[Jacob-list] Freckling - and a behavior observation

[Heather Hettick]

I have varying degrees of freckled sheep and I also like to separate my
colors sometimes.  I have sheep whose freckles don't extend to their wool so
I use their white for pure white without a problem. I do enjoy having a
couple of the heavily freckled girls as I like the mixed grey wool they
produce.  As I don't have a drum carder I actually get an evener gray mix
from those sheep than from mixing black and white.  I guess it would make
sense for me to get a gray sheep for a nice gray, though and I have
considered that.

Thinking back, I had an ewe line without freckles or leg spots but ended up
culling or selling them.  The original had bad horns and icky wool so I sold
her without papers to a family who wanted to breed for meat.  Her daughter
was sold bred and then died after being injured a barn fire while carrying
triplets who unfortunately couldn't be saved either.  The granddaughter, who
is beautiful to look at but not the kind of wool I liked, is owned by the
current owner of my 2002 ram and is doing well.

The reason I am thinking of not keeping potentially heavily freckled ewe
lambs this year - I have one for sure and maybe two, is the reason I was
drawn the Jacob breed is the variety and I really don't want an all freckled
flock.  This is the first year I have a lamb with a brown eye and a blue
eye, and that's pretty exciting to me.

I just love getting to know their personalities too.  My ewe lambs are
getting to be over a month old now and I have a group of 4 really outgoing
girls who come through the barrier every morning while I feed the bottle
lambs.  The leader is the bottle lambs' sister, who we call the Princess
because her mother is the dominant ewe and the name fits her.  The other 3
are progeny of the two other senior/dominant ewes and I feed them a little
snack of grain so I can observe them closely.  Princess is so tall and
elegant, but she's not a big grain eater and prefers to watch and sniff me
while I feed her brothers.  Do other people notice progeny of dominant or
those ewes less afraid of people more friendly or dominant themselves at
least as lambs.  I have noticed that shy or submissive ewe lambs often get
more confident after they have their babies too.

Heather Hettick
Moonstruck Jacob Sheep
Creston, OH
hettick.1 at osu.edu