The Soay Sheep Chronicles

The third in a three-part series

Part I:  our 2008 AI lambs, posted March 10, 2011

Part II:  our 2009 AI lambs, posted March 12, 2011

If you’ve been here recently, you know I  talked at length about the increased variety of coat color and pattern in British Soay sheep as a result of bringing in new genes via artificial insemination starting with the 2007-2008 lamb crop.  Last year, our 2010 lambs included several AI grandlambs and sure enough, the color fun continued.  Our light phase Mustard son (Dean) from the first year of AI served as one of our six breeding rams. I think I mentioned in the earlier color posts that as a lamb, Dean was a typical light phase Soay and he still is as an adult:

We hoped Dean would produce some pretty light phase lambs for us, and he did not disappoint.  First up, his twins out of Buttermere.

Next up, Ellerbeck x Dean twins,  another lovely light phase ewe lamb and … and …

You may be asking yourself, “wait a minute, Dean is light phase.  Where did that dark charcoal son come from?”  Well, remember his grandsire, Mustard, carries the gene for self-coloration, and we know that whatever form of “self” came over with Mustard, it expressed itself in Buckley in 2009 and then Barwick in 2010. Are these four lambs the sweetest-looking Soay you’ve ever seen? Wow.

Since I have focused so far on the contributions made by the sires, it is only fair to point out that the mother of tan Hepworth and Fouldon is a plain brown ewe with extensive white spotting — Buttermere — but she is a carrier for light phase.  And so is the mother of tan Blakeney and charcoal Barwick, a plain brown ewe (Ellerbeck) with white spotting, carrier for light phase.  Isn’t color genetics fun?

Dean kept producing interesting colors for us right through the end of lambing last year. Remember our pretty black ewe Heywood from the 2009 lamb crop, daughter of Xanthoria, a plain brown ewe, and Curtis,the dark charcoal son of  Norris?  Last year we bred Xanthoria to Dean and what should appear but another black lamb.

There’s a video of Cley the day she was born if you’re interested in seeing how totally black she was when she came out.  She has the same unusual eye “ring” we saw in Cantrall and Buckley the year before, and the same white “dot” on her lip (but this time on her right lip) that we saw in Heywood.  But Heywood is out of Norris, and Cley is out of Mustard.  What’s going on here?  Genetic diversity at work!

One of the most intriguing parts about all this new color is what role the ewes play in the transmission of colors and patterns to their offspring.  Here is another picture of Xanthoria, mother of two black ewe lambs (so far), one a granddaughter of light phase Mustard, and one a granddaughter of brown Norris:

Too bad you can’t see Xanthoria’s white belly and dark legs in this picture – typical British pattern and markings.  She was described as “very dark brown with black legs” as a lamb, so she must contribute color genetics to her black lambs.  But look back at the picture of her with Heywood.  Who knew she would throw black lambs?

Remember Keverne’s triplets from the 2009 lamb crop, the black/tan/chocolate trio? Look back at Keverne in the picture of her triplets; she also is a plain brown ewe with a white belly and white triangular eye markings.  Nonetheless, two years running she produced a light-phase lamb with eye rings, first Cantrall in 2009, and then Westerfield in 2010.  Here’s Westerfield:

Westerfield never was as “chocolatey” as Cantrall, and Westerfield’s eye rings faded as he matured, leaving him looking much more like a conventional light phase British Soay sheep.

Last year (2010 lamb crop) we also used a Norris son, Glen, as one of our breeders. His lambs are not as distinctive in color as the lambs out of Dean, but at least one of Glen’s offspring, a pretty ewe named Mattishall, shows some of the darker color we first saw in Norris’ daughter Vieva and his son Curtis, Glen’s father:

I need to circle back to something I said much earlier in this group of posts:  our Norris and Mustard progeny and grandlambs are by no means all new colors.  In fact, our last lamb in 2010 came out a textbook mouflon brown, but as you can see, her “common” coloring slows her down not one bit:

Hmm, Yarmouth’s legs look pretty dark in this picture, don’t they?  I need to get back out into the gimmers’ pasture and see how her legs and face look by now.  Maybe she has some of the darker coloring from her grandsire after all.

It’s no secret that a lot of the lambs from the AI project, both generations, remain on our farm.  What else would you expect from a geneticist?  But we have sent AI grandlambs to new homes in seven states and British Columbia (so far) and we expect these ambassadors of diversity to contribute to the important work of genetic conservation and preservation in the flock throughout North America.

With 2011 lambing set to begin this week, who knows what new color adventures await us and where they will end up?  Stay tuned.

For now …

The second in a three-part series

Part I:  our 2008 AI lambs, posted on March 10, 2011

Part III:  more new colors in our 2010 lambs, posted on March 14, 2011

Once Norris sired two uniform dark charcoal British Soay lambs in 2008, we figured that was it for new colors and patterns from the  AI project.  Wrong!  Spring 2009 brought more color surprises.

First came triplets, just like last year, this time from Keverne by Mustard.  But instead of three tan lambs (remember Mustard is light phase) or three plain brown lambs (Keverne is plain brown), out popped a black, a tan, and a chocolate, a veritable Soay rainbow!

Dora’s face shows some of the ash-grey look even though she is light phase, but it is subtle and I can’t seem to capture it on film.  Not so with Buckley and Cantrall.  There is nothing nuanced about their fleece color or their patterns.

Buckley remains nearly solid black, but he also shows a new eye marking pattern, almost like a bull’s eye around each eye.

As if Buckley’s distinctive coat coloring were not enough, when Steve up-ended him last summer to trim his hooves, we were presented with two gleaming, nearly-white balls.  Buckley no doubt was trying to say to Steve, “the better to see ewes with, my dear.”

Side note: for readers over the age of 50 or so, do you remember Buckminster Fuller and Bucky Balls?

Okay, back to business.  Milk-chocolate triplet Cantrall is neither typical mouflon nor the classic self-colored light pattern often referred to as “moorit.”  His pattern reminded us of Vieva and Curtis in 2008, but from the light phase rather than the dark phase alternative.  Cantrall’s distinguishing features from day one and as he matured were the unusual “ring” around his eyes, like Buckley’s, and a somewhat muted greyish brown fleece, as though someone rubbed his face lightly with ashes. We began to see a pattern in the new pattern.

The ash-brushed face effect showed up again more prominently in our fetching little ewe Tylesley, daughter of Borrowby x Curtis (son of Norris). We laughed every time we saw her as a lamb. She looked as though she was fixing to run away and join the circus clowns.  But Tylesley soon morphed into an elegant grey ewe with long horns in addition to her ash-grey face.

Our 2009 lambing season ended, or so we thought, with the arrival of Kiger’s conventionally-bred ram lamb on May 8, 2009. We particularly regretted that Xanthoria did not lamb, since we we were short on ewe lambs and hoped for another Curtis daughter as interesting as Tylesley.  Nearly a month later, on June 3rd, well after we had closed up shop on lambing and on the last possible day a lamb could arrive (148 days after Curtis returned to the bullpen), I sat in the kitchen with my morning coffee when my walkie-talkie crackled with Steve’s excited voice:

“Are you sitting down?”

“Yes.”

“Xanthoria lambed, looks like about 4:00 a.m.”

“Really?  Is it another ram?”

“No, it’s a ewe lamb.”

“Terrific!”

“Are you still sitting down?”

“Yes, why?”

“She’s pitch black, just like an ink well, no shades of grey this time, just black.”

Wow. Look at what Steve found that morning:

Heywood remains almost solid black to this day.  When we examined her closely as a lamb, we observed 10-20 little white hairs around her nipple buds, and we wondered whether that hint of non-self-coloration would spread. It has, and now when we up-end Heywood we find a fair amount of somewhat lighter charcoal-colored fleece on her belly and some off-white fleece around her mouth.  I cannot attach genetic significance to anything, much less these new colors and patterns, and Steve is still poring over his library of articles and musty textbooks to see if these not-quite-black Soay fall into known categories.  For now, we describe the appearance of Vieva, Curtis, and Heywood as uniform dark charcoal to reflect both the fact that they are not mouflon and they are not classically self-colored black.   In the following pictures, you will see Heywood begin to take on just a hint of lighter fleece around her mouth and elsewhere.

She remained solid black throughout her first summer and fall:

By the time she was a year old, Heywood developed her most unique feature: a small white “dot” on her lower left lip, much like her sire Curtis. Although her fleece bleached out a lot last summer, she is still solid black at the base of her fleece, other than on her back end and parts of her belly:

I have nothing profound to say about the next picture, but it is one of my favorites for showing off color variety. Heywood on the left, and on the right is light phase Arzie, twin of Dean  and daughter of Mustard:

At the conclusion of 2009 lambing, we decided to take a break from the complexities of artificial insemination and do all our breeding in fall 2009 with six of our on-site rams, including Glen (Vieva’s twin and a Norris son) and Dean (Arzie’s twin and a Mustard son). We weren’t sure we would get any more color surprises using AI sons rather than the donor rams’ sperm, but we thought we might, since we already had Tylesley from AI son Curtis. Our rams did not disappoint. For the 2010 color story, stay tuned.

For now …