Sunday, March 22, 2015

Update



This year we AI'd our three highest percentage ewes. happily all three delivered successfully!
One set of triplets, two sets of twins, all from an Irish-Bred Kerry Hill (Tom 11-SE-05, from Supersires). Each of my ewes gave up just one ewe lamb.

This is great as the previous 2 years I have had only high percentage ram lambs from AI (and as I have mentioned, they don't really move the ball down the field from and AI perspective). I kept one 87.5% Kerry Hill Ram lamb from our AI Sire Oak Tree Teddy in 2013 (his twin, the Black Knight, went to a starting flock in Idaho), and one 87.5% ram lamb out of our AI Sire Oak Tree Charles. Our three new ewes are a mosaic of 25%-37.5% Ted/Charles/Cheviot and 50% Tom. I know a little technical, but suffice it to say that I have added some genetic diversity to the flock.


This is our third of three, the 87.5% ewe lamb out of Bobby-Joe (ARR;75%) and Tom (100%).  Her maternal line has been very strong, producing exclusively strong and vigorous twins (and one set of triplets) for three generations, and all three generations ALWAYS 'taking' on Lap AI. (When Bobby Joe dropped her second boy this season, I left the barn a little dejected- I came back 1/2 hour later to make sure Bobby Joe had cleaned the lambs and passed the placenta and low and behold there was a bonus round lamb in the birthing stall- this little girl). I think she's the purest Kerry Hill ewe in the US.

Some great folks in Maine had taken some of my foundation Kerry Hill sheep back in 2011 (and gotten semen from me as well since). Shepherd magazine did a nice write-up photo-shoot, so check it out here.

You can see their progress here.