Rigg, Dan, and Roux are all 2 months old now. This snapshot shows the differences between one of my full-horned Unicorn sons: Dan, and two Bombarde sons that I believe might be half-polls: Rigg and Roux. At first I thought the Bombarde x Rai Min twins might be half-polls with only tiny scurs. But in the last month those horns have come in rather dramatically. If you click on the photo, or look closely, you can see how the first inch or so of horn on them was knife-like, flattened material. Their horns have come in much fuller since then. I still think Roux is a definite half-poll. His horns are much smaller in diameter than the others. I'm not sure about Rigg's, but I wasn't thrilled with his fleece quality from the beginning, so I never invested much hope in him. He will go to the freezer despite his good conformation. Bence, my other Unicorn ram lamb, has full, wide-spread horns like his half-brother Dan. And Jchen, the katmoget Bombarde son out of Sian, also shows every indication of being fully horned with a terrific wide-spread rack.
3 comments:
Hi Sabrina,
That's why I caution people to give those scurs some grow time. They start off much slow growing than most full horns, then kick in into high gear mid summer. The "knife blade" scurs tend to be larger scurs. I have a photo of one of my rams doing this that I'll share....
These transition years of going from horned to polled don't really give one much in the way of ram lambs to retain, I think. My potential half-poll ewelings are definitely staying. But I figure it will be a bit longer before I have a truly promising polled ram lamb to offer or retain.
Thanks for being so forthright about all the different horn possibilities that have cropped up at your farm. It's nice to learn from other people's experience. :)
You're right, they don't. Which is why I still have a bunch of flock sires from other farms. Someday that will change.
It takes a few years to start seeing a difference, then you'll start getting smaller and smaller scurs every year.
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