SHREVE — After several years of raising a small flock of Jacob sheep, Cheryl Gordon wanted to see how she was faring among other breeders. So in the fall, she loaded three of her ewes in a truck and drove 500 miles to the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in Asheville, North Carolina.
Along with a bunch of blue ribbons, the Shreve woman brought home a purple banner for her Reserve Supreme Champion Ewe among all fiber breeds. The ewe also was named Jacob Ewe Breed Champion.
"It was interesting," Gordon said. When a fiber artisan offered to buy the wool from two of her ewes, she found a shearer on site, she said, "And I literally sold two fleeces off my animals."
The Jacob breed combines two characteristics unusual in sheep: It is piebald — dark colored with areas of white wool — and often multi-horned. Mostly commonly the sheep have four horns. Hand spinners seek out the wool because they like its light and open fleece as well as the color combinations — black, white or a blend of the two.
Gordon sells her wool primarily online to hand spinners. That requires her to keep the wool as clean as possible and skirt it — remove any undesirable parts from the shorn wool.
She started her flock with six ewes that her daughter, Laura, purchased for a FFA project. After high school, her daughter headed to college and began working summer jobs that took her away from the farm, Gordon said. "At that point, the ewes became mom’s sheep."
Having grown up on a dairy farm, Gordon, who also holds a degree in agricultural economics from The Ohio State University, said she is "hard-wired" for animal care, but she educated herself on sheep production by attending classes through The Ohio State University Extension Service and consulting with her father-in-law, a sheep producer.
She chose Kingsfold for the name of her enterprise after finding a folk tune by that name in a hymnal. It’s of English origin, she said, same as the Jacob sheep.
It particularly clicked when she learned the hymn "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" used the Kingsfold tune. "The sheep really do respond to my voice and they know their shepherd," Gordon said. "I have had many humbling moments in the barn as I have understood why the Bible calls us sheep. So the name Kingsfold brings that around full circle for me."
At one point her flock grew to 25 ewes, she said, "but that was way too many for my tiny barn." A challenge is to keep her flock at a manageable size. This year, she has two rams and 17 ewes bred to lamb in March.
Gordon said the Jacobs are fairly easy to maintain and make good mothers. "Their lambs are up and nursing within 10 minutes."
She rotates her sheep through fenced-off pasture areas on the family’s 21-acre farm to help control parasites and maintain the sheep’s access to fresh grass. During a dry summer two years ago, it was a struggle to find fresh grass. "So the sheep were in our yard," she said. "We used every blade of green grass that was here."
While she maintains the sheep, her husband, Greg, a retired faculty member at The Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute, works on machinery in a shop on the farm.
"All my cheap help has grown up and moved away," joked the mother of four. Still, she plans to continue raising the Jacobs. Their size — ewes range from 100-120 pounds — make it easy for her to handle. "Plus, I enjoy it," she said.
This past year, she helped a 4-H’er show his first Jacob sheep at the Wayne County Fair.
Gordon also fared well with ewes she exhibited at the National Jacob Sheep Association Meeting in Cooperstown, New York. She registers her sheep with the association and enjoyed the camaraderie with other breeders.
She said she wants to continue to improve the quality of her sheep and sell breeding stock along with the wool, "one fleece at a time."