Great Finale to the 2008 lambing season

Our 2008 Soay sheep lambing season went out on a high note. Our last pregnant Black and White ewe, Teed's Cinnamon, was VERY pregnant--she was "udderly huge", so to speak. I was sure for the last 3 weeks that she was close to lambing. Finally Saturday evening I saw her off by herself. I watched her until 10 pm but no action (although clearly she was close). This morning (Sunday) at 5 AM I found her with her handywork. See Woodland Creek Yosemite - ram, below.

Woodland Creek Yosemite '08 - ram

Teed's Cinnamon X Woodland Creek Chilcoot

Yes, after our recently born Athena - this little ram is has the second-most white I've seen in a self-colored black Soay in North America. Cinnamon was our most white-spotted ewe. She has a poll spot, a forehead spot, and a small neck spot. So it was expected that she would give a good white-spotted lamb. (However last year her ram lamb Shoshone only had a few white hairs at his poll, so it doesn't always work precisely).

At any rate, after checking out the little ram Yosemite, I went to find out where he was born, and low and behold, there was a second lamb -but unfortunately it had never made it out of the birth sac. I could see it was another black and white, so I cleaned it up and photographed him (he was a little ram). He was a beautiful little guy too. I named him Sam, for the records.

Woodland Creek Sam - stillborn twin ram

Sam would have been the 3rd most extensively white-spotted self-black Soay (although admittedly only slightly more white than Thunder '01, good old Blue Mountain Thumper's very first lamb.

So more of the good news is that I needed a good B&W ram for this fall to keep spreading the white. Even better, this ram is out of a Tracy Teed ewe, so this brings some new blood to what had previously been a bit overloaded to the Thumper line.