AutumnSun's Jet-Black Pearl has the genetics for a good addition to a black and grey breeding program. Pearl is a well grown female, boxy with solid bones, with a well-balanced frame. She is calm and easy-going, relaxed around people and guardian dogs. Her fleece has good density in good staple, and she has excellent coverage on her head and legs. Her fiber is glossy with a consistent medium amplitude crimp. In her maturity she shows the effects of being an excellent mom as her fleece is bl ...
AutumnSun's Jet-Black Pearl has the genetics for a good addition to a black and grey breeding program. Pearl is a well grown female, boxy with solid bones, with a well-balanced frame. She is calm and easy-going, relaxed around people and guardian dogs. Her fleece has good density in good staple, and she has excellent coverage on her head and legs. Her fiber is glossy with a consistent medium amplitude crimp. In her maturity she shows the effects of being an excellent mom as her fleece is blown out. But, as a 2-year-old she had a soft lofty fleece that handled well. She has consistent white fibers throughout her black and intensifying at her chest, neck and legs. She clearly has a grey gene and is now an expressed modern dark silver grey -- despite her name.
For her first cria, by multiple champion male Snowmass Matrix Belvedere (now standing stud at Crescent Moon Ranch), had beautifully striking looks! Puzzle started as MB, but but like her mom she quickly turned a lovely MRG with white markings on her face and white fibers throughout her blanket.
Then, Pearl had a lovely dark brown girl, Blissful Burgundy, by our appaloosa herdsire Jacob that developed into a modern grey. Bliss matured quickly an became an excellent production dam in our herd.
In 2016, Pearl produced a lovely LRG girl sired by our MRG champion Longbow. This sweetheart has elegant looks. And, what a sweetheart! Ellycris is growing into a regal, graceful girl with distinct MRG fiber.
When bred to our champion AutumnSun's Black Maelstrom she proved a lovely fawn girl with black points (Orla) and then the next year, a beautiful true black girl (Cady) that we lost in our terrible winter. That was devastating as she was planned for auction.
This male gets better and better looking as he matures. He was born with a solid, well-conformed frame and he is maturing into a proud, statuesque herdsire. He is calm and composed in personality, not one to get easily excited but with the reserve common in the herdsire mindset. He will be a great stud. Good thing his fiber is also coming together very nicely, crimpy and soft with very nice density and bundling in a very long staple.
On a note about his showing (just his first halter show ...
This male gets better and better looking as he matures. He was born with a solid, well-conformed frame and he is maturing into a proud, statuesque herdsire. He is calm and composed in personality, not one to get easily excited but with the reserve common in the herdsire mindset. He will be a great stud. Good thing his fiber is also coming together very nicely, crimpy and soft with very nice density and bundling in a very long staple.
On a note about his showing (just his first halter show in May 2021):
We weren't planning to show, and so hadn't cria-shorn our 2020 crop or bothered coating them. Thus, when 2021 shows rolled around, to say we were less than prepared is probably being generous. But we loved the fiber on this guy and were excited about the public gathering restrictions lessening (then lifted!), so we decided to give it a go. In truth, the show results don't really demonstrate how nice this guy is, to our chagrin, and I can only say that we are proud of how he did and where he fails to show off as well, we shoulder the blame. So, be kind to him as you view his first fleece / 2021 results, knowing that he was at the mercy of his owners and weather conditions he could not control. :)
Despite that, he had done reasonably well in the shows, just off the mark (1st place, of course) by one -- but always showing against Artorius! His lower placing in the AOA national fleece show was actually scored higher than other scores with high placings, showing the high caliber of competition in the AOA show as to be expected. Though in walking fleece, if there was such a thing as Exceptional Fleece Award such as there is in fleece shows (and extrapolating the 80% to the less available total in WF vs fleece shows), he would have garnered such an award at the GWAS walking fleece show.
He open for breeding purchase while proving out. Then, will be closed as we are moving to being a closed farm.
Bliss has the color, fineness, uniformity and well grown frame in excellent confirmation of a fantastic foundation dam. She has taken after her dam and at 2 years old had become a rose grey with consistent white fibers throughout her blanket. She already had white fibers when we were showing her as a yearling, which is why we chose Bred & Owned, where darks, greys, and ID are grouped together.
At her first show, as a yearling with 4 months of fiber growth, Bliss was described by Peter Kennedy as balanced, with good uniformity in micron and expression of organization throughout the staple and across the blanket, with a lovely handle.
Bliss was an excellent mom to her first cria, a modern rise grey male by Red Granite's Mr. Ben Franklin, our Ragnarok who went on to another farm.
She continued to be an excellent dam to her modern rose grey girl Serenity by our multiple champion with lasting fineness, Smokejumper! Serenity got a lot of admiring looks in her show career and now has joined our breeding program and a foundation girl to carry on both Bliss' and our Jumper's fantastic fiber genetics as he has passed early from an accident. Serenity has carried on her rose grey genetics with her two girl crias.
Bliss' next modern dark rose grey girl was by our multiple champion Dauntless may have been her best cria to date! We named her Serendipity Smiles. Serendipity was bred for modern grey, Magistrate, and produced one of the nicest crias that year, named AutumnSun's Joie de Vivre -- who started out bay black and has moved towards modern grey.
Another beautiful girl from Bliss in 2021 sired by our multiple champion grey Truthsayer; that makes 3 lovely girls in a row! This one a LF (LF/WH roan really, since there is no such thing as a 'fawn grey'). Though, her fleece wasn't the dark modern rose grey we had come to expect from Bliss, it is wonderful in fiber characteristics. We confirmed that by genetic typing which showed she was a dilute black, 'ee aa'. Clair is one that should be able to breed into a black or grey program, which we have exercised by breeding her to our champion rose grey up-and-coming stud AutumnSun's Artorius.
Not to stop there, we have bred Bliss back to grey, this time a classic grey -- AutumnSun's Reposado, son of champion rose grey and our other matriarchal grey line via our AutumnSun's Loreleigh (which brings in great greys, Enlightenment, Avatar, and Addonis).
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