[VSS]

Interestingly I have a brown Ryeland ram whose lambs are always white, he is bred with Charollais, Welsh mules and cross breeds.  The lambs are occasionally born with a few brown spots but these disappear once they grow.

Colour in Ryelands is recessive, so the brown fleece is only expressed if a colour gene is inherited from both parents. Your white  lambs will be getting a coloured gene from their father, but not from their mothers.

[Remy]

Colour in Ryelands is recessive, so the brown fleece is only expressed if a colour gene is inherited from both parents. Your white  lambs will be getting a coloured gene from their father, but not from their mothers.

I have no idea about genetics but find it fascinating!  So I take it that the colour in Zwartbles is dominant - does that mean a purebred ram will always breed coloured lambs?

[Blacksheep]

Hi Remy, yes your Zwartbles ram will have brown offspring with a white ewe, these offspring in turn if put to a white ram will have 50% white lambs and 50% black/brown lambs! The first cross tends to be all brown with the white Z markings, sometimes some snow flakes on their heads. We keep one or two crossbred ewes in our flock and they go back to a Zwartbles tup, their lambs can be all black or have the Z markings, we had 2 3/4bred twin ewe lambs born this April with perfect Z markings! 
ps for the OP these 2 ewe lambs are for sale and very striking with friendly natures!

[Remy]

Hmm, will be interesting to see what Zwartbles x lambs will produce with my brown Ryeland ram, and also purebreds!  The Ryeland has produced some really good quality meaty lambs, so given that the Zwartbles is a large meaty sheep I may get some good commercial stock - although, it's the bias against brown sheep I'm up against at market ..    , still a rarity!

[Blacksheep]

Hi Remy, lambing always interesting with coloured breeds! Hopefully you should get some nice purebred lambs, we kept a triplet brother to your ram and used him last year on a couple of ewe lambs and have been very pleased with his 4 nicely marked offspring, he has been in with a lot more ewes this time! Always interesting to see how the crossbreds turn out too.

Which market to your take your lambs to Remy?  I spoke to one farmer who breeds commercially and bought a purebred tup from us a few years ago, she uses him on her texel ewes, so first cross are all brown and then puts a texel to those ewes, who go to have 50% black and 50% white lambs, when she took the first group to Shrewsbury market they said it would be better to put the black lambs in a seperate pen rather than sell them mixed in a pen. She actually got £10/head more the pen of black lambs compared to the white lambs, all 3/4 texel 1/4 zwartbles!

Sorry OP going a bit off topic, I hope you have managed to source a nice brown ewe for your wife.

[firemansam]

Thanks for all the replies.
I hvave enquired about an ad on preloved for some dorper x southdowns, they have the southdown fleece and wooly face buty a nice chocolate colour.

[lachlanandmarcus]

Certainly with Shetlands, white 'covers' all other colour combinations.
[/quote
Im not sure about that....:-)
Sheila Shetland sheep with her twins Handsome and Gretel. Sheila is all white tho she does have a couple of black eyes, does that make a difference? Tup was moorit.

 

[Tudful Tamworths]

Another option would be Balwens. Small, hardy, and easy to handle.
 

[jaykay]

LM, the black eyes are the difference. It means she's got the 'spotted' genes and it seems as though the tup had one, which was hidden by his 'solid coat colour' gene.

What I know of Shetland genetics is that there are three 'places' for genes. Place 1 can have in it these genes, roughly in order of dominance - ie if you've got one higher up the list it'll cover over one lower down: white, grey, katmoget/gulmoget, other (non-agouti officially). The next place has genes for either black or brown - black is dominant. And the next place has genes for spotted or whole coat, whole coat is dominant.

So your white ewe's genes, despite her looking white, are probably: 2 x  other, black and (black or brown) 2 x spotted. It's just that the black has been restricted to round her eyes, by the spotted gene.

And the tup will have been: 2 x other,  2 x brown, whole coat + spotted

So you've got lambs who are 2 x other, black + brown, 2 x spotted.

Hence their seriously cute socks and crowns 

Mind you, I've got a ewe whose lambs don't fit the above - it's never as simple as it seems with genetics!

[Remy]

Which market to your take your lambs to Remy?   She actually got £10/head more the pen of black lambs compared to the white lambs, all 3/4 texel 1/4 zwartbles!

Sorry OP going a bit off topic, I hope you have managed to source a nice brown ewe for your wife.

I've just realised who you are now, lol  .  Yes Shrewsbury, well that will be interesting then, I'll keep you posted     BTW Tas is a fence jumper and has had to be confined to a field with a thick hedge as well as stock fencing 

[Blacksheep]

Yes really surprising re the black lambs, from memory they were all at a heavy weight too, close to 50kgs I think, so keep thinking we should take our last group of heavy boys up to Shrewsbury, as they won't like them in our local market.   The lambs would obviously have had the texel conformation which is what the butchers like, but I wonder if the zwartbles blood in them stopped them going over fat at the higher weight. Interesting to see how you get on in due course.
Sorry to hear Tas has learnt to jump, sounds like he has been very keen to get at the ewes?  Hope he settles down once he is back in with the tups and the ewes are all settled, unfortunately they don't forget once they have learnt to jump, we have had a couple learn to jump hurdle gates but not stock fences fortunately.  His brother has a super temperament, a really softy, I hope Tas has this too.