[Jacob-list] importations

[Neal and Louise Grose]

Everything has a starting point. What we call purebred is a collection of animals of similar traits that have been isolated, inbred, and reselected for type. It might have been 50 years ago, or 150 years ago, or 1500 years ago. Other than Soay, which is not strictly a domestic breed, the only thing that would fit the later standard would be Merino and English Longwool. (Neither exists in a form that they had 1500 years ago).  

You don't say wither the sheep you saw had mixed Jacob ancestry. I have seen plenty of 3/4 Jacob lambs. There is always something askew with these sheep: the fleece is too heavy, early greying, the bone is too round, the color pattern is funky, ...something. There is no Jacob gene. Jacob-ness comes from a combination of many genes and many traits. It is certainly possible that Jacob Crossbreds, bred back to each other might produce a lamb with a good degree of Jacob type, but there would be a significant amount of off-type character that would show up without careful reselection. That doesn't mean that I think that we should allow these animals into a registry...we have already done the hard work of multi-generation standardization for type for an animal that mostly agrees to what we mostly agree on. With lack of a sample of DNA from a representative group of sheep from 1880, that is the best we can do.

Neal Grose 
North Carolina

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Hobsickle at aol.com 
  To: jacob-list at jacobsheep.com 
  Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 8:11 AM
  Subject: Re: [Jacob-list] importations


  I had an interesting experience 6 or 8 years ago.  I took a couple of Jacob sheep to a buyer who said they had a few sheep that had come with the farm, but wanted to get into Jacobs.  When I got there, low and behold they already had a Jacob lamb...I thought.  I mentioned it and they said "on no, that's the offspring of one of our non-Jacobs that had been somewhat inbred."  Original mutation?...Recessive brought out by inbreeding?...I don't know, but I do know that under the right circumstances something that looks like a Jacob can be produced by non-Jacobs.  My point?--references to Jacob-like sheep may or may not refer to actual Jacobs.  I'm NOT saying I think someone is making that mistake, I'm just saying that there are other possible answers to some of the very early "Jacob" reports.  If only there were original documentation...

  -Dan

  PS I wish I had documented this incident better, but I the time I was early into my Jacob experience and didn't give it that much thought.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  Jacob-list mailing list, sponsored by Swallow Lane Farm & Fiberworks
  Jacob-list at jacobsheep.com
  http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/jacob-list
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.pairlist.net/pipermail/jacob-list/attachments/20090920/b5926119/attachment.html>