Hannah had a big black gulmoget ewe lamb this morning. This is the first ewe lamb that Hannah has ever had. I've gotten three ram lambs from her in previous years.I wondered if she would single this year. She didn't look like a hot air balloon like she did last year before she delivered twins. Then when I saw the size of this year's lamb, I knew she wouldn't have another one.
This gulmoget girl has the halo fleece that starts at the ribs also. She's emptied one side of Hannah's udder and is a sleepy girl now.
I have one more moorit ewe lamb who is bred to Harrison. It's looking like Harrison may be homozygous black -- we've only gotten black factored lambs from him. We'll have to see what Leonie delivers.
So far Harrison has done really well by us, with three gulmoget ewe lambs, a black krunet ewe lamb and a grey ram lamb. I know it's early to be thinking polled, but the grey lamb is very smooth on top so far.
On another note, I got my micron test results back from Texas A & M yesterday. Some were very surprising. I thought for sure my Ile de France/Dorest cross ram would micron around 19 AFD, but his was 25.0! Wow, how could I be so far off?
Our flock average AFD is 26.9.
Of our lambs from last year, lowest micron count of 22.5 came from Lana (black gulmoget ewe lamb out of Harrison and River Oaks Lucy), then 23.3 from McIntire (fabulous black ram lamb out of Windswept Boggart and River Oaks Hattie), and then 24.2 from Marshall (scurred mioget ram lamb out of Boggart and River Oaks Hannah).
Of the BFLs, River Oaks Leora (Lanora's white lamb from 2008 sired by Granite) was the lowest with 24.9 AFD.
Bo, the little ram lamb we retained (out of River Oaks Cora and Boggart) microned at 25.3. So nothing special this year.
The good news was that only one sheep in our flock microned over 30 AFD. That was Derra, our longest fleeced Shetland mule. And her fleece is pretty nice, so I'm not complaining. :-)
Still pretty shocked over the Ile de France ram though...
congrats on more ewes lambs and more gulmogets!! i'd love to see a private email with your results ;) :)
ReplyDeleteI promise to send you some when I get them back!
Thanks Garrett, it looks like we just have one more ewe to lamb this year - one more chance for a moorit gulmoget. LOL.
ReplyDeleteIn looking over my micron test results some more, I see that Leora, with her AFD of 24.9 comes in with 94.1 CF (comfort factor). And Peppy with the 25.0 AFD comes in at 90.7 for CF. Lana's CF was 92.7. Those were my only three coming in over 90 for CF. As we know, the lowest micron count doesn't always indicate whose fleece FEELS the softest.