Our sheep herd started out by accident when Eva managed to end up in our truck after the fur and feather animal auction at a local county fair. A two hour drive to pick up another companion sheep ended with two not one so our herd started with three Shetland ewes. The original purpose of the small herd was pasture management since we had discovered that our prima donna dairy goats were pretty horrible at eating anything but hay personally delivered morning and night! The tough little Shetlands with the awesome wool were ideal for our purpose, they eat our weedy pasture we sell some fleeces, everyone is happy. Then we discovered that Shetland lambs are about the cutest things in God’s creation and our three ewes began to multiply until we had to put on the brakes to avoid overpopulation! Our herd has stabilized at ten ewes and wethers though if we develop more pasture that could change!
Shetlands come in many different colors, which have their own traditional names. However, while some Shetlands are easily placed in on the color charts, many are somewhere in between. We try to determine the correct color but sometimes its just a guess. The important thing to remember is that these are natural colors, no dyes so the blacks tend to be more chocolate than black, or maybe a little silver. And the wool can be different from one end of the sheep to the other. For instance Rain started out a deep black but has developed some silver patches on his hind legs. All our black sheep have brownish tips but when the wool is carded and mixed it tends to be a really dark chocolate. The only way to limit these color changes is to keep the sheep indoors or put coats on them. Our sheep are pasture sheep so indoors is not an option and coats can cause a variety of other problems. So our sheep are as natural as they come!
