You may be researching the pedigrees of our sheep and
see that individual sheep keep appearing in certain pedigrees. This is a very intentional strategy and not a haphazard
breeding. We spend a lot of time evaluating our sheep, condition scoring and recording the strengths and weaknesses of each
sheep for the traits that we desire. A ram is selected for each ewe based on those records. We may choose to use
linebreeding as a way preserve the influence of outstanding individual sheep within our flock. Linebreeding is a
tested, sound, and accepted breeding practice and should NOT be confused with inbreeding which introduces more than 50% of
the blood of one or more ansesters, they are not the same. Sheep chosen for linebreeding are carefully selected for
their outstanding traits and should be sought out rather than shied away from. They express some of our best breeding
goals and do not come up for sale often.
In "The Basis of Linebreeding" by J.H. Lents (1991) he
writes: "
Linebreeding is a system of mating which concentrates the blood and influence of one or more ancestors to a level above that
which would have existed had each of the ancestor's names only appeared once in the pedigrees of their descendants. Linebreeding
never introduces more than 50% of the blood of any ancestor into a descendant regardless of the number of times the ancestor's
name may appear in the pedigree of that descendant."
