Black ewe - 25% UK - single, born 4.9.01
AaAa, BBBb, SSS?. Proven poll carrier ewe.
Above and below, show Lambo as an 8 year old ewe. Her twin lambs out of Heights Orion are with her below.
Below is Lambo's eight year old fleece histogram and micron.
Lambo is truly a dream come true. Thanks Stephen for letting me get her from you :) As an EIGHT year old ewe she has one of the best histograms that I have, as well as giving me wonderful lambs! (her daughter this year was WhitePine Bethany - fawn ewe AFD 23.4, SD 5, CV 21.2, CEM 8.9, CF 92.8%)
I'm hoping to use her in AI this fall to Todhill Jericho in hopes of getting some impressive katmogets :) (Jericho is homozygous katmoget). She now, at 8, has just a tiny amount of iset in her britch, but otherwise no iset. That's also hard to come by!
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4 comments:
She reminds me of Inky in so many ways, only holds MUCH better condition. I just love my old black girl, and can't wait to see if she and Braveheart give me some beautiful spots on a couple of very consistent and fine-fleeced, four-square lambs!
Now see this is something I don't understand about micron testing and histos. If they are having a lot of fibers going over 30, isn't that a bad thing?
I'm starting to wonder if I'm not being too hard on myself and my sheep?
You are right, a black ewe holding her color at that age is a gem! Justalit'l Grace is like that, I have two daughters out of her.
Hi Garrett,
There is an article on raising ewe lambs on
http://pipevet.com/pipevet/default.aspx (under sheep go to "Educational Articles" then "Raising Ewe Lambs") The article talks about ewes bred as lambs not regaining condition before being rebred and as a result don't produce as well in the second year.
Also, David Keir an international sheep shearer (who also has a flock of sheep) says that if you feed the bred ewe lambs right (so as to not stunt them)that it is actually more expensive than not breeding them.
Last year about half my lambs got bred and half did not. The ones that did are smaller even if they were bigger to start with. It will be interesting to compare them next spring and summer with production and final ewe size when they stop growing. This year I'm not breeding my ewe lambs. Oh, in the UK most shepherds do not breed lambs.
Nice looking ewes! How old is the limit for AI ing do you know?
Juliann, you are correct. Alot of fibers over 30% is difficult to overcome. The easiest way of looking at the histogram is:
AFD is correctable by degrees. To correct you need:
SD: Aim for as low as you can get. Anything under 7 is going to be increasingly effective for improving your fleece.
CV: Aim for under 20. Remember what this measurement actually is; it is about VARIATION. You want to keep your variables within the fleece to continue to decrease. The merino folks in AU and NZ have always looked toward <20 as ideal. For every point below 20 you go you actually improve the seeming AFD.
F>30 is a bit crazy as you really don't want ANY fibers over 30, that is the gateway to truly rough. The Texas report gives you the Fibers <15 which is actually helpful in that it will point out the outstanding fibers in the fleece.
CEM needs to keep falling below 10 if you want you fleeces to actually BE soft, not just feel soft.
Use the histogram as your best help. You want that inverted V with little to no scatter to the right (harsh fibers) I don't think any of us would argue with scatter to the left, lol.
A point to remember is that a fleece that has an AFD of 29 with a very tight inverted V is much more improvable than a fleece with an AFD of 19 that has a histogram that looks like a storm across the graph.
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