Breeding Groups

Coburg
Spunky
Coppelia
Smily

Broderick
Petal
SheltrgPines Corina

Walden
Fantasy Dance
Cotillion

Velour
Allemande

Dungaree
Samba

WS0923
Sonata

Pegasus
Toccata

Blue
Waltz
Valse
Sorry no descriptions, five minute post today. Hoping for beautiful lambs out of every single ewe. I think I have a problem. I have too many sheep now that I don't want to sell, and I will have all their lambs next year...

The Yearlings

Hey, it's almost fall 2011- does anybody want to know what last year's lambs look like?! Well, here they are, minus Valse,  who I still could not get a good picture of (guess why :). Ah yes, the yearlings. Such individuals- each with their own very independent personalitys - the spoiled, the aristocrats, the brats. They are my best lamb crop, with each one being different, but with consistent good conformations, good breed type, and nice soft lustrous fleeces on all of them.

 Sonata.

Samba. Good conformation on a little smaller scale than her sister. Samba has a fine, very soft, very lustrous fleece with good staple lengh. Her lamb fleece was super fine, with extreme crimp. Not quite so extreme now, more mid-range, which is ok with me, because I can't spin laceweight! I showed her fleece under an experienced spinner/weaver/etc. judge at the Fiber Event who said laceweight spinners would go crazy over her tiny little crimp and fineness! Samba passed inspection with UK inspector Kate Sharp at WSWF. Kate said she was typical of the Shetland Isles type.

Cotillion ('Coti').  She's  got a good conformation with great breed character, and a medium sized frame.  Coti has a pretty fleece, similar to the typical grey kat - not terribly dense, but silky, very lustrous, and soft.

Arabesque. She has a nice fleece, a touch too britchy, but very dense, fairly lustrous, and soft. Very good conformation and breed character.

Allemande ('Alli'). Spoiled rotten, nice little ewe. Good conformation, head, tail, and a nice fleece that is staying a true black so far, with not much sunbleaching.

Tango. She has a very darkly shaded steel blue-ish grey fleece, soft, not as lustrous as most kats because of her deep color, and very dense.

Toccata. Great breed character. Nice soft fleece with good color, sort of your typical grey kat type.

Valse, my other fawn (really fawn, as in modified, not moorit as most 'fawn' kats are) kat, is a nice medium sized ewe with a good conformation and a highly lustrous, very silky handling, soft fleece with a ~4-6'' staple. Oh, and she's spoiled, which is why you'll have to look at the posts below for her most recent picture:)

Ewe Lambs

Here are some of my 8 ewe lambs, in no particular order.

Minuet (Apache x Fantasy Dance)

    Peanut (Waltz x UTS Emperor's White)

Rhumba (Apache x Spunky)

Rhumba's fleece - not very clear in the picture, but she is a dark fawn, not moorit.

Mamba, light badgerface.

        Mamba's fleece - sort of a silvery-blue with caramel overtones

Mazurka's fleece - great color (I think she got the dark gene from Aster, a dark grey seasonal fader) and very soft  and dense.

Mazurka (Bramble McDreamie AI x Aster)

2011 Sheep

2011 Lamb List
all ewes S'more stock unless otherwise indicated
SheltrgPines Corina X UTS Apache - black light badgerface ewe, moorit ewe, black ram
Spunky x UTS Apache  -  black ewe, moorit ewe, white ram
Fantasy x UTS Apache - moorit ewe, moorit ram
Smily x UTS Apache - mioget ram
Aster x Bramble McDreamie AI - spotted black kat ewe, spotted black kat ram
Coppelia x Bramble McDreamie AI  -  black kat ram, moorit kat ram
Waltz x UTS Emperor's White (B2) - black kat ram, white ewe, white ewe
Joyce, Petal, and Gypsy all went to Blue :(
                                   

                                    2010 Lamb List - now yearlings

Samba (Spunky x Bramble McDreamie AI) - white
Sonata (Spunky x Bramble McDreamie AI) - white
Tango (Fantasy Dance x Bramble McDreamie AI)  - spotted black katmoget
Toccata (Fantasy Dance x Bramble McDreamie AI) - spotted black katmoget
Arabesque (Coppelia x Bramble McDreamie AI) - moorit katmoget
Allemande (Coppelia x Bramble McDreamie AI) - black
Cotillion (SheltrgPines Corina x Bramble McDreamie AI) - white
Valse - (Waltz x UTS Broderick) - fawn katmoget

Here are the numbers on a few yearlings; the rest will be sent off soon. Though I couldn't care less about what a machine tells me, it's a scientific, hard-fact reference for what my fingers are feeling. And it gives anyone who's not able to touch the sheep some objective data, rather than relying on what one person says their hands are feeling - because everyone has their personal soft, very soft, not-so-soft, silky,  and all those other subjective, general terms.  I'm glad the SD's are pretty low  (silky/ smooth fiber), and they all spin finer than the actual micron (feel softer than they really are in numbers). Tango was the biggest surprise, as she was born with a hairy bithcoat (look at the picture at the top of the blog) that she didn't shed out, and yet is the finest in micron so far.

AFD,SD, CV, SF

Arabesque - 22.4, 4.1, 18.3, 21.3
Cotillion - 22.0, 5.0, 22.8, 21.7
Sonata - 28.0, 5.5, 19.7, 26.9
Tango - 20.9, 4.6, 21.9, 20.5
Toccata - 21.2, 4.2, 20.0, 20.5
Valse - 25.2, 5.0, 19.7, 24.2

Some Pictures

Portrait of 'Peanut' (Waltz x Emperor's White)

 

Valse

Well, hello, Valse. She was headed towards me for petting, as usual.