About JSBA/NE: News and Views

Good morning, world!  This blog is to help folks with Jacob sheep learn more about their sheep, share their thoughts about raising jacob sheep with others, post sheep and sheep related items for sale, tell about their farms, and basically, help form a community of jacob breeders in the Northeast U.S.A.

I, Betty Berlenbach, on the board of Jacob Sheep Breeders Association representing the Northeast will manage the blog, but every member of JSBA:northeast region will be able to post to it.  If folks comment, I’ll manage those comments and will be able to direct them to particular people if necessary.

We jacob breeders are a varied lot.  We have between two and a hundred or more sheep. These sheep are primitive, polycerate (having many horns: some have six!, in males and females!), hardy, spotted sheep.  There is a debate about whether they came from the Middle East or Nordic lands, but there are two lovely myths about them: one that they are direct descendants of the sheep that Jacob (Genesis, Hebrew Scriptures) raised in ancient times.  The other is that they made their way to Spain and when the Spanish loaded their ships with sheep for milk and meat to mount their attack against England, and the Armada sank, those sheep on board, which happened to be Jacobs, sometimes called Spanish sheep, swam to shore in Ireland and England and that’s how they arrived there.  From the British Isles, they made their way to zoos in the U.S. in the ’50’s and through importations in the 70’s.  U.S. Jacobs are more primitive than their British counterparts.  No one really knows what interbreedings there have been over the centuries to make them what they are today, though there are some documented interbreedings with dorsets in Britain in the 60’s, I believe, or possibly 70’s to give them bigger carcass size, and improve their fleece some.  There is a British registry for these sheep, and several registries in this country, the largest and oldest being the Jacob Sheep Breeders Association.  The Jacob sheep is recognized by the American Livestock Breeds Association as being a rare breed.  It is not in danger of extinction at this point, but is being watched.  With the popularity of handspinning, jacob sheep have become more numerous, for the fleeces are a delight to work with, having spots, which means one fleece yields black, white, and (through mixing) grey fibers.  Being a primitive fleece, you cannot say jacob fleece is a very narrow particular type of fleece.  There are several types.  They range from coarse to fine, from soft to scratchy, but to be registered, they must be within certain limits.

So, all you blog-followers out there, enjoy checking out these marvelous sheep.