[Jacob-list] intro, questions

[Penelope]

Hi Rebecca & Daryl,
	Welcome!  What an interesting post you wrote.  My spouse and I have a
similar assortment of animals to yours, although ours are fewer in number,
and we're only on five acres until we can find more.  :-)  We are not
anywhere near you unfortunately, but I'm very interested in your
description of your Jacob Sheep.  

At 08:50 4/18/00 -0500, D Fikar wrote:
>new ram to keep the flock healthy and diverse but are confused about
>what we should be breeding for; so we thought of joining a Jacobs sheep
>organization to learn more about the breed.

	What we have done is to join both organizations, which leads to some
conflicting information, but overall, we figure that any sheep that is
acceptable to both is likely to be a pretty decent Jacob.  With one you get
a more immediate registration, with the other you have to go through a
couple of generations of breeding to make sure that the sheep in question
breeds true.  I see good points to both.  And it's very educational!

>Our ram has two great horns going straight up about two feet.  He has
>never let me measure them.  He also has two horns that curl  around his
>head forward.  (Are these forward horns?)   One of his curly horns comes
>close to his head and we have cut it because it looked like it was going
>to grow into his face but it didn't.  Are the horns supposed to curl
>backward?  None of his horns touches each other so I assume they are not
>"fused."

	It sounds like you're right, they are not fused, but the horns may be
forward tipping.  The rams I think of have top horns that go up and out or
up and back, and side horns that go out and somewhat down.   I'm sure
someone with more experience and information than me will also answer you.

>white on their heads and feet.  Some of our two horned ewes have four
>horned lambs but all of our four horned ewes have four or five or even
>six horned lambs.  Of course, the many horned lambs' horns have all been
>touching because there just isn't enough room on their little heads for
>all those horns so how do you have many horned lambs that aren't
>fused....?

	How interesting that you're getting five and six horns.  I have seen a
couple of rams with five distinct horns, and I presume that a sixth one is
fused to one of the others on the other side.  I believe that I read
somewhere that Jacob Sheep can really only produce an even number of horns,
so if you can count an odd number it means that the last one is fused or a
scur.  On one of my ewes I can see the potential for a fused third pair of
horns, and I have hopes of some day getting a lamb with six horns from her,
but she is officially called a four horn.  And this year, bred to a nice
four horn ram, she produced one lovely two horned ewe lamb.  

>Photos of these things would really help.  Any good web sites we could
>visit to see some of the wanted/unwanted traits?  What is the reasoning
>behind the good horn/ bad horn thing?  Four pictures of all of our sheep

	If you do a web search on Jacob Sheep there are several sites out there
with pictures.  I think the list is now talking about a web site to discuss
traits of specific sheep, which sounds like a good thing.  I'll leave
someone else to explain why fused horns are bad, I think it's mainly an
asthetic thing, but I'm  a little foggy on the details.  What I would
consider "bad" horns are those that get in the animals way when it tries to
eat, or those that are very weak.  I have a personal suspicion that weak
horns are connected to scurs, but I don't have any proof.  I keep the horns
on my goats (they make great handles!), and like horns to be strong enough
that I can lead them or hold them still if I need to.  So I judge Jacob
horns similarly, although the sheep object more to having their horns
handled than the goats do.

	Yes, four pictures are a lot.  We just went through that around the turn
of the year, and I felt like I was swimming in pictures although we were
only registering four ewes with the two organizations.  We got good feed
back from them however, and I was delighted to find that the JSC sent us a
more complete pedigree on each sheep than what we had in our records.  We
now owe the JSC a few more pictures - some of ours weren't as close as
they'd have liked.

>pictures?  We have tried to keep good birthing records but we use ear
>tags and they sometimes fall out.  (So number 64 used to be number 53, I
>think, although she sure looks like Friendly's baby who would have been
>number 54....)  What do you use to tag your sheep?

	I have few enough that I don't tag them, it's not necessary since I don't
show them.  I keep photos of each sheep, along with a record sheet, a
pedigree, and any registration papers all in a notebook, each sheep with
its own plastic "sheet protector" which holds all the assorted bits and
pieces.  We're hoping to have new pictures each year so we can keep track
of how the sheep change too, but I don't know if we'll succeed in keeping
that up.  The spots on each sheep are unique, so with a full set of photos
(or for myself one very clear photo, although that's not what the
organizations want) I can tell Gamma from Ezri from Jasmine.  

	Again, welcome to the Jacob list.  I hope you get lots of answers to your
questions, and find some Jacob owners more local to you.  

peace
penelope
--  --
Penelope Jacob, Doula (& John Nanci, Alchemist) pcj at efn.org
Quality horned milk goats & Jacob Sheep:  Stonering herd & flock.  
Now llamas & emus too.
Year-And-A-Day Farm, Umpqua Valley, Oregon 
radical, fundamental, ornery & friendly poly pagan folk