Saturday, November 1, 2008

Evaluating Ewes

Last night, as I tried to fall asleep I lay there in the dark, staring at what I thought was the ceiling (hey it was that dark). I couldn't sleep and these breeding groups I am trying to plan for all year are now up in the air. I couldn't help but try and figure out my best ewes, and ones that needed improving the most.

I took all the yearling or older ewes and found their most recent micron reports. Popped those numbers into a spread sheet and then sorted them from lowest to highest in three categories: AFD, SD and CV. I then placed them 1-25 (that's how many yearling and older ewes I have) and then added up the three placings for each ewe in the three categories. Lowest possible score was 3 (ewe being the lowest for AFD, SD and CV). The highest score was 75 (ewe being the highest AFD, SD and CV)

My top three ewes hands down are in order:

FirthofFifth Rahu - white illget ewe (she had a score of 8)

RiverOaks Lucy - grey katmoget ewe (she had a score of 10)

WinterSky Layla AI - mioget ewe (she had a score of 12)

They are definitely my "A" ewes.

The next obvious split of girls ranging from 22-31 points are the following:
WhitePine Twix - moorit
River Oaks Eliza - white
ShelteringPines Fleur di Lis- smirslet grey katmoget
WhitePine Skor - shaela
Minwawe Dixie Cup - black krunet
FirthofFifth Taika - black gulmoget

These girls had very nice, low averages.

I think that these girls will have a lot to offer me in the future. Many thanks to those who were willing to part with these fine animals!

Rahu's boy, Romeo is still available for sale too...hint hint :P

3 comments:

Kara said...

Glad to see a Minwawe ewe made the list :) My Pearl and Duet from M.E. are also by Hopalong and have fantastic fleece.

Becky Utecht said...

Whew! And I'm glad to see both the River Oaks girls made it into your top groups. :-)

Jenny Holden said...

This is really interesting, but I don't understand all those AFD, SD and CV things! I've not heard them before, please could you explain?

A long time coming!

 It has been a long time. Too long in fact. We lost access to our farm website and ebonwald website when WEBS.COM was closed by VistaPrint. ...