[Jacob-list] What is this sheep, anyway?

Tue Sep 19 15:35:48 EDT 2000

What a great letter, I wish I had time to ruminate like that!!! Actually I
have.  It is a very nebulous thing to do, raise a heritage breed for no
other reason than you like them, and find value in them , and in their
existance.
My market lambs make sense to people, but then my methods are about
unconventional there too.  We have raised champion 4 H market lambs for the
past 3 years and they  are not purebred Suffolk which confounds and amazes
those other sheep breeders everytime.  We raise mixed breed market lambs,
and although I have never done anything as daring as throw  in a Jacob mix I
have used Dorset, Romney, Suffolk  and Corriadale to good advantage.
I never mix breed the Jacobs. They are in themselves a mixture, and I tried
to hand pick the ewes to express different traits.  I love the wool, so that
is a bonus, but my beautiful 4 horned lilac ram doesn't have a beautiful
fleece, and his sons and daughters have.   Every one of them has been a
pleasure and a surprise.  When I originally started with the Jacobs my main
concern was to find a way to make a profit with them, and now they are like
the rest of the farm...they just have to find a way to pay to keep
themselves going.  I delight in the fact that they carry genes no sheep has
anymore.  I like their different personalities, and they certainly do add
interest and color to a field of white sheep and black cows.
I have enjoyed all the Jacob people I have met, and all of the people I have
only emailed. The folks who do this jacob sheep business all have a love of
the unique and different in common.  This is husbandry, and we select for
traits within our flock, but we also select for Jacobness, or our definition
of it. I do think it would be hard to judge a Jacob show, because of the
diversity and because we are all convinced that our flock expresses
Jacobness to the highest degree. So it wouldn't matter to most of us what
the judge thought, and that would defeat any negative influence of showing
these sheep. I really am not convinced you could get the Jacob breeders to
conform to a tight enough standard to actually change the breed.  Like the
sheep, I have found the breeders to be individualists, who don't conform to
the status quo. I think the idea of a show, is just so everyone can get
together and see what those other sheep look like.
That is the beauty of the breed. I hope I can continue to have these
delightful animals around forever, and not only so I can keep explaining
what they are and why I have them. Thanks for encouraging a little
philosophy on a gray day in the fall. I best get back to work!
Kate Barrett
Ruby Peak Jacobs
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan L. Nielsen <snielsen at orednet.org>
To: jacob-list at jacobsheep.com <jacob-list at jacobsheep.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 9:51 AM
Subject: [Jacob-list] What is this sheep, anyway?


>Hi, List --
>
>Posing a philosophical question here. Forgive me if this has
>been done to death -- I see from the archives that such things
>have come up now and then, but I'm thinking we can't have too
>much philosophy on the farm and trying to run a farm these days
>is at least 50% a philosophical exercise anyway. Maybe it's the
>autumn season that makes me ponder and ruminate... ;-)
>
>... or maybe it's that I'm fairly new to this conservancy of
>breeds practice. I look out my windows and see this half-dozen
>odd little animals wandering around with their mythical horns
>and their goat-like bodies, and we are having such earnest
>conversations over breakfast and between chores about what they
>might produce in breeding, and whether they are Good Examples
>of what they should be. And I have answered so many questions in
>the last weeks from people who are everything from amused to
>puzzled to delighted to know what they are ("What kind of goats
>are those?" "Is that some little kind of antelope out there?"
>"How did you get those extra horns?" "Can you eat it?").
>
>And although I answer the questions with enthusiasm and with the
>benefit of all the book learnin' I've brought home this summer,
>it occurs to me to wonder what, exactly, they _are_ about?
>
>It's easy to say they are a rare breed and that they are, from
>the evidence, pretty ancient. But after all, they are not little
>antiques running around the breeding paddock. Watch them come up
>to you for treats and look you in the eye with an unsheep-like
>gaze and they seem very much like real animals, not relics.
>
>"So, what is this sheep worth," they ask?
>
>I can think of 3 kinds of answers to that. The first is, "Oh,
>around $200, that one there." The second is, "Well, you can sell
>the fleece, you can sell the meat, you can sell the horns..."
>
>And the third is the one that I'm fussing with this week: it's
>value is in the diversity of the stock we keep. It's value is in
>its heritage. It's value is in the fact that if we lose it, we
>can never get back the unique bundle of characteristics that make
>up a Jacob sheep.
>
>But then, as I read through the discussions of improved and unimproved
>stock, primitive, deerlike, standardized, landrace, selected... stock,
>I ask myself, how do we know that what we look at as desirable in
>this sheep is anything like what we want to think is an "original"
>Jacob. And how can it be possible not to select for traits that
>please us when we pair them? Is it not the case that our expressed
>bias for "unimproved" Jacobs is as directional as a meat grower's
>bias toward long loins and big individuals? Unless we were to turn
>them all loose in the hills and let them have their way for a few
>or a lot of generations, how would be know what they are?
>
>What are we breeding for? I mean, what traits are we breeding for?
>Are we looking to recreate a fossil sheep? Are we seeing how far
>we can select, from among Jacob parents, a sheep with traits we
>desire, such as fine fleece or good chops (apologies to jazz
>musicians! ;-) )? Are we trying to see how nice a head of horns
>we can get? Or is it enough to observe that horns vary, and that
>sometimes you get bad eye notches, and that these sheep come in
>all degrees of spotting and freckling, and that they are usually
>rather small but sometimes they can be bigger, and that variation
>that does not reduce vigor is probably good?
>
>In fact, if preserved diversity is part of our goal, is it appropriate
>to select rigorously for traits?
>
>But then, what kind of husband of a breed would do otherwise than to
>look after its best progress through the generations? What is the
>diversity worth if we can't draw on it?
>
>Well, anyway, this is all pretty long, and it can keep a person up
>all night counting sheep to think about it too much.
>
>But maybe someone out there would like to toss in some thoughts
>on it?
>
>Susan
>--
>Susan Nielsen, Shambles Workshops      |"...Gently down the
>Beavercreek, OR, USA                   |stream..."
>snielsen at orednet.org                   |           -- Anon.
>
>
>
>
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