Smiling Lamb

I actually took this from the sofa in the sitting room through the dirty window and onto the hillside where I can see the ewes and lambs. To follow on from the colour theme from yesterday the brownish lamb is off a white ewe and white tup (ram). I think it is the Shetland that is 1/4 of the breeding in the ewe that has thrown this funny coloured lamb.

For those that didn't see in my comment section I was asked why white sheep produce black lambs. Its to do with genetics and recessive genes. In sheep, a white fleece is the result of a dominant gene that actively switches colour production off - that is why most sheep are white.
This means a black fleece in most sheep is recessive, so if a white ram and a white ewe are each heterozygous (have the black and white forms of the gene for fleece colour), in about 25 per cent of cases they will produce a black lamb.
This is quite a rare occurrence though, and in most white sheep breeds only a few white sheep are heterozygous for black, so black lambs are usually much rarer than this.

I was then asked about the value of fleece and the colour. The reason that most sheep are white is that this is the most popular colour as it can easily be dyed. Therefore white fleece is more valuable. However when selling to the British Wool Marketing Board as we do there is also the type of sheep that the fleece has come from that effects value. Generally the hardy hill sheep have the coarser wool that is of very little value at all and usually is used to make carpets. Shetland sheep produce lovely soft wool that has a higher value than some.

The interesting thing that we have discovered when selling lambs through the market is that black lambs are worth less. The buyers will bid less on a pen of lambs if they have blacks in amongst the white. We have to sell the black lambs separately and even if they weigh as much or more than the whites they sell for less. My husband thinks maybe its from an old wifes tale that they don't fatten as well. I think its just a way for the buyer to pay less for perfectly good lambs!!

7c 5mph S hail rain showers in the morning a break with sunshine in the afternoon followed by heavy rain showers when out on dog walk of course!!