Autumn. I'm pretty impressed with his lambs this year. We didn't get spots out of this pairing like I had hoped, but we did get extremely nice fleeces, which was the primary goal. This was a linebreeding on Whispering Pines Blue's Clues.

Sommarang Ilke had nice looking twin moorit ram lambs earlier in the week. These guys look very promising as well. These guys are also out of Egyptian Autumn.

It's been raining ram lambs here at Whispering Pines Farm, but they have been outstanding. I'm not sure how we are going to proceed because we already have an outstanding adult ram flock, and we haven't even used all of those guys yet. I'm not sure how to make room for some of these ram lambs. I would rather have that problem though than to have 16 ewe lambs that I want to keep. That would not be a positive situation. This is by far the best overall ram lamb class we have had since we have been breeding Shetlands!

2014 Lambing Update

Lambing begain here at Whispering Pines as Whispering Pines Pearl had a black ram and moorit ewe on Saturday at noon. Egyptian King is the father.

 

It’s a bit soon to say much about them other than that they are refined like their mother, and both have very similar birth coats. My goal with this breeding was to get a black ewe lamb that exhibited the best traits from her parents. I like that they are both unpatterned and look to have the type of fleeces that we breed for. Whether they are superfine or not down the road, I can’t say. There’s just too much to like about both the genetics and what I can see so far! I am very pleased with the outcome of this breeding!

 

Wintertime Itasca lambed on Sunday at 6 am, having a grey katmoget ewe lamb out of Stonehenge. Stonehenge is a yearling ram out of Whispering Pines Genoa and Winter Sky Khan.

My goal with this breeding was to attempt to reproduce Genoa’s fleece type more than anything else. Stonehenge has a similar fleece type to Genoa, but he doesn’t have the density. He has adequate density, but we are accustomed to having denser fleeces around here. Itasca has great density, so our hope was to improve the density and maintain his fleece type. What I didn’t expect was that Itasca would have a lamb who looks nearly identical to Genoa in terms of color, markings, and overall fleece type. I am not all that concerned about the fineness at this point, but she is very fine! Mission accomplished with this breeding! Just a beautiful lamb!

 

Whispering Pines Frangelico strengthened her reputation as a top producer for us when she produced fawn katmoget twins Sunday night – a ram and a ewe.

 

 

 

 Another picture of the ram above.

The ewe (in the center picture) is lighter in color, but both look really nice! These are the first Whispering Pines Egyptian Autumn lambs, which is promising because we bred quite a few ewes to him last fall. I will be watching how these two promising lambs develop as they contain some of the best genetics I have worked with. Frangelico is out of Khan and Constantinople. Egyptian Autumn is out of Blue Sapphire and Egyptian King. We are now starting to combine some of the genetics we have been accumulating on our farm, and I like what I am seeing. It’s one thing to just breed quality to quality, but it’s another to combine them in a way that puts you closer to your flock vision. That takes generations of work to accomplish.

 

Winter Sky Vogue produced twin ewe lambs last year that were exactly what we are breeding for. This year, we bred her to Egyptian Autumn in hopes of producing more of the same. I didn’t have a specific genetic reason for pairing these two Shetlands, but I felt they could produce something really nice. It was more of a hunch than a calculated strategy, in other words. What we got was two lovely ram lambs.

 

It’s been quite a few years since we have had a flashy spotted yuglet lamb like this, but it was a nice surprise to say the least. It’s always been a sub goal of mine to produce line of fine fleece spotted Shetlands. I say sub goal because we aren’t really trying to breed spotted sheep. When it happens though, we’ll take it.
 

Whispering Pines Irish Mist had a pair of twin ram lambs out of Egyptian Autumn. This was her first lambing, and these are two of the nicer lambs we have had this spring. Again, this is what we were looking for out of her. These are lambs that are Khan and Constantinople grandsons, and they go back to Bond and Todhill Jericho as well. They are just really really nice ram lambs! Very fine!
 

 

 

 

Whispering Pines Coloma is another Khan daughter that we retained two years ago out of Itasca. She had this really nice ram out of Egyptian Autumn as well as a moorit daughter that we are raising in the house because she was so small at birth and it was extremely cold that night. We’ve never had such a small lamb at 3 pounds, but she is doing well. Most of our lambs are in the seven to nine pound range (including all of the ones this year). I haven't been able to get a picture of the ewe lamb yet (even though she is in the house). I will follow up with that later.

 

Sheltering Pines Constantinople lambed on Wednesday night with a ram and a ewe.

The ram is a beautiful blue-grey katmoget, and the ewe is a fawn katmoget.

The ram is a beautiful blue-grey katmoget, which of course, is my favorite Shetland color. He is very fine!

 

 

 

 

I had some trouble getting good pictures of the ewe lamb, but she is equally nice, but fawn. Both are excellent and very fine! As you can see from the pictures below, fawn katmoget or not, she's something special!

 

 

Her lambs are always very robust. These lambs are out of Egyptian King. I like both of these lambs a lot, but there is no getting around the fact that I love the ram’s color. Constantinople is easily our best mother as well. This year was a good example. Most mothers clean their lambs and then leave them alone while they deliver their second lamb moments later. Constantinople, however, continued cleaning the ram while the ewe was being born. She believes in multi-tasking apparently.

Finally, a good picture of Constantinople and her ram lamb.

 

An excellent start, but much more to come!