Shetland sheep traditionally have the characteristic of shedding their fleece once a year.  On the Shetland Islands, farmers would wait for the fleece to start shedding and then pluck or pick the wool. This was called 'rooing' the fleece.

I've been rooing my Shetlands rather than shearing for many years now, and although I've been able to roo every Shetland I've ever owned, with some the wool is difficult to pull, which makes the sheep difficult. :)

So I've been breeding for shedding Shetlands for a long time.  Ashling The Sundance Kid, my longtime favorite herd sire, shed most of his fleece every year.  His daughter/granddaughter Gesina also was a shedder, and was my best ewe in spite of the inbreeding thing.  I bred Gesina to Insel Lyr It's Alive and produced a nice set of white twins, who had no names, just numbers--- 51 and 52.  52 was sold to the Polish lady who lives down the road from me, and I kind of forgot all about 51.  By the time I remembered I had an intact ram lamb in the barn, it was breeding season and he had bred.  I decided to let him be herd sire for a year, and gave him the name 'Area 51'.

I didn't have that many ewes that year, but Area 51 got them bred, starting with his mommy, Gesina, who had twins, Morwenna and Molly.  For two years I used other herd sires--- including the grand old man, The Sundance Kid.  Then I decided to give Area 51 another shot, with the whole ewe herd which had grown in number.

He sired a bumper crop of lambs, but several of the ram lambs had undecended testicles and so Area 51 was sold for meat last fall.  Then this year his yearling daughters all proved to be shedding-type Shetlands by self-shedding their wool.  (I could have rooed them when the self-shedding started but I wanted to see how well the shedding would go.)

The self-shedding genetics seem to work like this: the white ewes shed their fleece first, while the moorit and other darker ones took longer.  The one horned ewe sired by Area 51 was the slowest to shed.  Most of the ram lambs sired by Area 51 were sold as meat wethers, but there is one intact ram yearling, Robert Emery.  He has shed very little so far.

The dams of the Area 51 daughters included some ewes related to Area 51 and some unrelated ewes purchased from Sheepy Hollow.  This did not make much of a difference in the degree of self-shedding--- some of the best self-shedders were from the unrelated Sheepy Hollow ewe lines.  The color and horned status of the sheep seems to make more of a difference than relationship to the Area 51 line. 

The Area 51 daughters have been divided into three bloodlines, to form a conservation breeding program.  One line is that derived from the Sheepy Hollow ewes, another from the Gesina bloodline, and the third from my other, non-Gesina bloodlines.  My two rams have also been assigned to the bloodlines.  Nikolai, the ram from bloodline C (Sheepy Hollow bloodline), will breed this year.  Robert Emery, the Area 51 son, is the ram for bloodline A (Gesina bloodline) and will breed next year.  Sons from each sire will be saved and evaluated, and the best kept.

According to the Conservation Breeding Handbook, each of the bloodlines needs at least one male animal.  I will either have to get a new ram for bloodline B, or else arbitrarily assign a Nikolai or Robert Emery son to be the bloodline B sire. 

What remains to be seen is how well the self-shedding gene is transmitted through the daughters.  Morwenna's daughter Nadezhda needed to be rooed this year, didn't seem to have self-shed to any degree.  But Nadezhda is fawn-colored rather than white and the darker ones shed less....  Perhaps breeding Nadezhda to Robert Emery would bring about good results (if I keep Nadezhda, that is.)