[Jacob-list] Mid west Jacobs

[Mark Essen]

If any of you remember Edd Bissel's video of Jacobs in the US, it seems to me that many of them were midwest.  Edd used to talk about Dave Hale's auction in Cape Giradeau, Missouri.  There are still auctions for "exotic" animals In much of the mid-west.  Most of these auctions do not brag on (or even mention)  registration, but some of the best looking primitive type Jacobs I have seen have been at some of these auctions (some real crap is available also).  As somebody has already pointed out, you need to keep an eye on offspring for a few generations to be sure that you actually bought a jacobs.   After all, these can be the very definition of unknow background.   But a lot of people that raise jacobs want to raise pure jacobs, regardless of paperwork.  When I go to the farms of some of these people, many of them have never heard of some of the names of farms, farmers, and flocks that some of us old-timers hold in such reverence.  But they certainly have a high regard of the breed.
As far as money goes, the highest prices I have ever seen go to the rams with the nicest set of four horns.  I saw a beatutiful white four horn ram sell for twelve hundred dollars.  He sold at a sale in Tennessee and then went to a hunting ranch in Texas.  Obviously they did not care that he was not pure Jacob, just that he had a nice set of horns.  I think that it would be hard for most of us to remember the last time we saw any registered Jacob sell that high.  I suspect that many people on the list do not like hunting ranches, but we have to admit that they do influence prices.  
I guess that my point is that there are lots of small farms in the midwest that raise Jacobs.  We just seem not to be as apt to join the registries as some of our coastal counterpoints.  At least that is how it appears through my eyes.
  
Mark Essen, a rampant anarchist in Missouri who is trying hard to stay out of the regisratration discussion.
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