Doc: Replacing the Irreplaceable Ram

This winter we lost our favorite (and only) ram, Doc. He wasn't perfect--- as you can see, his horns were too close together--- wider spacing is preferable. He was 1/2 Katahdin and 1/2 Shetland. He sired a whole bunch of lambs for me across several years to the point that my current ewe flock consists almost entirely of his daughters. Yes, he became a bit of a genetic bottleneck and urgently needed replacement!

This is Doc's sire, Igor. He was a nearly fullblood Katahdin. I had been experimenting with crossbreeding my Shetlands with hair sheep to spare myself the chore of collecting the wool I had no market for. At first I tried White Dorpers, but those rams are expensive and not locally available. So I thought of Katahdins. I looked on Craigslist and a lady who lived near Iron Mountain was giving her old Katahdin ram away. So I picked him up, changed his original name of Eeyore to Igor, and used him on my flock. In addition to Doc, he sired a number of daughters whose bloodline lives on in our flock.

Doc's mom was Romana, a purebred and registered Shetland ewe. This is not a picture of Romana. Romana had no horns. This was Romana's mother, Piroschka, a wonderful ewe who lived many years and who is probably the reason so many of Doc's daughters have horns. Shetland blood adds friendliness and hardiness to the mix.

This is a picture of Doc as a lamb, along with his year-mate and uncle, Bela, a son of Piroschka, who made no mark on the flock at all due to dying young.

The question is, how to replace him? He combined the two breeds I wanted for my crossbred flock, Shetland and Katahdin. The only way is to replace him with two new rams--- one a Katahdin and one a Shetland.

This isn't going to be easy. The Katahdin would ideally be a color other than white. For the Shetland, I'd want a moorit (brown), ideally, since I have no moorits left. The Shetland would have to be horned, and, best case, be the son of a horned ewe. If not, I'd want to get a horned ewe lamb to revive my pure Shetland line.

Some of Doc's horned ewe daughters