[Jacob-list] Re: Lilacs

[Hobsickle at aol.com]

1) Test crosses of "chocolate lilac" Jacob to both moorit and homozygous 
white are giving the same results...black lambs. (And in our case, piebald black 
and white lambs.)

This together with some of today's other discussions leads to one of the 
serious problems in this whole color business--that is, there is no 
standardization of terms among Jacob breeders and no assurance that we are all using the 
terms the same way.  The literature describes black as ranging from black to 
"brown-black" and the browns ("moorits") as a range including milk chocolate, dark 
chocolate, and black-brown.  Brown-black...black-brown...where's the line??? 
(You, Neil, have commented the the "black" of Jacobs typically browner than 
the black of Holsteins.)  It is pretty pointless to discuss results of crosses 
if we're not all on the same page with our terms.  I'm not sure how to 
standardize it, but it does need to be standardized.


2) If different lilac colors are the result of different combinations of 
genes, then occasionally we should have some funky results from crossing lilac to 
lilac. Has any one seen this?

The punnett square at the address I sent yesterday lists all of the possible 
genotypes for the alleles suggested.  Nothing funky strikes me as the possible 
genotypes (ignoring shades) are black, grey, brown-grey, and brown.  The 
literature indicates that grey homozygotes are lighter than heterozygotes, so 
perhaps we can add "light" and "dark" to the list of grey-bearing phenotypes.  
(This may explain why some lilacs fade so badly--maybe they are homozygous.)

-Dan
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