Exhibit C: fawn?

I wasn't planning to bring Valentine up next, but since the possibility of Brava being fawn has been raised, it only seems logical.

Above is Valentine at OFFF in 2006, the first time I saw her. I was immediately smitten with her friendly personality - and that fleece! I had never seen such a pretty color (not that I'd seen THAT many Shetland sheep yet), and asked her breeder Lois what it was called. Her label: light moorit.

According to Lois, Valentine (Stonehaven Valeria) looked like a regular moorit through her first shearing; she didn't turn lighter until after that. So was she really a moorit? I started asking around and sending pictures after shearing her here in 2007. I got several opinions, but fawn seemed to get the majority vote since Val has no signs of Ag and the all-over color change didn't point to early age-greying, or iset.

Above are current photos of Val and her fleece. Like Brava, she is darker along her topline and lighter at midside, and as with Brava, I can't tell for sure if her color is from a mixture of light and dark fibers or if it's "pure." My understanding of the modified colors is that they are not a mixture, and fawn is now thought to be a modified color. What if she does have a mixture of light and dark fibers? How should she be labeled then? It should be noted that Val's only lambs to date are twin "milk chocolate" moorits (fawns?) out of my musket ram; see the post titled "A rose by any other name..." for a close-up of her ram lamb's fleece.

That's it for now from . . .