[Jacob-list] docking

[Betty Berlenbach]

I still say when you have a breed standard which includes the length of a tail, you can't tell if the sheep meets the breed standard or not, if the tail is docked.  Hence, if you buy a ram with a docked Long Tail, the long tail may be passed along to a bevy of babies!  This is not good!  So long as there is mention of tail length in breed standard, I won't buy a sheep with a docked tail, unless there is a photo of the animal as a lamb before the tail was docked, to give some idea of tail length...and only then, if the animal is so incredibly great that I can't resist.  I've too often ended up with a bunch of long tailed babies from a docked tail ram, whose tail was obviously too long to meet the breed standard, or else he had genes for long tail, can't be sure!  Luckily, that hasn't happened recently.  But I've had to cull rams who consistently produce lambs who wouldn't meet the breed standard because of too long tails, despite their obvious beauty in other departments.  
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