We had a very informative and interesting Saturday afternoon talking about how to decide on which stud male to use for your dams. Jay covered some of the theory, talking about the various parameters that you need to consider such as your aims for breeding, fibre quality of the stud and dam, colour, the qualities the stud gives to his offspring, the pedigree and colour ancestry of the stud and dam, conformation of the stud and dam, etc. There is a lot to consider and a good breeder can help with their detailed knowledge of their studs and the attributes they can influence over your dam and hopefully improve in the cria.
Roger then introduced some of his studs and talked about their fleece qualities. We moved on to look at some groups of very cute cria sired by the studs we had already seen. Knowing the dams the cria were from, Roger explained how some of the studs didn’t massively improve on fleece stats for dams that didn’t have particularly good fleece themselves but were able to sire very good cria from good dams – often given the term ‘polishers’. Other studs were able to improve fleece quality for most of their offspring compared to their dams – known as ‘improvers’.
Thank you to Roger for hosting the event and to Roger and Jay for sharing their knowledge and experience.
