Jacob (American)

Spotted sheep were documented in England by the 1600s and common by the mid-1700s, kept as ornamental park sheep on estates. That job suited them: they looked good and needed almost nothing. Nobody selected them for much beyond hardiness, spots and horns, which is why the Jacob is a primitive breed that still largely looks after itself.

The first came to North America in the mid-1900s, though most of the current population descends from imports in the last thirty years. Small flock keepers, hand spinners and weavers have kept it popular. The British breed society formed in 1969; American registration began in 1985, and the Jacob Sheep Breeders Association was established in 1988.

The two populations have since diverged. British Jacobs have been selected toward meat and are now larger and more uniform; American Jacobs retain nearly all of the original type, which is why the American population is treated as its own conservation priority.

They are small and horned, black and white, and honestly a little goat-like to look at. Ewes run 80 to 120 pounds and rams 120 to 180. More than half the animal is white, with colored patches that are usually black but can be brown or a paler shade called lilac. The skin is pink and the hooves are usually black.

This is a multi-horned breed. Most carry two or four horns, and six occur. The fleece is medium, light and open, with a staple of four to six inches and a weight of three to six pounds.

British Jacobs run heavier, with rams to around 220 pounds. If a seller quotes British figures for an American-type animal, that is the explanation.

Docile and calm, and hardy across a wide range of temperatures, though they want shelter in severe weather. They are good climbers and social animals, which is worth remembering when you build fences.

The ewes are excellent mothers, typically raising one or two lambs in spring.

Wool is the working answer: the spotted fleece is what hand spinners and weavers keep the breed for. Meat and pelts are the rest of the Conservancy's list, and the park-ornament history still shows in how many are kept simply because they look the way they do.

Almost nothing, by the standards of improved sheep. The breed spent centuries being decorative and unattended, and it kept the self-sufficiency. Basic shelter, basic fencing that respects a climbing, social animal, and routine care cover it.

The American Jacob is listed as Threatened on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List. The point worth understanding is that the American population, not the breed worldwide, is the conservation target: it preserves the old unimproved type that British selection has been moving away from.

Expect variability. That is what an unimproved breed looks like, not a fault in the animal you are being shown.

Registration runs through the Jacob Sheep Breeders Association. Horns are part of the standard; a hornless Jacob cannot be registered, so look at the horns, and on a multi-horned animal look at how they grow, since you will be living with them at gates and feeders.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.