The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: humphreymctush on December 20, 2011, 01:20:55 pm

Title: sheep colour genetics
Post by: humphreymctush on December 20, 2011, 01:20:55 pm
Having kept coloured shetlands for years I have only just bothered to find out about colour genetics. I had no idea it was so simple or so fasinating. If I had kept records of the different lambs each ewe has had I would by now know exactly what genes they all had. As it is I will need to start the process now.
My Moorit ram is easy to work out because brown and unmarked are both recessive so I know he has homozgotes (matching pairs of the brown gene and the unmarked gene. I also know that he has a hetrazygote (not matching pair) of spotty and unspotty. Thats because he has produced spotty lambs and because spotty is recessive a lamb needs a homozygote of spotty genes (one from each parent) to be spotty.
I'm starting to get obsessed with this!
Title: Re: sheep colour genetics
Post by: kanisha on December 20, 2011, 02:55:43 pm
LOL welcome to the club ;D
Title: Re: sheep colour genetics
Post by: jaykay on December 20, 2011, 04:37:17 pm
It's good isn't it  ;D I've decided I need a spotty, brown tup  :)
Title: Re: sheep colour genetics
Post by: humphreymctush on December 20, 2011, 07:59:36 pm
I just joined the Yahoo sheep colour genetics discussion group and having asked a question and got several answers I am going to need to retract my comment about the subject being "simple".
Title: Re: sheep colour genetics
Post by: kanisha on December 20, 2011, 09:06:11 pm
Quote from: humphreymctush on December 20, 2011, 07:59:36 pm
I just joined the Yahoo sheep colour genetics discussion group and having asked a question and got several answers I am going to need to retract my comment about the subject being "simple".

LOL again yep but its like a logic puzzle the more you learn the more it pulls you in and I guarantee you will never solve it:-)
Title: Re: sheep colour genetics
Post by: wellies on December 28, 2011, 12:06:45 am
I don't know too much about sheep colour genetics but have studied and taught equine genetics and that is fascinating but can be a hugely complex topic. It is addictive when you start mapping though and it just draws you further and further into the possibilities of the resultant progeny. Good luck with it, I'm sure you will get more and more fascinated the more you look into it  ;D
Title: Re: sheep colour genetics
Post by: feldar on December 28, 2011, 10:30:37 am
Ha, you should try Budgies, when i looked into what i could get from my birds i gave myself a headache!!
My mottled yellow cock and hen produced blue and white chicks!!! :o