Shetland Sheep for Sale

Our first ever year to sell sheep is here. We simply have too many sheep for the winter, so it's time to make some difficult decisions. In an attempt to reduce genetic repetitiveness, we've tried to either offer adults and keep their ewe lambs or sell ewe lambs and keep their dams. We're primarily selling moorits to increase our fleece colors.

The two ewe lambs for sale sired by Cedar are both moorit based with nice conformation and comparable fleece. Franny (left) is a solid fawn out of Maggie, who is out of Wynona, so we felt that line would be reasonable to start thinning. Both Wynona and Maggie are excellent, attentive mothers who lamb without assistance, and each have strong Shetland features with nicely shaped tails. Maggie twinned her first year lambing, and Wynona successfully lambed triplets this year. Molly (right) is a spotted fawn out of Poa, who has given us twin ewes for the past two years. There are only so many ewe lambs I feel I should keep from one ewe, so this was another reasonable starting point.

The registered yearling ewe that will be offered is Annie, another ewe out of Poa but sired by Xavier. She is a spotted moorit who has held her spots and her color well. A nice ewe, but we really felt we could only keep one ewe lamb from each breeding out of Poa. Claire ('11) and Hannah ('12) will stay here, and they were primarily chosen over the other two for their fleece colors (mioget and black, respectively).

The hardest decisions were regarding adult ewes. Since we were able to get two nice ewe lambs out of Crystal, we've decided to see if we can find her a nice home in a smaller flock where she can hopefully get more scratches than we can currently give her. I may regret this sale, but it really isn't practical to keep a ewe and both of her twin ewe lambs. Nettie will give us the potential to get a horned ewe or more HST lambs, and Cali will be our token spotted black ewe.

Mocha will also be for sale, and we're considering selling Madeleine. Hard decisions, but to improve our flock and increase diversity it is a necessary component of shepherding.