Excerpt

JACOBS CATTLE

For easy referral, I have included the entire biblical text, as follows:

And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut (sic) tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. (Genesis 30:37-39)

Jacob had spent several weeks in Haran and was ready to return home, but Laban wouldn't let him go.
Jacob said, You had very little when I came here to serve you, and now you have a multitude of animals. It is time that I provide for my own family.
Laban said, Just tell me what I can give you to stay on.
You shall not give me anything, Jacob answered. But if you will agree to let me take my family and leave, I will feed and keep your flock a while longer.
Jacob explained his plan to Laban. Today I will go through all the flocks, and I will remove all the speckled and spotted cattle, all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and that shall be my payment for staying on.
Laban agreed, but instead, he separated all the animals that were speckled, spotted, ringstraked, brown or tinged with white and moved away by a space of three days. This left Jacob with only Laban's flocks and herds to care for.
Laban should have known that Jacob could be just as cunning as he, but he had no clue that Jacob was about to get even with him for all the years Jacob worked for him without pay.
Under the microscope, chromosomes are easily identified by their differences in size and form, characteristics that do not change for each individual chromosome throughout all succeeding cell generations. The genes which carry inheritance are strung along the chromosomes in linear order much like a string of pearls, but not necessarily evenly spaced. Each chromosome carries the specific genes which belong to it alone, and which remain with it, making gene-mapping possible.
When Jacob peeled the rods, he removed and separated the genes from the chromosomes which carried the inheritable traits of solid coat color from those that would produce speckles, spots, and striped coats.

The story of Jacob's Cattle is more than one of simple animal husbandry and the natural breeding of herds and flocks. If it were simply a matter of separating the herds and flocks visually, then there would be no need to go into such great detail about how Jacob peeled white streaks in rods of green poplar, hazel and chestnut trees and held them before the faces of the animals.
Every statement in the Bible, no matter how trivial or strange it may be, holds a deeper significance than its surface meaning. The allegory of Jacobs cattle is stating a genetic principle that was known long ago, and which modern science is just beginning to understand. Furthermore, the genetic engineering of Jacobs cattle also reveals something far more than simply the inheritance of coat color in animals, and that is the principle of racial inheritance.
Hebrew legend confirms that Jacob did carry out certain procedures on the cattle. A note in THE LIVING TORAH agrees that Jacob did in fact manipulate and change the genetic structure of the herds and flocks, but suggests that he may have done this by directing spiritual energy by deep meditation on the rods. Another explanation is that Jacob used the image-making faculty of the mind to bring an increase on the premise that the idea of a thing always precedes its manifestation. Needless to say, neither of these theories gives any scientific basis for the actual physical changes that took place among the cattle.
In the May 1992 issue of Science News, an article appeared written by I. Peterson entitled Generating chemical spots and stripes. Peterson relates that laboratory experiments have uncovered evidence of how certain patterns (stripes and spots in particular) develop in the coats of certain animals. Peterson reports that in 1990 researchers conducted experiments in which they adjusted the concentration of one component in a chemical system, resulting in the production of patterns of spots or stripes.
Is it just possible that because of our preconceived ideas about our ancient ancestors we have not been willing to admit even to the possibility that there were multiple cultures living side by side, some of whom may have had knowledge of which we have been unaware until now? Perhaps the second underlying principle in this story will help you decide.
It is perhaps even more difficult to believe that those who wrote Genesis had the incredibly sophisticated knowledge that follows. If you have any doubts as to the correctness of my interpretation, I urge you to check out every key word with the Hebrew Lexicon, and if that is not possible, use a modern unabridged copy of Webster's Dictionary. I claim that the second principle in the story of Jacob's Cattle is the incredible account of how human beings developed stereoptic color vision. Consider the evidence.
The rods in the story represent the photosensitive long cells of the retina. Green poplar (from Latin populus, meaning extremely full and thickly populated, is a reference to the enormous numbers of specialized neurons that make up the rods (120 million) and cones (6 million) in the retina. The mention of the hazel refers to the pigmented reddish-brown or yellowish-brown of hazel eyes that are usually flecked with green and gray, called in the story spotted. The chesnut tree represents a nerve. Jacob peeling white streaks in the rods represents the development of the vitreous jelly that maintains the shape of the eye and attaches to the retina.