Monday, January 25, 2021

Whispering Pines Freyja

 

Whispering Pines Freyja

Freyja is a very flashy spotted ewe from our 2019 crop of lambs, named after Nordic goddesses.  She is registered as black even though most of her fleece is white.  What is making her appear white is that technically she is black with an enormous white spot.  Her fleece will be mostly white, with a few small spots of black and black/white fiber.

Whispering Pines Freyja

Her dam is Blue Sapphire, one of our first fine shetlands born here on the farm.

Whispering Pines Blue Sapphire

Her sire is Rush, who we brought in from another fine fleece shetland breeder, OK Acres.

Rush

We knew when we put these two together that we were going to get very prominent spots, so were not suprised that Freyja and her twin brother had a lot of flash!

Freyja and Twin Ram as lambs

Last year I was able to roo her lamb fleece, which means I was able to pluck her fleece by hand without the use of shears.  This is a trait with the shetland sheep where their fleece encounters a break in the staple which allows them to shed their fleece.  It is also called a rise, and usually happens in the early springtime.

Freyja's Roo'd Fleece

The AFD data on her fleece is AFD 23.4, SD 5.9, COV is 25.1 and spinning fineness is 23.6. 

Her staple length is a very nice 3" unstretched.

Freyja's lock

This fall we bred her to Brienne's 2020 fawn kat ram, who we named Frederick, after Frederick Douglass, keeping with the theme of key players in ratification of the 19th amendment.

Whispering Pines Frederick

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