Wednesday, April 11, 2012

"What's up?" Wednesday

This morning before turning the sheep out, I took some time to investigate a puzzle.

Here are fleece shots of Bittersweet, Annabelle's ram lamb.
shoulder area

hip area

scrotum

Looks clearly moorit, right? This would mean that white Annabelle's genes at the A locus must be Awt/Aa.

Here are fleece shots of Bloom, Annabelle's ewe lamb.
shoulder area

mid-side

hip area

Even though Bloom doesn't show any other signs of Ag, that is a lot of fading at the skin level - much more than I would expect from "side dusting" on a gulmoget. But her sire is clearly a moorit gulmoget, and her dam is Awt/Aa, so there's no possibility of Bloom inheriting the fading gene. What's up?

(The photos I took over the weekend are still languishing in an unopened file; I will get to them eventually.)

That's it for today from . . .
at

5 comments:

  1. Christine4/12/12, 5:20 PM

    I'm stunned with how long their fleeces are already. Wow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michelle4/12/12, 5:40 PM

      They're not, really; just tight close-ups. The moorit ram lamb is pictured in the previous post and you can see how evenly crimpy his fleece is - but I wouldn't call it long.

      Delete
  2. Mary Ann4/12/12, 7:38 PM

    Greek to me :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown4/16/12, 7:58 AM

    Unknown modifier gene?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michelle4/16/12, 8:29 AM

      I'm wondering about that, too, Shelly.

      Delete

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