[Jacob-list] Moorit X Lilac

[Neal and Louise Grose]

Yes. this is one of those things that can throw our ideas about what's'what out the window.

After using a lilac carrier ram on our longwool (Lincoln X Finn X Cotswold) one year, it dawned on me that something weird was going on. We did not have a single longwool X Jacob lamb that was not Jacob black. In fact, 4 white FinnX ewes produced 13 black or piebald lambs. This was just NOT statistically probable.

Moorit is the most recessive of the color genes. Betty, our dear friend, gave us a moorit Shetland ram for me to experiment with, and we used him on 6 lilac Jacob ewes. Once again, all of the lambs were black or piebald. This means that lilac is not located at the Jacob black allele. It is recessive, but the black alleles are present and are only expressed in absence of two lilac genes. (This may mean that lilac is the absence of some other link of the protein pathway that yields black.)

As a follow-up, Max, the moorit ram with a Napoleon complex, died as our only fatality in a tornado, but left a black half-Jacob son who was used on some of his sisters. As a result, we now have what appears to be the only lilac crossbred that I have ever seen. And for the record, our lilacs do not prematurely fade.

I just love muddied waters...

Neal
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Linda 
  To: Heather Hettick 
  Cc: jacob-list at jacobsheep.com 
  Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 2:42 PM
  Subject: Re: [Jacob-list] Jacob-list Digest, Vol 71, Issue 1


  Neal? didn't you get black lambs with the moorit Shetland/lilac Jacob cross?

  Linda

  Heather Hettick wrote: 

Did you breed your moorit Icelandic ewe to your lilac Jacob ram?

My current Icelandic ram carries moorit, but has never produced anything but
black crosses with lilac Jacobs.  


Heather Hettick
Moonstruck Farm
Creston, OH
www.moonstruckfarm.wordpress.com


 



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