[Jacob-list] Fw: What is lilac?

[sunbriar at juno.com]

I crossed lilac ram on 10 barbadoes ewes, all the lambs were black with 
small white marks on the head. so it  didnt result in anything
unexpected. The thing that came up funny though, was the lilac ram was a
fused 2 horn and the barb ewes were polled, and i got 2 lambs with split
eyelids!!!!!! Kathy

On Fri, 10 Aug 2001 09:47:03 -0400 Grose <NLGrose at Yadtel.net> writes:
> Here's a communication with Dr. Sponenberg that I thought y'all might 
> be interested in. In our flock, lilacXlilac=lilac, lilacXlilac 
> carrier= 50% lilac and 50% black, etc. just like we would expect. I 
> think I will repeat this test cross [on purpose this time]. It would 
> be helpful though if others would try some test crosses to other 
> white breeds and to mouflan or Barbados.                     Neal 
> Grose
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Phil Sponenberg 
> To: Grose 
> Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 3:42 PM
> Subject: Re: What is lilac?
> 
> 
> oooh no, this is indeed interesting. Some lilacs appear to be Agouti 
> locus patterns. Yours cannot be, and so is interesting. This might 
> be a brown locus allele segregating, since your crosses indicate 
> something like that. Not all lilacs are created equal. What happens 
> when you cross lilac to lilac in your flock?
> 
> Phil
> 
> 
>   Dr. Sponenberg,
>   A topic has come up on the jacob-list that has drawn a great deal 
> of interest. We have had "lilac" sheep in our flock for some time. 
> About 2 years ago, MaryEllen Hansson wrote to you concerning an 
> impromptu test cross between a lilac ram and some white 
> Cotswold/Finn/Lincoln/Finn ewes on our farm. ALL the resulting 
> lambs[20] were black with white markings [they ranged from 95% to 
> 50% black]. I have to assume that even if all the ewes were 
> heterozygous white/black that some of the lambs would have turned up 
> white or lilac had they not inherited a Jacob dominant black allele. 
> What I recall is that at the time, you indicated that the lilac 
> essentially "masked" the expression of black. "Black" and "lilac" 
> appear to have a simple dominant/recessive relationship. If the 
> lilac allele does not alternate with black at the "extension" locus 
> could it be a subset of "extension" or would it be at a separate 
> locus where the dominant condition is not expressed?
>   My wife, Louise, assures me that the color we see as lilac is a 
> corruption of yellow. In trying to recreate it on the computer paint 
> program the closest that I have been able to come to this so far is 
> red 49,green 21, blue 15, hue 8, saturation 128, and lum 30. The 
> true color is slightly more yellow and blue and more saturated. The 
> legs and horns on these guys appear saturated brown, one shade 
> lighter than the "blacks".
>   [?] What does lilac knock-out of black to get this color? When our 
> sheep are sun scorched, the lilac and black wool is almost the same 
> on the tips.
>   Thank you very much for your attention to this fascinating yet 
> useless field of study.
>   Neal Grose
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> D. Phillip Sponenberg, DVM, PhD
> Director of Student Affairs
> Professor, Pathology and Genetics
> Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine
> Virginia Tech
> Blacksburg, VA 24061
> USA
> 
> e-mail: dpsponen at vt.edu
> phone: 1-540-231-4805
> fax: 1-540-231-6033