Izarra had a pretty fantastic ram lamb out of Barenfang and he illustrates the potential that I saw in Barenfang when we threw some ewes in with him last fall. Izarra is a Khan daughter, and Barenfang is a Khan son. This is a closer line breeding than I normally do, but there were some things I was looking to combine with this pairing, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
On a related note, I got my ram micron tests back today and Khan came back at 22.5 microns as a three year old, which I thought was quite impressive. His spinning fineness was 21.9 microns.
Barenfang's numbers were excellent as well. His yearling test was 21.5 on average, with a 20.7 spinning fineness. If I had to pick between the two, I would go with Barenfang simply because his fleece has the full range of characteristics that I am looking for. But they are both excellent polled rams. Anyway, I like Izarra's ram lamb, to make a long story short (after I've already made it long).
Frangelico, another Khan daughter also came through with an excellent fawn katmoget ram out of Pompey. We ended up with 10 ram lambs this year, and nine ewe lambs, and this ram is at the top of the list. I said before how I liked how the Khan and Pompey lines have worked together, and this one is a good example of it. I'll have to get better pictures once the lambs mature more, but this was the best I could do with the time I had tonight.
Itasca is a ewe who always produces well, and we always look forward to her lambs because of it. This year we bred her to Pompey for the first time, and she produced this beautiful fawn katmoget, who has earned a spot in our top five ewe lamb list this year. She is what I was looking for when I cooked up this pairing last spring. It took me a while to get around to it, but once I did, it paid off.
And finally, Pearl produced an excellent fawn katmoget ram lamb out of Khan. This is Pearl's first lamb even though she is three. She is a very refined ewe, so we waited a year to breed her and for a variety of reasons, she didn't get bred last year either. But the wait was worth it, because I see this ram as a future flock sire. It's hard to really predict how a lamb will turn out, but I like what I see in this one. Time will tell whether he has his mother's density, but both of his parents are superfine.
