Whistle and Watson are the proud parents of these twins born on Saturday, a doe and a buck. The buckling is for sale, the doe is staying here.
Solid liver pup.
Hershey has decided she loves her ram (wether) after all. She has taken over feeding him.
Our pup...still unnamed.
Those flashes by his eyes are looking gulmoget too, don't you think? Note the lack of horns.
very nice kara!! i would say hesters ram is a gulmoget i was looking at other pictures of him and his legs look it and it appears he has side dusting too is that true?
ReplyDeleteHe looks to have dark markings where a gulmoget would have light eye flashes to me. Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteThanks Mac, we are still trying to figure that out. Supposedly it is genetically impossibility.
ReplyDeleteMichelle that IS interesting...maybe a mutation after all? Still not sure how I feel about this mystery or fully understand the implications of any possible scenario. Parentage mix up is not a possibility. I SAW Hester give birth to him and I didn't have a gulmoget ram. My gully's each had their own set of gully twins (one double patterned).
Just looked up his daddys lines, its a far shot but champ and his dad could have been ED(extension dominant) because this rams grandpa is a gulmoget, although if he has the kat eye spots hester could be ED her grandpa on her moms side is a katmoget with almost all kats in his background. yikes what a mystery!
ReplyDeleteI have an explanation but would be interested to know how much of a possibility ED would be?
ReplyDeleteHi Kanisha,
ReplyDeleteWelcome from France! Thanks for taking the time to help me figure this out, any theory you have or explanation, I would love to hear. Some say that there is no way that ED is in the US flocks and that is as improbable as is it being recessive...I think mutation is equally unlikey so that leaves me with no explanation at all. It has to be something because he looks very gulmoget to me, but I guess test breeding would be the only way to tell. He father and grandfather are not gulmoget and never threw other lambs that indicated that they were hiding the pattern. The great grandfather was gulmoget. All gullies in the US trace back to Roban Dillion. Your thoughts?
Kara, I know some people poo-poo ED, but I think it has been solidly proven in test breedings by people like Bill Stearman and others with other sheep breeds - plus Phil Sponenburg (sp), a well-known and respected sheep genetics expert, accepts it. That doesn't mean it's in your flock, but it IS in North American flocks.
ReplyDeleteHi Kara,
ReplyDeleteI am fairly certain that there is ED in NA shetlands from all that I have read and so there is always the likelihood that this is the reason for a gulmoget lamb appearing unexpectedly. However............. in the unlikely event that it isn't ED there is another interesting possibility and I have no idea how you would determine the difference.This study http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2008.01712.x/full was done in 2008 on the Xalda a primitive spanish breed of sheep who are in the main black coated ( there are some whites)of the 120 sheep tested 109 black coated none were ED and only 11 were proven to be homozygous for the deletion that is thought to be responsible for recessive black. A smaller number of sheep were tested for ASIP mRNA expression revealing that some sheep with a white genotype were actually black coated.....in other words the sheeps genotype was not responsible for the black colouration another mechanism was and one that was not ED.To my knowledge very little further work has been done on this so i have no further informatiom as to how its inherited or why it might suddenly revert to show agouti genotype in your lamb in this case but as far as providing an alternative explanation it may be one that might be out on a limb but offer an alternative to ED.