[Jacob-list] White legs

[Neal and Louise Grose]

As it happens, we received a JSBA Newsletter yesterday that had an excellent 
letter (by Helen Smith to "The Ark" forwarded by Ingrid Painter) that 
touched on white legs in British Jacobs:
"I believe, it was decided that the normal spotty legged sheep should be 
bred out in favor of the fewer, white legged versions. It was felt that 
'spotty legs detracted from the body markings'."

She goes on to say that an unintended consequence of white legs has been a 
white hoof with an increased susceptibility to foot rot.

I would hazard a guess that breeding for white legs may also lead to too 
much white on the face for my tastes. I do not think that it is likely that 
black markings on the legs can be genetically separated from the proportion 
of black on the body.

It seems to me that it would be difficult to breed for white legs without 
reducing the over-all black area of the animal. This may indeed reduce the 
tendency to have freckling, but things are probably more complicated than 
that.

We know (Ok, I have observed over the course of the last twenty years with 
Jacob sheep and 49.95 years with piebald cattle) that there are several 
variants of the piebald genes. Large distinct black markings are genetically 
distinct from more numerous, smaller ones. "White faces" (small or 
non-existent eye-patches) tend to be a dominant trait and may be genetically 
linked to the smaller marking variant (and in my experience, are linked to 
more flighty dispositions). Some, but not all, freckling can be linked to 
crossing these variants of spotting.

Neal Grose


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Betty Berlenbach" <lambfarm at sover.net>
To: "Neal and Louise Grose" <nlgrose at yadtel.net>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Jacob-list] RE: Link on ALBC's Web Page for Jacob Sheep


> Hi, Neal,
>
> I thought that the Brits preferred white legs because there is less chance 
> of freckling with white legs...
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Neal and Louise Grose" <nlgrose at yadtel.net>
> To: <jacob-list at jacobsheep.com>
> Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:16 PM
> Subject: Re: [Jacob-list] RE: Link on ALBC's Web Page for Jacob Sheep
>
>
>>I have noticed that the JSS Breed Standard is for all white legs. I am 
>>puzzled why they did this. In fact, we cull for absence of color on the 
>>legs. I guess a lot has to do with everyone's first look. The first Jacob 
>>we saw is the one that looks right to us.
>>