[Jacob-list] wooly eye

[Penelope]

Karen Askounis, DVM wrote:

> Hi list members

>

> I have a kind a survey for you. I had one lamb this year with a dermoid. It

> is an area at the edge of the cornea (at the junction of the clear area and

> white area of the eye)that is growing wool. These occur in many species.

> They contain the wrong cell types for the area and usually grow hair or in

> this case wool. I found a reference that it is inherited in Hereford cattle

> but is not considered inherited in dogs. Our local ophthalmologist has

> removed one from a Jacob in the past but could not find an answer in her

> references regarding whether this would be considered inheritable. Well we

> will not be using him for breeding just in case but I thought I would see if

> any of you have had this occur and if so did you recognize is as more

> frequent in certain lines etc..

>

>   

We had one lamb that had what sounds like this condition.  We observed 
it at shearing time, when we collected all the lambs we hadn't already 
laid hands on to check them out, made a note that we would cull her 
later in the year, and that we didn't think much of her wool anyway.  
She appeared to be blind in that eye, but not in any discomfort.  Our 
shearer, who had experience with many sheep, had not seen it before. 

At this point I'm thinking that it must have been an exceptionally rough 
year ... I don't remember what year it was but it could well have been 
shortly after our house fire which would explain why I didn't simply 
cart her in to a vet later that week.  That would make sense because the 
next year we had friends from our daughter's school at shearing with us 
with the good shearer, the year after we had a horrible shearer, and 
then there was this year.  So that was spring 2004, sometime in April, 
and our house fire was Mar 5.  Sorry to digress.


-- 
penelope jacob
pcj at efn.org
www.dreamsandbones.net/blog