[Jacob-list] No Eye Patch

[Cathy Robinson]

A couple of comments on no eye patch:

One of our original Jacob ewes came to us at around 11 years of age, and 
she was/is missing one eye patch.  Jane is now close to 20 years old, &  
had her last lambs in 2002.  She produced 7 "children" for us in four 
years, and 13 "grandchildren" to date.  All had complete eye patches on 
both sides and in varying sizes,  until this year when a grandson 
arrived minus one patch.  He did have dark "eyeliner" outlining his eye, 
which his grandmother does not.  I really expected to see more lambs 
without eye patches than just one.

I was not really "wild" about Jane when she arrived as part of our 
starter group...both because of her age and her markings, but her time 
with us has taught us valuable lessons.  She is a tough, old girl  that 
has truly been an asset to our flock, despite her lack of ideal 
markings.  Some great attributes would have been lost, had she been 
culled for the lack of an eye patch.

Linda's description of the two lightly marked sheep producing ideally 
marked lambs, reminded me immediately of a similar occurrence in the 
rabbit breeding world.  A spotted rabbit with only minimal spotting 
(predominantly white) is called a "charlie", and it is said that 
breeding two "charlies" together will  result in nearly perfectly marked 
offspring........Sounds very similar to me.

Cathy
Perfect Spot Farm, NC
    ....where we are drying out tonight after receiving LOTS of rain 
from Cindy


Linda wrote:

> I'm curious as to how many breeders would consider a white eye patch 
> (or, as I call it, no eye patch) a factor for culling - all else being 
> acceptable, of course.  I used a ram with no eye patch on one side for 
> a couple of years and did not find that the trait took over.  As an 
> experiment, I bred him to a daughter that also had a missing patch. 
>  Both ram and daughter were very lightly marked, had one missing eye 
> patch and one teeny, tiny eye patch.  I know it's only one instance 
> and not a scientific study by any means, but the resulting lamb was 
> one of the most "ideally" marked lambs I've had - 45/55, big eye 
> patches, knees, hocks, etc.  It's quite possible that if I had 
> continued to inbreed the ram, I'd have ended up with with a flock look 
> that focused on a lack of eye patches.   The ram added things to my 
> flock and I was happy to have had him.  He didn't seem to pass on his 
> missing eye patch to the majority of his offspring and, thank 
> goodness, did not pass on his incredibly horrible personality :-)
>  


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