Thursday, December 31, 2015

Ewe-A-Day - White Pine Reawick

It didn't seem like I would ever be saying this, but this is the final Ewe-A-Day post and it comes on the last day of 2015. It took a long time to get through our ewes. After this, it's on to the rams.



White Pine Reawick is the first ewe we’ve brought into our flock since 2011. Back then, we were desperate to bring in fine moorits. That worked out so well, now we have too many of them. Now we are lacking blacks and whites. The good news is that we have some black based sheep to work with, so there’s hope on that front. Whites are a completely different story. If you don’t have at least one white sheep, you have exactly 0 % chance of getting white lambs.

Reawick may not give us the white lambs that we are looking for this year (one never knows how the genetic dice will roll), but she is a good start to our goal of re-establishing white in our flock. She’s also a very good looking ewe with a soft fleece. I don’t have the fleece stats on her as we brought her in after the latest round of micron testing.

I just think she is a nice ewe and she brings us genetics we don't currently have. It can take some time to learn about new genetics and how to best use them, which is why we don't bring them in often. You really do get to know your own genetics over time. Of course, they weren't our genetics at one point, so it's always exciting to see what we can do with new ones. Chances are, if we are able to reestablish fine fleece white sheep in our flock, we'll have this ewe to thank. Thank you to Garrett Ramsay in helping us get this ewe in time for breeding season!

In our next post, I'll ramble on about our rams and why I think they hold the key to our flock's future. I am very bullish on what we have out there and can't wait to use them!

 

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