As many of you will know, our first sheep were Manx Loaghtans, purchased from my Aunt. However, for various reasons,
we really didn't get on with them, and sent all but Alice (the one friendly-ish ewe) to slaughter last year. Meanwhile, in an attempt to repair our battered egoes
we switched our attention to Zwartbles (yes, I know that's quite a change!).
That left us with a dilemma though - what to do with Alice? The obvious answer was to run her with
Ace, our Zwartbles ram in the hope of getting some nice butcher's lambs.
So, in April, Alice gave birth unassisted to twin ewe lambs (4kg each):
possibly the world's first ever Zanx Loaghwarts! To my surprise they were born polled and entirely black. They were also up and sucking very quickly.
Though significantly smaller than the pure bred Zwartbles lambs, they grew well over the summer:
And now, at 7 months old, look like this!:
So overall, I'm really pleased - they're really canny wee sheep
. They definitely scare more easily than the Zwartbles, but are also very inquisitive and will come to a bucket no problem. As they've aged, their heads have started looking much more Zwartbles-shaped. Their fleeces are also indistinguishable from the Zwartbles lambs in both colour and texture, though I think the staple length is slightly shorter.
Most importantly though, they're now only slightly smaller than the pure bred Zwartbles ewe lambs, which means they will make a good slaughter weight in the same year they're born, which was not true of the Manx/Shetland crosses Alice gave birth to the previous year.
The question now of course is what to do with them!
We don't have room to keep them ourselves, so my current plan is to see if anybody wants them for breeding (subtle hint!
). If not, I'll keep them over winter, and will send them for slaughter as hoggetts in the spring. And as for Alice? Well, she's done us proud once again, and will definitely be running with our new Zwartbles tup this autumn
.