Fleece Clinic

First of all, I’m not qualified to give a fleece clinic, but if I called this anything else you probably wouldn’t still be reading. Even though I’m far from a Shetland fleece expert, I have visited 13 farms around the country and I have seen many different types of fleeces. What I want to share today is some observations on a few sheep. We own all but one of these sheep, so I can share my thoughts freely with some data to back it up.

The first fleece sample is from a Shetland that is not from our farm. I’m not saying we’ve never had a fleece like this here (because we have), but it’s a good example of bad Shetland.

I read on one blog that Shetland fleeces are not straight. Well, this one is. There’s no crimp or wave whatsoever. It is double coated, but that’s not the problem. It’s just coarse and hairy. It’s about 7.5 inches long. I don’t have micron data on it, but as you can see, it’s more like hair than wool. I suspect that when people have a negative impression of the breed, it’s because they have experienced wool like this. Oliver Henry is the world’s foremost authority on Shetland fleeces in Shetland and I really don’t know how he would classify this one. It’s “Rough” at best. Certainly good for making carpet or something that wouldn’t see skin contact, but if that’s what you are making, why even use Shetland?

Is this fleece example typical in the U.S.? Sadly, yes. And this one isn’t even the worst one I’ve seen. I’m not sure how the breed fell apart this badly since the breed was imported in 1980.

The next fleece is Shiobhan’s. She’s our F1 Orion. Her staple is about 4” long with loads of crimp. It has a nice silky handle as well with very little tip.

I like this fleece. It’s not super fine, but it is 25 microns with a 16.7% CV and a 23.7 Spinning Fineness. The spinning fineness is a number that I think does a good job of capturing the handle of the fleece. I use it as a relative gage of handle. In other words, I’ve found that it is a better indicator of handle than the average. I have no data to back that up, but when I rate our fleeces by hand, the better handling ones also have lower Spinning Fineness numbers. Okay, maybe I do have some data. In Shiobhan’s case, her fleece feels finer than 25 microns. That’s my point. Is that misleading? I don’t know.

Blue Diamond’s fleece is also a favorite. Her fleece is very much like Shiobhan’s (except a different color, of course). It’s 4” with great crimp and a very nice handle. I would say the fleeces are identical in many ways.

Blue Diamond’s average micron was 25.4 with a 19.9% CV and 24.5 spinning fineness. Do I think Shiobhan’s feels a full micron finer than Blue Diamond’s (according to the spinning fineness)? As a matter of fact, I do. It has a little better handle. But they are really close. In fact, probably within the margin of error of my handle test.

Christmas Holly is the one sheep that really threw me off this spring with my tactile evaluation. I had her pegged at one of our finest ewes. She isn’t. I thought she might be 25 microns (like Shiobhan and Blue Diamond). Her micron average was 26.3 with an 18.0% CV and 25.0 spinning fineness.

So, how can a sheep with a 25.0 spinning fineness feel softer than the others? She is very silky. That’s my only explanation. It’s just a beautiful handling fleece. In fact, Itasca’s fleece (which is actually 25.0 microns), does not handle as well as Holly’s. The difference? The CV and the silkiness. Holly’s fleece is the same length as the others (4”), has similar crimp, but it just handles wonderfully. I have to argue that it handles better than the other fleeces here. The only other difference worth noting here is the tip. Holly has more tip than Blue Diamond and Shiobhan. You can see that in this picture.

Bond is two years old now, but his second fleece looks good. His second fleece tested at 23.6 microns with an 18.6% CV and a 22.5 spinning fineness. His crimp is nice, and the handle is excellent. Now, as far as length goes, his fleece is only 2.5" long. But now that we've had a chance to process it, I can say it has special properties that you just don't often find in Shetlands.

The finished yarn last year was just exquisite, and everyone who has touched it is impressed. You just don't find Shetland fleeces in this part of the country like this. The only other thing I can add here is that Jen was overwhelmed when she spun this this past winter. Two years ago, I would've thought a fleece needed to be four or five inches long to spin properly, but it's all in the experience level of the spinner. Fine is good, and let's leave it at that. The end result speaks for itself.

The point of all of this? Shetland fleeces come in different types. There are bad and excellent fleeces within the breed. A lot of lamb fleeces look pretty good, but there are usually some indicators of future behavior. I may not be able to differentiate between a 24 and 26 micron fleece in 100% of the cases, but I have gotten pretty good at it. This year, I was able to estimate 85% of our flock within a micron of their true average fiber diameter. Some of that was probably luck, but I was in the ballpark on the rest. On the whole, I was within 0.17 microns estimating the flock average once I added up the individual estimates (I averaged my estimate vs. Texas A&M’s results and I was within 0.17 microns).

Anyway, as I learn more about fleeces, I hope to improve on my estimates, but for now, I feel good about the lambs that we kept based on my subjective evaluation. And that’s a good thing because we all have to make tough choices in that regard before we have any help from science. I like to wait until our ewe lambs are yearlings before we do micron testing on them. That means I’d better not be off by much…in June. Fortunately, I was very close on all of the yearling estimates. I only missed on four adults.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some examples of good and bad Shetland.

Irish Lace's Ram

Here’s one of the few ram lambs we’re offering for sale this year. He’s out of Irish Lace and Little Buckaroo, which makes him an F2 Jericho with Black Forrest ancestry. Iris Lace is a Black Forrest granddaughter. This guy is 51% UK.

Here’s my assessment of him thus far:

• He’ll most likely have a full rack. It's possible he'll be scurred, however.

• His fleece will most likely be 4” to 4.5” long with crimp

• He is a fawn katmoget

• He probably carries spots

• He has an excellent conformation

He just oozes Shetland, and would make an excellent flock sire for someone looking to add UK genetics and jump start their breeding program. I think he’s about as good as it gets in horned Shetland rams. I don’t know how fine he will be but both parents had very good micron tests. I do know he’ll have a low CV. If he was polled, he would be staying here.

F3 Orion & Pompey Daughter For Sale

This ewe looks like she might be the last lamb we offer for sale this year. She is out of S’more Sparkles and Pompey Magnus. She is 52% UK genetics, an F3 Orion, and will be Ag. I like her and would like to hold onto her another year for evaluation, but we have more sheep than we are comfortable with right now.

What do I like about her? Her genetics for one thing. Pompey is a great Shetland ram who is correct and very fine. This lamb’s mother has a 4” very dense fleece. I always think her fleece is longer than it actually is. Sparkles is also still less than 30 microns as a three year old, with a low CV as well. Another thing we look for is the quality of the grandparents. I think a lot of Sparkles’ parents. Under The Son Torvus is an F1 Orion, who I have always liked. He has a beautiful dark golden fleece and has all of the properties I like in a Shetland. Sparkles’ mother, Petal, is also very nice, and one of the reasons we got Sparkles in the first place. There are just a lot of generations of nice Shetlands in this lamb’s pedigree.

We were looking to produce a lamb with a 4” fleece like her mother, but with the fineness of the lamb’s father. I do think this lamb will have a 4” to 4.5” fleece, but it’s too early to gage fineness. Her crimp really hasn’t come in yet like I know it will.

Anyway, I think this is a good Shetland lamb that will help someone who is looking to improve their flock. I also think she is capable of producing very fine lambs, and as I said, she will most likely be the last lamb we offer for sale this year, and definitely the last Pompey lamb.

Moorit Gulmoget Ewe For Sale

We’re finally getting around to creating a sales list, and are offering a few sheep at this point. As the spring rolls on (or arrives), we’ll continue making the hard choices.

First, Irish Lace is a two year old solid-sided gulmoget out of Firth of Fifth Leyland and Buttercup. She is a Black Forrest granddaughter.

I really hate to sell this ewe, because she is built quite nicely (as the shorn picture shows) and because she is very rare (being a moorit, solid-sided gulmoget who carries spots).

Her fleece is 5” to 5.5” long, which still meets the Appendix A guidelines. Her two year old micron test average was 27.7. I wouldn’t hate keeping her, but for now, she’s for sale.

10 Lambing Thoughts

1. I'm still having a tough time picking which lambs I like the best. I think we ended up with more top notch ewe lambs than I expected. I was hoping for four really nice ones, and maybe it'll end up that way, but right now, there are quite a few great ewe lambs out there.

2. It’s hard to get all of the colors, patterns, and spots that you want while also improving quality. As we raise the bar each year, it becomes more of a challenge.

3. Egyptian King turned out to be a great ram. His lambs are everything I hoped they would be.

4. I’m happy that we haven’t taken a step back in terms of conformations while working on fleece improvement. I was worried about that. I’m not sure why.

5. Pompey made a nice contribution to our flock in only one year.

6. As did Buckaroo. I wanted to introduce more Jericho blood into our flock and he allowed us to do that.

7. We’re still reaping the benefits from bringing in Blue’s Clues and Bond two years ago. I’ve done (and continue to do) dumb things, but those were good decisions.

8. We’ve built up a nice foundation of poll carriers. Three years ago, I don’t think we had any. Leyland was the first half-poll ram we ever used, and at that time, we were breeding him to ewes that I knew didn’t carry polled. This spring, I believe all but one lamb carry one or more polled genes, and some carry both of them. So, I’m happy that we’ve been able to introduce that into our flock without giving up other things as well. It’s still not our number one priority, but we’ve been able to make good progress.

9. I continue to be amazed by the diversity in this breed. I mean, we have a lot of katmogets here, and yet, no two are the same. The fleeces are different, the colors are different, the pattern itself varies. The same is true of gulmogets.

10. I continue to find joy in learning about different fleece types, and speculating about how each lamb’s fleece will turn out. There is so much to consider beyond color.

Lambing Stats

Here are the stats from this year's lambing:

13 ewe lambs
6 ram lambs
4 grey katmogets
8 fawn katmogets
6 blacks
1 grey

That’s 19 lambs, which quite frankly, isn’t too bad. Of course, I say that because 13 of them were ewes.

As expected, we certainly had a run on katmogets again this year. We are still paying the price for breeding with two grey katmoget rams two falls ago. But we are also reaping the benefits of that decision in terms of fleeces and conformations. In year three of our fleece improvement program, I can honestly say we struck gold. Much work remains, but it’s nice to see some incremental improvement.

Our goal heading into this spring was to add some solid black and moorit ewes to our flock to go along with the overall quality of the sheep. We were able to add blacks, but not a single unpatterned moorit. Still, if I had to choose between color and quality, quality wins every time, and that continues to be our philosophy.

Now, we did add some exceptional fawn katmogets, so we’ll take that. We didn’t have a single fawn katmoget ewe last fall, and we wanted to add a couple.

We are attempting to put together a sales list, but it’s not the easiest thing to do. We believe strongly that we need to keep a nice mix of adults and lambs, and we’re trying to do that. We really hate to part with any of the adults. But our goal is to breed for quality, and the difficult part is deciding whether a mother or daughter is a better fit for our plans for next year. That is very difficult to evaluate with lambs that are only a few weeks old. Some certainly will not be improvements on their mothers. And it might take months to really gage that with any accuracy. And some of the mothers are such great producers, that you really need to include them in the breeding program. Other adults are young, but already showing promise.

Last fall, we kept 18 ewes and bred 14. I don’t know how many we are keeping this year, but it won’t be more than that. More important than the number is our goal of making sure each flock member is outstanding. Some might be finer than others, some might have more crimp, some might have greater density, and still others might have better conformations. Maybe none will have all of the things we want. But looking at the progress we’ve made this year, I feel confident that our flock can reach the goals we have set for it. I’m not sure how long that will take, but I’m pleased that we are starting to contribute to the breed in a positive way. Sure, with such a small flock, the contribution is very small, but it’s rewarding nonetheless.

Lambing - Final Stretch

Two new lambs to talk about. Blue Sapphire lambed on Wednesday and gave us this extremely fine fawn katmoget ram lamb. He’s 56% UK and a half-poll. He’s just a beautiful ram in my book!

Now that all of the Egyptian King ewes have lambed, I can say that I’m blown away by his lambs! Each one has his fleece type. I can’t say that all of them will be 20 microns, but they are going to be fine. Granted, we did breed him to two Blue’s Clues daughters, so I shouldn’t be surprised at the outcome, but I was very pleased with his lambs this year. Christmas Holly’s ram lamb out of Egyptian King is also looking impressive. He may or may not be as fine as his father, but I like his structure better already. He’ll be one to watch over the next few months as we figure out which way to go with breeding next year.

Whispering Pines Shiobhan, our F1 Orion ewe from last year, also lambed on Wednesday and had a very pretty grey katmoget ewe lamb out of Pompey. She is 58% UK and the second darkest katmoget we’ve had here. I love those dark blue katmogets and would have four or five of them if I could. This lamb looks promising so far.

Only one ewe left to go, Irish Lace, our solid-sided gulmoget (shown here trying to elude my camera). She is bred to Little Buckeroo, our F1 Jericho son.