Ewe-A-Day - Venice

Well, we're well into the two year old ewes now. I refer to these ewes as the boring ones because I always look at all of our sheep as steps to something better and we now have lambs and yearlings in the flock that are a year or two closer to my vision than the two year olds. In reality, however, there is gold in them there ewes. One or more of them will have another Jane Eyre next year. I don't know which one(s), but that's what I expect from this group.

Venice is another Pompey daughter who was/is on our sales list for this year and probably will be next year as well. It’s not that’s she’s not as good as our other ewes, but she is a fawn katmoget and we have many of those. In fact, Venice looks very similar to Florence and several of our other ewes. So, it’s hard to keep duplicates when you have a limited flock size. Her fleece stats are very good, but not exceptional for our flock: 27.3/4.2/15.6/7/25.4. Still, her 25.4 SF is pretty telling, and somewhat rare in the North American Shetland community. The other thing I like about her is that she is always there to greet me at chore time because she was a bottle lamb. I am impressed so far with her third fleece, although we don’t test our adult ewes until spring. I will say that it feels finer than 27 microns, so I am not expecting an increase. She is out of Sommarang Isla. She's another one that I really don't want to sell because she offers me variety in fleece type, and yet retains the signature softness that defines our flock as a whole.