Lambing Begins - Pompey Magnus x Constantinople

Well, lambing is afoot here at Whispering Pines. I said I would like a keeper ram lamb out of Constantinople and Pompey Magnus, and we got two of them. Both have potential to be flock sires in the future, but that’s certainly not a call I can make this early in their development (it’s easy to disqualify lambs this early, but not as easy to pencil them into the starting lineup). At any rate, they look pretty good for rams of this age.

I’m not even sure which one I like the best at this point. There are some genetic possibilities here that I envisioned when I line bred Pompey and Constantinople. Ultimately, however, it comes down to whether they can move us forward with our breeding program in multiple areas. It will be interesting watching these guys mature over the summer to see how typey they are and that sort of thing. I was looking for type with this breeding.

I don’t normally let them outside until they are three or four days old, but it was so nice today, that I gave them some exercise time.

Breeding Strategies and Bloodlines (No lambs and I'm bored)

Every year I go through the same process here at Whispering Pines. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out which breeding groups will move us forward in our quest for the perfect Shetland sheep. Then I forget about everything sheep related until late March.

This down time gives us time to think through what we are after with this year’s lamb crop. It also gives me more time to second guess breeding decisions. If second guessing myself was a profession, I’d be doing quite well. What I’ve discovered in life is that there are good plans, and then there’s good old fashioned luck (good and bad) that comes in play with all things. That’s especially true with Shetlands.

Case in point, could anyone have predicted that out of the hundreds of breedings involving Roban Dillon and his offspring, Black Forrest would emerge? I don’t know that I would call that a fluke, but it wasn’t planned either. But it’s the kind of thing that happens when you use good bloodlines.
Note: for those of you who are new to the Shetland field, Black Forrest is probably one of the finest adult Shetlands we’ve ever had in this country.

Over the years, I have seen a lot of bad offspring from the Roban Dillon line, and I’ve seen some decent ones. If you have a gulmoget in this country, it came from his line (there were no Dailley gulmogets).

So, what does Roban Dillon have to do with my flock and our grand total of zero gulmogets? Pompey Magnus was an F2 Dillon and one of the few lines out of that imported UK ram that has produced super fine Shetlands that doesn’t trace back to Forrest. If you trace back lines from different Shetlands, Forrest certainly has made big contributions. But so has Pompey, except there are far fewer offspring out of him. As a point of reference, Sheltering Pines Salicional is Pompey’s half-sister (they both had the same father) and both are super fine.

My goal several years ago was to build our breeding program from Pompey, and I have gotten to work on that in earnest this year. Two of our best ewes (Siena and Genoa) are out of him, and Barenfang is a Pompey grandson. Barenfang is also a Black Forrest grandson. See where I am going with this? Barenfang combines two super fine bloodlines, and he is super fine as well. I don’t anticipate getting any lambs from him this year, but my intention is to use him heavily in the fall to see what impact he might have on our flock.

This spring, I expect to have somewhere around 10 lambs out of Pompey. I should have used him more than I have, but when you have a ram like Winter Sky Khan, it’s hard not to use him heavily. As I said last year in a post, you never know how long you will have a ram, so it’s difficult to project what their impact might be on our flock. Pompey is a perfect example of that, and he was the subject of the post when I said that. Call it a vision or bad luck, but we lost Pompey last winter. It happens with rams.

So, my grand plan of juxtaposing two separate Dillon lines hasn’t really come together like I wanted. My plan was to breed Pompey to some of the Khan offspring, to see what would happen. I was impressed with the one time we tried it last year with Siena, and this year we bred Genoa to Khan, so we’ll get another look at it this year (plus we bred Siena to Khan again). I also line bred a Bond daughter to Pompey two years ago, and we got a super fine ewe lamb that we liked a lot (Victoria below).

I don't know about you all, but I have never purchased a ewe lamb as nice as Victoria. It's cool when it works out like that. Genoa is another good example.

Siena as a lamb below.

Again, no disrepect to anyone else out there who is producing fine or super fine Shetlands, I've never even seen ewe lambs this nice (not in person anyway). I may never produce lambs this nice again.

So, the strategy has been successful where we’ve tried it. I had just hoped we would’ve had more Pompey daughters to try it on. Pompey just produced incredibly well. It’s rare to find that kind of prepotency in a ram. We will probably never have another one like him in that regard. I still remember the trip I made to pick him up a few years ago. I was having truck problems almost the entire way, but didn't realize until I got home that my vehicle was leaking transmission fluid out of a rotted hose. I wondered then whether the repair costs had been worth it. They were.

But that’s my goal for this spring. I want to get one Pompey son that we will keep for future use, and I’d like to get six keeper daughters. We retained six Khan daughters from last year as well as one son (Barenfang), so we’re pretty much following the same play book. We currently have 19 ewes, so about a third are Khan daughters. All are very good to excellent, but not exactly what we are breeding for in all ways (the Forrest line typically has a different crimp structure than we like). Structurally, they are all fantastic, and all are fine-to-super fine, but as I’ve said before, we aren’t breeding for two or three traits, but the complete animal.

 

Below are some of the Khan daughters to which I am referring:

 

Blue Diamond daughter out of Khan (also a Blue's Clues granddaughter)

 

As I said, I would like to breed them back to either Pompey or his son, and I currently have no way to do that (they are half-sisters to Barenfang). It’s a bit of a dilemma. In a perfect world, Constantinople would have a keeper son out of Pompey that we could use on some of these beautiful Khan daughters. My gut feel is that we would see great results from such a cross. It’s just not practical to have two thirds of our flock either Pompey or Khan daughters. That would mean we could only keep six of our current adults. Now that I think about it, Constantinople's Khan daughters are also an example of crossing Pompey's line with Black Forrest's. Constantinople is a Salicional daughter, who, as I said, is Pompey's half-sister. Those two are probably my two favorite Khan daughters from last year.

 

In short, there is a method to our madness here at Whispering Pines. While we have at times become too heavily invested in katmogets, it’s the bloodlines that we covet as well as the future potential of the sheep that we keep. Down the road, I could even see us bring back great sheep that we have sold where it makes genetic sense. When you are trying to maintain a flock of 16-to-18 ewes you have to let some good sheep go each year to make room for lambs that should be better. You rapidly reach a point, however, where you are selling sheep that are different, but not necessarily inferior to the ones that you keep. If we don’t think a sheep fits into our genetic puzzle, it might be a find for someone else with different goals.

I'll close with a picture of Barenfang as a lamb, who, as I said, is a striking example of the Pompey/Khan bloodline cross. Ahh, I can only hope we get one or two this good this year!

Sheltering Pines Pompey Magnus

I brought in Sheltering Pines Pompey two years ago because I thought both he and his bloodline seemed to consistently produce sheep that I liked.

The first year, he didn’t disappoint me either. I liked all of his lambs, and we still have two of his daughters (Siena and Genoa). Unfortunately, I didn’t give him that many ewes that first year, and I gave him the year off last year while I went in another direction. It’s one of those things where you want to try different bloodlines and see what happens. And good things did happen, but he’s too nice to sit idle again, and I really would like to get more ewes like Genoa and Siena. Quite frankly, they are our nicest sheep.

Pompey has held his fineness very well over the years. He’s six now, and his last micron test was 25.6 on average, and his CV was 20%. His spinning fineness of 24.9 puts him in the super fine category. It’s not a long fleece (probably three inches), but it has great crimp and density. There are some good polled rams around, but he’s really nice, and certainly one of the finest for his age.

I picked ewes for his group based exclusively on correct type and fleece quality. Obviously, I didn’t put his own daughters in with him, however.

The ewes are:

Blue Sapphire

Blue Diamond

Frangelica

Itasca

Kiyah

Irish Rose

Vogue

Constantinople

I didn’t much care whether the ewes were katmogets, spotted, or solid. I am interested in getting great lambs only. The patterns just don’t matter to me. Plus, I really like katmogets.

Obviously, no one can predict which ewes will have the best lambs, but I think we have a good chance of getting some nice ones out of this group. I don’t really even know how many ewes we will keep next year, so I don’t think we need to get more than three or four great ewes out of the three groups I’ve set up. The way I look at it, the more the lambs we end up keeping, the more ewes we’ll have to sell to make room. I don’t really want to sell any of these ewes. I would like to get some more blacks since we only have one right now, but I’m not really that serious about that or I’d be using Egyptian King. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use him next year. If all goes well, I shouldn’t feel compelled to use Pompey again next year, but you never know. It’s easy to assume there’ll be another breeding season down the road for some of these rams, but that isn’t always the case.

I'll close with some pictures of his group. Pompey is in the middle of the top picture. He's trying to blend in.

 

 

Winter Sky Khan

Last year, I felt our ewes were of sufficient quality that I could try harder at bringing in some brown based lambs. I had been thinking about getting a moorit ram for a little while, but just didn’t see anything polled that I really had to have. I saw some really nice horned rams, but that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go (although it was tempting). Scurred would’ve been fine as well. Finally, at the last minute, this ram became available, and I felt like he was what we needed. He was polled, moorit, super fine, and I just really liked how he looked. In fact, I liked him as a lamb as well, but never really gave much thought to it since we had plenty of good rams at the time (can you have too many? Yes, you can).

 

 

Khan is a Black Forrest son. Black Forrest is known as one of the finest Shetland rams in the country (although Pompey is arguably as fine). And as you look at some of the finer Shetland rams in the country, most of them seem to trace back to Forrest. Certainly, not all of them, but a lot of them do.

Khan’s two year old micron test was: AFD: 22.5 CV: 21.3 CEM: 8.0 CF: 95.7% SF: 22.0 CRV: 93.9. I don’t know much, but I think that qualifies for super fine status. His average will surely creep up on his third fleece, but I still think it will be less than 25.0 microns. If you aren’t into numbers like I am, what does all of that mean? A comfort factor of 95.7% is pretty darn good. A CRV of 93.9 is pretty special as well. I like to have as many fine fibers as I can get without giving up other fleece traits that we like.

He has most of the things I like in a ram such as level topline, long body, nice tail, and what I think is a really nice head for a polled ram. I don’t care for some of the heads on polled rams. I do think the horned Shetland rams are more handsome and majestic looking, but I really like Khan’s head.

His ewes this year are:

Genoa

Pearl

Siena

 

 

It’s a small group, but what it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for with quality.

I’ve not played around much with Black Forrest genetics, so I really don’t know how they will cross with these ewes, but they have the nicest fleeces in our flock, and they are some of our top overall ewes.

Theresa told me once to just breed the best to the best, so that’s what I am trying to do. I think these ewes are the right ones for him. In fact, I did breed Siena to him last year, which is how we ended up with Barenfang.

Whispering Pines Barenfang

The tour of the ewes in our flock is complete, so it's off to the breeding groups.

This is Khan’s son out of Siena from this spring. He is very much like his mother in looks except that he has Khan’s head. That’s a pretty good outcome, essentially combining the best of both parents. I don’t really like to breed ram lambs, but I am rolling the dice here. I really don’t mind if he doesn’t breed any of his ewes, however, but it would be a nice bonus. I should probably use a clean up ram, but that just extends the lambing season, and I really can’t do that.

His six month micron test was: AFD: 21.7 SD: 3.9 CV: 17.9 CEM: 7.3 CF: 98.1% SF: 20.6 CRV: 71.9. Those are pretty good numbers to go along with my overall assessment of him. His fleece also has fantastic density and uniformity to go along with luster. He's one of the better ram lambs we've had born here, and certainly the finest.

I just figured I needed to try him out and see how we do. If he does breed these ewes, I have a high level of confidence in the quality of the lambs. His ewes are:

Sommarang Ilke

Coloma

Amaretto

Izarra

We’ll see how this goes. I think my gamble here speaks to the confidence I have in the other groups I’ve set up. This one is a bonus.

Speaking of bonus, here's a few of his lamb pictures. I think Corinne did this last year, and I thought it was cool to show how the lambs have matured.

 

 

Whispering Pines Kahlua

Well, it took some time, but we are at lucky 19 in our ewe flock. This was our first lamb born this year, and the last one I'm blogging about during our annual tour of the flock.

Kahlua is out of Wintertime Grasshopper and Winter Sky Vogue. Both of the parents are fine, and I am particularly fond of Vogue. She just has a look about her that I like. She's of average size for the breed (I would say 75-80 pounds). This lamb is moorit, but a bit lighter than say Coloma or Kahlua. She's not modified though. She does carry spots (for what that's worth) and is super fine (at least I would say she is without having micron reports to prove it). She is one of those lambs who will need some time to develop. She looks different than all of our other lambs in both type and fleece, so we'll see how she turns out. If you see her from a distance, you'd say she has a primitive fleece because it appears longer and open. But it's really not that way at all once you take a closer look. It's actually one of our finer fleeces from this year's crop. It's just a different type. The old notion that there were somehow three distinct fleece types with Shetlands just isn't so. Even within single-coated Shetlands, there are very different types. This is an example of one of them.

To be honest, I could care less about the types as long as they are consistent from front-to-back and don't have excessive tip. Tip is indicative of guard hairs (which are longer and coarser than the other fibers). Guard hairs ruin an otherwise fine Shetland fleece.

I have heard it said that some spinners like the long, straight fleeces. To that I say, to each his/her own. In talking with spinners, I think the long straight fibers are easier to spin. But if you want to make products that are itch-free and elastic, those Shetland fleeces aren't going to get the job done. At any rate, we have all single-coated Shetlands here at Whispering Pines. We've experimented with different types, and we arrived here after many years of disappointments with fleeces. We even purchased fleeces from other people just to see if we could find some fine, double-coated fiber. I had heard good things about them, but I tend to require data and evidence before I climb on board the band wagon. Some of the double-coated fleeces are soft and silky, but unless you are going to separate the two coats (which can be quite difficult to do), you can forget about calling roving or yarn from such fleeces "fine". The average might be fine, but there is so much variation within the fleece that you will have a large percentage over 30 microns, which is the absolute upper threshold for scratchiness. Most people prefer fiber that is finer than that.

Bottom line, this lamb is not typical for our flock, but she is very fine and consistent. In fact, I like the idea that she might have a 4" plus fleece that is crimpy, fine, and consistent. That's all I really ask for in our flock. I like density too, but we require fine, crimpy, and consistent.

This is a nice Shetland lamb. She isn't the last one I'm blogging about for any particular reason. Someone had to run the anchor leg. Another thing I like about her (and really all of the lambs) is that I like the pedigree. Having experimented with so many Shetland bloodlines, we have determined that some produce well pretty often, and some just don't. A lot of that has to do with several generations of good and bad breeding. This isn't a breed that is going to kick out lambs of predictable quality year in and year out, but if you go after the right bloodlines, your chances are much higher.

I hope everyone has enjoyed our little flock tour this year. I wish more people would do this, because, quite frankly, I enjoy seeing what other people have and why they like them. It's not a judgmental thing; it's just easier than traveling around visiting different flocks. I would rather visit flocks in person, but it's not very practical. Oddly enough, I learned things about our flock by doing this series of posts. Writing for me is sort of relaxing, but it forces a harder evaluation of our flock. I don't like to say things that aren't true. If I say something about one of our sheep, you can be sure I really believe it, and I can tie the statement back to the Shetland standard. As I've said before, there is a substantial lack of knowledge in this country about the Shetland breed. As a person who believes in maintaining the breed the way they are in the UK, I hope that people see this and a light goes on. We had a Jamieson and Smith customer approach us at one fiber event this past fall, and they were shocked that you could buy something similar in the US. She wasn't looking for lace weight (which we did have), but something else that escapes me at the moment.

We're just plugging along trying to do our part in showing fiber and sheep people that this breed is useful as a production animal, not just as a pet (although they surely make nice pets as well). We have bags of britch wool and skirtings that people buy for knitting because it's better than some of the stuff they usually encounter. Not everyone needs or wants to pay $2 an ounce for raw Shetland fiber. And we don't charge that for everything either. In fact, we sell more of the fine or good shetland fiber than we do the super fine stuff.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. That's the ewe flock heading into the winter. Some will be bred and some won't be. But that's a topic for another time.

Whispering Pines Anisetta

Okay, just a few more lambs to write about, and then it’s off to other educational topics that have been creeping and crawling around inside my head (along with the voices…and bats).

This ewe lamb is another Khan daughter out of Sommarang Isla (a ewe that I’ve already blogged about. I don’t always breed ewe lambs, but reluctantly did put Isla in a group last fall. This lamb validated that decision for us. She has that deep rich moorit color that I mentioned the other day, and overall, looks very similar to Coloma (Itasca’s daughter). I have a tough time telling them a part, quite frankly. They have similar fleeces and overall type.

This isn't a great picture of her, but she is in the lamb pasture, and not in a breeding group, and it's tough to get close ups of the lambs.

She is fine boned, crimpy, and fine, and just exhibits the type that I like.

 

Next year, I will probably have to make some tough choices with some of the yearlings because I do truly like all of them. Yes, I like some better than others, but I think all of them have great potential. In some ways, it comes down to colors, patterns, and markings. It’s kind of like collecting baseball cards. How many Reggie Jacksons to you really need? But Izarra is pretty nice, and likely better than some of the other ewe lambs that I like a lot. The good news is that if I end up selling some of these lambs, someone is going to get nice sheep, which is what we have been shooting for in the first place. My philosophy has always been to keep only those Shetlands that move us closer to our goals so we can keep our flock small. That philosophy is going to help other people improve their flocks, and the breed overall. If I keep all of them, I’m not really doing anything positive for the breed. I don’t know if all of that is true, but it helps me part with sheep that I want to keep.

I don’t know if Izarra will be a keeper or not, but that’s my plan right now. Over the years, we have brought in sheep for a specific purpose, and that was to inch us closer to our goals. Some pay dividends, and some don’t. And some do pay dividends to other people at some point. That’s part of the hobby.