[Jacob-list] 2/4 Horn Heritability - pictures of unusual ram horns

[Heather Hettick]

I had heard that 4 horns are dominant and 2 horns are recessive, but just
this morning I discovered an exception in my flock.  A three week old ewe
with both nice looking two-horned parents, was looking straight at me and I
thought her horns looked a little close together for a two horned sheep.  I
caught her to feel her horns and was surprised to find 4 little points.
There is no chance she could have been sired by our previous ram as there
was over a month between the last possible due date for lambs he could have
sired and her birth date.

I have 4 4H ewe lambs and 4 2H rams this year, and I think we're done
lambing as one yearling doesn't appear to be pregnant although her half
sister had twins.

Also,  I could dig out and scan some pictures of a ram lamb we had with
strange horns.  Where could we send them?  He started out looking really
nice and around 4 months the horns started going forward and then curving
around towards his face by the time he was 10 months old.  He didn't have
the "broken" face and was otherwise a beautiful ram but would have had to
have his horns trimmed and they really looked horrible.   The next year a
half brother had forward pointing horns and he did have the broken face but
I didn't get a good picture of him.  It was very disappointing as their
father had wonderful horns.

Heather Hettick - Moonstruck Jacob Sheep
Creston, Ohio

Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute
Hettick.1 at osu.edu