Custom Colored Critters

04/03/2026

Been a while since domestic wool sales have been reported. This would put 21 micron with 58% yield at around $2.83 greasy. With the increase in diesel costs lately, freight is going to cut into those prices some.

03/25/2026

03/25/2026

Finished trimming and/or shearing the yearling rams. This handsome fellow is from Leah Saltzman in Klamath Falls. If you’re looking for a colorful, complete package type romeldale ram, contact her soon. She lambs in April, and only after much begging by me did she save one out for me last year. I don’t go outside for rams often, looking forward to breeding to him this summer! Then I got to the boy in the white fleece. He’s a once in a lifetime fleece I think….

03/09/2026

Got a little more shearing done. The yearling ewes are flashy, fine, long loined. And their fleeces look pretty good too.

03/07/2026

Im going to likely have a significant NUmber of older BFL ewes available as fiber providers. Fleeces are good, pet dispositions on many. Both white and colored. First trailer leaves for the lamb buyer the 20 or so of March

03/03/2026

Lambs around the barnyard…

03/03/2026

01/21/2026

Inbreeding vs Line Breeding – Part 6
Bottlenecks, Blind Spots, and What We Actually Know

By Tim from Linessa Farms

If you’ve followed this series from the beginning, you may have noticed something uncomfortable by now:

Most genetic narrowing does not happen because someone intentionally set out to line breed aggressively.

It happens quietly.
It happens unintentionally.
And it often happens under good intentions.

That’s what this final article is about.

⸻

How most farms bottleneck without realizing it

You don’t need close matings to create inbreeding pressure.

It happens when
– the same ram is used too long
– replacement females all trace back to the same few animals
– outside genetics stop coming in
– selection focuses on a narrow set of visible traits
– culling pressure drops

No one calls this line breeding.
But biologically, it still increases genetic uniformity.

That’s why many people are already “under the umbrella” of inbreeding without ever putting their finger on it.

⸻

COI, pedigree, and the illusion of precision

Inbreeding coefficients (COI) are often treated like a safety score.

But COI only estimates probability, not outcome.

It does not tell us
– which genes became homozygous
– whether those genes matter
– how they interact with environment
– or what management is compensating for

COI is also only as reliable as the records behind it.
If pedigree assumptions are wrong, or someone “fudged” records, the math can be clean and the answer meaningless.

COI is a risk indicator, not a verdict.

⸻

Why some traits fade quietly

One pattern has repeated throughout this series:

– simple traits respond quickly
– complex traits degrade quietly

Traits like color, horn status, and body style stabilize fast.

Traits like
– fertility
– parasite resistance
– robustness
– longevity
– feed efficiency

are polygenic (multiple genes involved) and environment-dependent.

They don’t fail dramatically.
They lose margin.

And that loss often isn’t noticed until
– stress increases
– management slips
– animals move to a new environment

Nothing suddenly “went wrong.”
The system just ran out of room.

⸻

Phenotype tells the truth — just not the whole one

Phenotype reflects gene expression under a specific set of conditions.

Two animals can carry the same genes and express them very differently depending on
– environment
– nutrition
– stress
– disease pressure
– management

That’s why animals can perform exceptionally well in one system and struggle in another without anything “changing genetically.”

Phenotype tells us what worked here, now, under this system.
It does not guarantee transferability.

Consistency is not the same thing as resilience.

⸻

What responsible line breeding actually does

Responsible line breeding does not create universally superior animals.

It creates animals that fit a specific system very well — sometimes at the cost of flexibility outside that system.

Done well, it requires
– understanding which traits are simple vs complex
– constant, honest selection
– tracking fertility and longevity
– accepting culls when outcomes aren’t right
– recognizing that performance is system-specific

Done casually, it narrows genetics faster than people realize.

⸻

The real risk most people miss

The biggest risk in breeding isn’t inbreeding itself.

It’s mistaking consistency for margin.

Uniform animals can look stable right up until the moment pressure changes.

⸻

What I hope this series actually did

This series was never about telling anyone what they should do. Without trying to sound gruff, I could honestly care less if people choose to line breed or not. This is an education piece; that’s it. If you felt this was bashing your methods or promoting others, that’s just you projecting.

It was about
– cleaning up language
– removing false certainty
– separating probability from promise
– explaining why biology resists shortcuts

If this made breeding feel a little less tidy — and a little more honest — that’s a win.

⸻

What’s next?

I’ll be following this series with a short companion video using a simple parking garage analogy to visually explain genes, alleles, homozygosity, and why environment changes outcomes. This is the visual I use when teaching human genetics. It still applies and I think many of you who are visual learners will find it helpful. Look for that post in a few days.

Not to convince anyone — just to make the structure easier to see.

Because once the structure makes sense, the arguments mostly disappear.

⸻

Breeding isn’t about fixing genetics.
It’s about managing risk, margin, and reality.

Thanks to everyone who helped put these articles together! You are appreciated. I will be posting these articles together on our website as soon as I de-format them from Facebook to PDF.

11/27/2025

The best sunset views are in the pasture. Specifically, the ladies in waiting. Udders are coming. I’m guessing start around the 10-15, heaviest at Christmas to the first of the year.

09/27/2025

A tale of two rams (lambs). Most of you, my followers, fellow shepherds, and observers, know that I don’t generally just ‘keep’ ram lambs because they’ll fill the show string next year. This year just finding quality rams out of the lamb crop was difficult (should have been a good ‘nick’, just wasn’t). On the plus side, what’s been kept has been the pinnacle of the crop (less than 10%), on the minus side, just how high was that pinnacle? So below are two that have made this far. The spotty one, i desperately wanted to keep, direct line back to Ike, looked like him, and ive found those dilute spotty sheep tend to throw a lot of color. After he passed the fleece check, I ‘chucked him out-back’, so he could grow without judgement.
The second, wonky horned ram was a standout from the beginning. Big, bold, beautiful. A spotty moorit badger, while his fleece wouldn’t be highly colored, he should be able to throw most any color but solid moorit. I don’t know where the horns came from, we either get magnificent racks, polled, or simple scurs (h***y nubs). At least for being wonky, they’re attractive and not going to cause an issue welfare wise. He’s consistently been top of his class (except for BSG, I consider that show the throwaway of this year), checks all the boxes, etc.
The ‘date with destiny’ is Monday. I’ve been counting lambs reserved, spaces available, and lambs to fill those spaces…(I currently have six slots available after 3 backed out)…
Guess who gets to stay, and who is going away…