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Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sugar Lips
Yes we do have sugar lips! Almost all of my lambs carry the gene, Ag, so when you see "sugar lips", white hairs around the lips of an otherwise dark colored lamb you know that lambs color will fade to a gray or almost pure white like in most of my ewe's.
The ram lamb above from Oma and the ewe lamb below from Charlee are are both what you call katmoget, with dark points on their face, legs, tail and belly. Other breeds of sheep call this marking badger pattern. They already have near white fleece on their backs. I can't tell for sure if they are pure white since their fleeces still have some coloring from the birthing. I'm not sure how they came up with this light fleece since both dam and sire have color.
Charlee, above, has the Ag gene so she is near white now but was dark like her son when she was born. I can't find the name for the white on the ram lambs face, help please. I do think the little katmoget ewe has these markings also. Both have sugar lips!
Above is a little black ram lamb, Bellas, with sugar lips and below my sweet little spotted ewe from Hattie. Her brother will stay pure black! Should the black sugar lip lambs be registered as black or gray?
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4 comments:
My understanding is that solid-colored lambs with obvious signs of Ag should be registered grey or musket, depending on base color, and that on those Ag lambs you don't usually identify the white markings since they seem to go with Ag and fade with time. I have one obvious musket lamb, but another who was born solid brown with no sugar lips or white hairs in his ears, but still looks lighter in color near the skin. I THINK he's going to show himself to be Ag with time, but I will wait to register him to be as sure as possible.
Thanks for explaining this for those of us who are not blessed with lambs of our own. :-)
In my eyes they all look sweet, "sugar lips" or not.
Heidi
That's interesting about the sugar lips. My lamb was born with them and she has a few white markings on her face but the rest of her is black. She is Gotland/Finn/25%Shetland. I am hoping she will turn silver like her Gotland daddy :)
Look at that black color!! Grow, little fleece. Grow!!!
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