[Jacob-list] No Eye Patch

[Peaceful Valley Farm]

We have one of Jane's girls.  Perfect Spot Penelope Jane (aka P.J.).  She has to large eye patches, and all of the lambs that she's had while with us have had full eyepatches EXCEPT for one ram lamb.  He had an eye patch on one side, and a tenny little spot on the other side.  His sister Rachel has two nice eye patches.  And this year's ram lambs from P.J. both have nice eyepatches (Although this years had a father who has a LOT of pigment on his face.) 
Matthew
www.peacefulvalleyfarm.com 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Cathy Robinson 
  To: Jacob List 
  Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 10:37 PM
  Subject: [Jacob-list] No Eye Patch


  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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