No these aren't the equine kind of mule. In the fall of 2008, we started an experiment - the crossing of Shetland ewes and Jacob ewes with a Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) ram to produce a commercial style crossbred ewe that would hopefully have the vigor of their primitive breed dams and soft lusterous wool of their BFL sire (Longhope Lord Nelson). These crossbred ewes are called mules. The idea is to breed the mule ewes to a British style Suffolk or Texel as a terminal cross to produce lambs that will finish well and quickly on grass. This breeding scheme is popular in Britain and becoming more widely used in the U.S. You can read more about it at http://www.mulesheep.com.
The first 6 lambs we kept born in 2009 (4 jacob and 2 shetland mules) are now over a year old and ready to be bred. They are shown in the picture below with their Suffolk ram. They are about the same height as their dams, but broader and slightly longer. Based on my experience and reading, the BFL crossed with a Shetland produces colors such as black, white and various shades of gray. The Jacob cross surprised me in that we got some white and dark brown lambs in addition to the black lambs I expected. They seem to produce more wool on a weight-basis compared to their dams. Temperment wise the mules resemble their dams; in fact I often describe the Jacob mules as Jacobs wearing a BFL suit because they are definitely Jacob in behavior, but their wool and body type are more like their sire.
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