Featured Sheep – Meet Emily!

Meet my first featured sheep – Emily!

Caroline from Pantcyfyng sheep farm in Lampeter provided me with Emily’s fleece to spin. Many thanks to Caroline who has kindly written an introduction to our woolly friend:

Pantcyfyng Emily was born on 24th March 2004. A triplet. Her mother was a black welsh mountain and her father a Lleyn. She was the smallest of the 3 lambs and getting the least attention, so she was taken from her mother at 3 days old and hand reared on the bottle, along with 3 other triplets; Penny, Emma and Hazel.

Emily had her first lamb on 1st April 2006. She made a real April Fool of me by producing a white lamb! I had expected her to give birth to a black lamb as both she and Mr Sweep the lambs father were both black. But a white lamb was just as likely as a black one in this case as Emily’s father was white and Sweeps mother was white! All her other lambs were black though.

In 2007 she gave birth to a fabulous ram lamb Pantcyfyng Emperor (Pero) who is still with me and in 2009 i kept a daughter from her Pantcyfyng Emerald. I have many daughters in the flock from Pero and Emerald.

Emily was retired from lambing in 2010 and lives her days out contentedly with her friends at Pantcyfyng. I never get rid of my old ewes, they stay here until they die naturally or are put to sleep if they are struggling with old age. They’ve worked hard for me and i like to give them a good retirement. Emily is in good health and pays her way by selling her fleece each year. I hope she will be with me for many years to come. She looks so fat visitors to the farm always assume (quite wrongly) that she’s in lamb and expecting at least triplets!!! (You will note in this photo of Emily with her 5 friends – Swift etc. that she likes to keep her weight up!!)

Caroline has 60 sheep of various breeds, Jacob, Jacob x, Welsh, Welsh x, Charollais and Blue faced Leicester x, etc. They have been bred over the years to improve their fleeces which are available in just about every natural colour you can think of!

If you’re interested in Pantcyfyng farm you can connect with Caroline here: [email protected]