Fiber

[Rebecca]

I'd like to get some of the sheep's wool tested. It's $7.50 per at Yacom-McColl which is the only place I've found online. I'm willing to pay for several sheep to be tested so that we can make some claims on the fiber quality of this line. I'm going to test Baagonia and Woolson. I'd like to test Oran and a few of the others as well if it's okay with you guys. Can you pick a few of the others? I don't want to pick out the best, but rather have a good sampling of color, age, gender, and lineage. Maybe one of Oran's black lambs and then some Abram's get? Or Wooliam, since he's the only adult white sheep in the bunch other than Oran. What do you guys think?

[Sue]

Contact Laurie (Laurie's Lambs) via HFSheep! She told me about a university source that charges $2 per but darn if I can find the saved information; it must be in my old Mac (and I stored it during the ice storm).

It would be good to include some wethers as they often have the nicest fleeces and they're what many handspinner's keep. Plus, we need to promote wethers since there is only so much of a market for rams. How about Aiden and Louie? Louie is coming two, white, and a wether...

Shebaa might be another good one. Of all my adult sheep she has the finest fleece with the longest staple; she's black (well, silvery-beige nowadays) and by Abram. She's out of Rebaa, so she has 4 crosses to the old Bear Farms ram.

Sue

[Lori]

You guys can pick who to test.

:) Lori

[Rebecca]

Okay, it's $1.25 per sheep for fiber testing at the Texas A&M labs. So, testing is on me! Sue, if you are willing to do the work I'd like to test all of your and Lori's Cheviots (even the retired girls). Toni - I don't have any idea how many sheep you have, but I'd like test a couple of Brian's get. We're really happy with the lambs Oran produced - I'm assuming you had similar results from Brian.

I really want to be able to make some claims about wool quality so that we can find good homes for the wethers. :)