[Jacob-list] Re: Lilacs

[Betty Berlenbach]

Wow, and that's a shetland  cross, huh?  It will be interesting to see what happens with the shetland crossed "jacob" lambs when they are bred, either to a shetland or to a jacob!  Interestingly, when a shetland is crossed with a black and white jacob, in my experience, the lamb is black.  (It was a moorit shetland.  Not sure what would happen with a more dominant shetland color.  This could get very confusing.  HOwever, it might be of interest to note that the dominance in shetlands goes like this, in order of most to least dominant (usually): white, grey and beige, black, moorit.  I wonder what would happen with lilac jacob and GREY shetland!  Or black.  It seems like it is not only color but piebald connected to color, since moorit shetland to black and white jacob produced pure black baby!  I wonder if in jacobs the dominance is similar, that is, that lilac (greys) are dominant to black!  And "chocolate lilac" is a moorit, not a lilac/grey at all!  Don't have any grey or black ram lambs at the moment, but next year, if I get them, and if you want to play that game, I'll try to send them south!

Guess I should have posted this to the list...hmm..will go back and try
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Neal and Louise Grose 
  To: R Unzicker ; Betty Berlenbach ; Ingrid Painter ; Sandra Van Liew ; Edie Van Valkenburg ; Stephanie Arceneaux ; Jacquee' Gillespie 
  Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 9:40 PM
  Subject: Lilacs


      I received the NW newsletter in the mail today and it reminded me that I had meant to correspond with some of you about the lilac gene.    
      I am sending you a picture of a lilac ewe and her lamb from this spring. The subject of 'lilac' tends to bring up lively discussions on Jacoblist. Last year, someone on the list mentioned that they were going to wind up breeding a Jacob to a Shetland and wondered what the outcome might be. I replied and suggested that if anyone happened to cross a lilac Jacob to a Moorit Shetland, to let the rest of us know the outcome, since this would tell us a lot about the 'lilac' gene. 
      After some number of emails between Betty and myself, she gave us a Moorit Shetland ram named Max in the interest of science. I put Max in with six lilac ewe lambs about the first of December last year and the lamb pictured is the result of this mating. I would have preferred to have more lambs, but two of the ewe lambs jumped the gun and the rest did not breed. This lamb is piebald black and white. It would be tempting to discredit this as a mistake and the result of a Jacob/Jacob cross, except it is the same result as we get when crossing homozygous white longwool ewes and Lilac Jacob rams. 
      After consulting with Phil Sponenberg and other people that have seen lilac/moorit crosses, I think that this is representative of moorit  crossed on "chocolate" lilac. Other types of lilac may give other results. Lilac is not a simple recessive to black. Here is what I think is going on here: Lilac is recessive to "Not-lilac". Two copies of lilac are required to cover up black expression.  ( I am waiting to later to muddle out the dominant and recessive piebald genes. We get different results from different bloodlines.)
      I intend to repeat this experiment this year, with a some variety of ewes to use as controls. If any one has any suggestions how I should proceed from this point, I am interested in hearing them.  I normally put rams in with ewes about the first weekend in November.

  Neal Grose



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