[Jacob-list] the perfect sheep

[Debbie Bennett]

I lost my "perfect" ewe last month after a brief illness. She was  
twelve years old. She was small, fine boned, freckled with age, her  
top horns curled forward at the tips, in short, she was one of the  
ugliest Jacob ewes I've ever seen. She ran to meet me every morning  
and then raced to the barn and if I was slow to get there, she pawed  
at the door to the hay storage. She was independent. She beat up more  
than one dog in her time. No matter what ram I bred her to, she  
always had amazing looking, four horned, 60%/40% offspring (even the  
year she took off with the churro ram)!  I look out and see one of  
her daughters, a grand daughter and the crossbred wether. They are  
all lovely to look at, but they all have their own personalities and  
none quite like hers.
Debbie Bennett
Feral Fibre Farm
Oakland, Oregon

On Jan 6, 2006, at 2:48 PM, Linda wrote:

> Hi Betty,
>
> Try to stay warm and get better!  Bronchitis is no fun.  Sorry to  
> hear about your old boy.
>
> But raising Jacobs is!  All my sheep are "perfect" (joke) - just in  
> different ways.  Some are more perfect than others and some you got  
> to get to know before you notice that they are perfect (still a  
> joke). They are all, however, special in some way or other.  When I  
> switched from crossbred sheep to Jacobs, Dave made the comment that  
> he hoped the Jacobs weren't all going to be so pretty that there  
> wouldn't be any culls for the freezer.  So far, that has not been a  
> problem and the freezer stays pretty full.
>
> Hope you get to feeling better soon.
>
> Linda
>
>
>
> www.patchworkfibers.com
> Registered Jacob Sheep, Angora Rabbits, Handspun Yarn
>
> On Fri, 6 Jan 2006 16:27:14 -0500, Betty Berlenbach wrote:
> > if we all got our wish and got the perfect ram and perfect ewe, how
> > boring lambing would be, if all the lambs looked the same...and
> > with no bad ones to compare them to, the good ones wouldn't look
> > quite as incredibly good, would they?  So, maybe we all ought to
> > stick with what's around in the gene pool now, and stop trying to
> > make "clony" sheep!!!!  I love it when I'm surprised by two
> > incredibly beautiful lambs out of a not so beautiful ewe, and when
> > the opposite happens, I'm not real surprised. The real question
> > becomes: would you rather have a spectacular set of sheep on the
> > field, who threw so-so lambs, or not so great looking flock who
> > threw spectacular lambs?  Probably a mixture of each would be best!
> >  I'm turning philosophical, I guess: not much else to do when
> > you're sitting around coughing out your brains with bronchitis.  On
> > top of it all, my spectacular mioget shetland ram, who threw
> > gorgeous lambs, about 6:1 girls to boys, appears to be dying.  He's
> > nine and very frail...so, in addition to the cough, I have a death
> > watch going here, planning on how to bury him in weather like
> > this...the compost pile it is.
>
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