text: Before and After — Meridian Jacobs
  Go to the previous blog post for photos of Shearing Day. Here are what some of the sheep look like before and after.
  This is Fran. At 11 she is the oldest sheep in the flock.
  People always think that these are brown and white sheep but it is just the sun-bleached tips that make them look brown.
  Fran is mostly black, but Jillian is mostly white. That's the great thing about a flock of Jacob sheep.
  Something that you may see after shearing is additional spots. In these case, those are skin spots but not freckling that shows up in the wool. Jillian's wool is white over most of her body.
  If you want to see a freckled ewe take a look at Marilla, but you can't really tell from seeing her like this.
  That's a freckled ewe. I don't have a photo of her fleece right now. It's gorgeous, but "excessive freckling" is not a desirable characteristic in general for Jacob sheep. That is one reason that I always breed Marilla to the BFL ram for crossbred market lambs instead of lambs that i'd want to keep or sell for breeding.
  This is a ewe lamb (born last March) named Quartz.
  Here she is after shearing. Now that they are shown you can also start to differentiate between "pregnant bellies" and "open", although I must say that I use udder development as a more definitive clue.
  Terri , an almost two-year-old, in full fleece.
  Terri after shearing. Again notice that she is really not a brown sheep.
  I like this photo of Terri. Here horns are not desirable but they have character. The "claw" horns on her left tend to catch grass in the pasture. Look at the photo of her dam, below. Do you see a resemblance?
  Have you ever seen such a round sheep?
  The "rescue" sheep from Pope Valley still hang out together. That's the five of them walking away from everyone else.