Jacob Sheep

Jacob Sheep has got to be the fleece that I am most familiar with.  I have prepared and spun countless fleece of this breed over the years.  In fact, it was the first breed of sheep fleece that I bought when I was learning to spin.

The Jacob sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

A little over a year ago we went on a family visit to Charlcote Park, Warwickshire.  In the gatehouse is a display that claims that their ancestor, George Lucy, introduced the first ever flock of Jacob sheep to England in 1756.  I wrote about that visit in this post here.  This is most likely true as that is just a few years before these sheep became popular with landed gentry who owned large estates and used them as ornamental sheep.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 17th century.

Their true origins are not known for definite but there has long been speculation that they are related to the sheep mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible .  According to the Book of Genesis 30:31-43. Jacob took every speckled and spotted sheep from Laban's flock, his father-in-law, as payment for his work and bred them.  In a dream God told him to use only spotted rams for breeding and soon every sheep in the flock was spotted.  The sheep, previously just known as piebald sheep, was given the name of Jacob sometime during the 20th century.  

A study in 2009 found the Jacob to be more closely linked to sheep from Africa and South-west Asia than to British breeds, although all domestic breeds can be traced back to an origin within "the Fertile Crescent", an area in the Middle-East spanning Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, north Kuwait, south Turkey, western Iran, northern Egypt and Cyprus.  Many of the sheep were piebald in nature and a sheep expert at the Israeli Agriculture Ministry has been quoted as saying that British Jacob was not indigenous to ancient Israel and the sheep's resemblance to that described in the Bible is just a coincidence and that "Jacob Sheep are related to Jacob the same was the American Indians are related to India".  

They have been bred in England for more than 350 years and are well documented here and it is accepted that they are a British Breed.  Jacob sheep were first introduced to North America in the early-20th Century and due to selective breeding differences there are now significant differences between North American Jacob and British Jacob sheep.  I am only interested in the British Jacob and this is what I will be writing about.

The Jacob is a small build sheep with a badgerface, black muzzle and cheeks and a white blaze. The legs are free of wool below the knees and the head is free of wool forward of the horns and on the cheeks. They are polycerate, which means they can have two, four or six horns and this is in both sexes, although the males horns tend to be larger and more impressive.  Most British Jacob sheep have just two horns but there are some that have more. It is a piebald breed with fleece that ranges from cream and brown to almost black and is very similar in texture and handle to Down's breed of sheep. 

The fleece quality varies from fine to coarse and some fleece include kemp.  None of the raw fleece that I have ever had, and I've had quite a lot, have ever had any kemp in them.  They produce a fleece that generally weighs between 1.5kg and 2.75kg that has a soft to medium handle with a staple length of  between 3 and 6 inches long (7.5-18 cm long) and is usually 32-34 microns.  It is light, soft, springy and open and there is usually a difference in the length of the staples of the different colours within the same fleece and I have written about this in the past.

This fleece can be carded or combed using Viking combs.  How you handle the different colours is entirely at the spinners discretion.  You can separate them out and spin just black/brown and just white/cream or you can blend them together to produce a whole range of shades of grey, depending on how much of each colour you blend.  In the past I have produced natural coloured gradient yarns by varying the amount of each colour that is blended together.  Even if you do choose to spin the black/brown and white/cream separately it is inevitable that there will be an amount of fleece that you cannot separate totally and will make a grey or multi-coloured yarn from this anyway.  Also, don't be fooled into thinking that you cannot dye the dark parts of the fleece.  I have done this several times.  On the darkest parts you will need strong dark colours but you can achieve navy blue, dark green and dark red for examples.  You can also dye the grey in an array of colours with the blackest of the fibres showing through to produce marled yarns which can be very striking.

Yarns spun from Jacob fleece can be used for a whole variety of items and this will depend on the quality of the fleece that you spin from, which varies too greatly for me to say for certain what it can make.  That decision, in this case, is entirely in the creators hands. 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and I also had a 25g sample that I got with another pack that I stretched it out to the same length as the 50g and spun them together at the same time.  It was the most coarse and just horrible Jacob wool that I have ever encountered.  It was also full of kemp, which I tried to remove as I spun and ended up having to use tweezers after I had spun it to pull out all the nasty kemp that was sticking out and I did this in short lengths, knit that bit, cleaned up another length and then knit with that and I did this until I had knitted my sampler.  Pulling the kemp out greatly improved the quality but it still wasn't as nice as when I've bought it in as fleece from local farms. If this is the standard of Jacob that retailers are selling to spinners then I finally understand why a lot of fellow spinners say that they don't like Jacob and complain about how horrible it is.  I could have spent the time combing some black Jacob fleece that I still have left from fleece I bought in a few years ago but I thought I'd use this seeing as it was just the right amount for my needs.

My finished yarn is of poor quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly kemp.  My knitted piece for the project only took 12g/28m and I threw the rest of it in the bin.