Sheep breeding

I am blogging on a nicer, more life-affirming topic today- sheep breeding!  I gathered up the rams today to get them ready for breeding.  I had to stop and admire Jocko's lovely wool once again.  Even at 8 years old he has my favorite fleece- it's soft, crimpy, golden and has the most lovely sheen.  Photos just never do it justice but I tried again:

We then had a visitor today.  Jackie, Marshall, Eric and Ondra brought Madison over to be bred with Lewis.  Madison was born here as Amanda.  She was named after the sister of a good friend of mine.  At the time Amanda the sheep was born Amanda the person was in the ICU with an undiagnosed blood condition and quite sick.  She pulled through that, was been diagnosed with a blood cancer and just in the last week is receiving a bone marrow transplant.  I named this particular sheep after Amanda since she's tall and has beautiful short brown hair.  I am still hoping that Amanda the sheep's obvious health and vigor (see photo below) will somehow influence Amanda the person's recovery.
I collected all of the ewes to be bred into a pen to get them and the rams sorted into groups.  The ewes are below except Jenny who managed to escape when we were moving Madison/Amanda in.
Below is Jocko's group.  He has Jenny the wild katmoget sheep (who is supposed to make mioget katmoget ewe lambs), Sheila the older shaela sheep (who is supposed to make shaela or mioget lambs with gorgeous fleeces like their parents) and Wink (who is supposed to make a gorgeous mioget ram to replace Jocko).

Below is Lewis' group.  You can see they aren't too interested in him so far.  There's Madison/Amanda, Monette the double-coated light grey ewe (who is supposed to make a light grey ewe lamb for the little girl Alice who lives down the road), and Daphnie the musket spotted horned ewe (whose supposed to make spotted moorit ewe lambs).  I will put Mona in next week.  She's limping a little so I want her to be walking a little better before breeding her.  She's the black ewe that made two gorgeous HST ewe lambs last spring, and I would like her to make some more!