Black-Moorit
"Mosaic" Ram
born March 2011
at The Lavender Fleece
One of the most delightful reasons to raise Icelandic sheep has been the fun of lambing and seeing what colors and patterns of lambs are produced. For instance, I've had a white ewe, bred to a white ram, produce triplets that were black, moorit and grey - all different in pattern than their parents. In the spring of 2011 though, I was not prepared, and was totally shocked to see a ram lamb that exhibited moorit and black (along with the white spotting pattern) and additionally, solid as well as grey pattern! When he was born I remembered an article I had read years ago written by Stefan Adalsteinsson about an Icelandic ram in Iceland (1982) that he referenced and photographed in "The Journal of Heredity," Volume 75, 1984, p 83-84. At the time I had copied the photo and it was stored in my files. I've included the photo of that ram, named "Skrauti" here, above right. The main difference between my ram lamb (now named Skrauti as well), is that the Iceland born ram had a white "stripe" separating the black & white on his face.
Another difference I found with my ram is that his moorit has a "grey" gene, which means that in order for him to have the solid black hooded pattern on his neck, he also has a grey pattern infused into the brown on the left side of his neck. His black coloring is solid to the skin. He's a strikingly beautiful animal. I emailed his photo to Phil Sponenberg, who is a Professor of Pathology and Genetics at Virginia Tech University. I sent Dr. Sponenberg a photo of "Skrauti" and this is what he wrote me: "Two options come to mind, and he might be a third. One is that he is a chimera or mosaic, meaning that part of him is genetically different than the other part. Chimeras are fused embryos, mosaics are due to mutations within a single embryo,or another genetic mechanism that allows for two genetically distinct cell lines. Relatively common mosaics include calico cats, and maybe brindle cattle and brindle guinea pigs. If he's a mosaic, he'll pass it along (I'd recommend moorits). If he's a chimera he'll just be interesting and will throw lambs to one cell line or the other
(I don't know of any that produce lambs from both cell lines). The second option that I can think of is he has a moonspot. These are more common in goats, but I have seen them in sheep in South Africa. They are more obvious on hair sheep, and are usually light brown/tan spots on any background color. Arguing against this is that clean line down his face -- moonspots are usually round."
After studying the photo of the ram in Iceland that Dr. Adalsteinsson documented, I am convinced that Skrauti is also a mosaic pattern. So, to test this theory,I put him in a breeding group with several moorit ewes for spring 2012 lambs. I am hoping that he will reproduce himself in at least one lamb -- which would prove he is indeed a "mosaic" pattern. But with such a small test group to work with, it may take longer than one season to test out this theory. I also put his dam and sire back together to see if they will possibly reproduce a lamb like Skrauti, which is probably less likely than Skrauti himself producing a lamb that is mosaic. His dam is a moorit mouflon (she carries spotting, shown below) and his sire is a white ram that carries moorit and spotting. In talking with a friend this summer, while we were watching Skrauti in the field, I told her that one of the things I always liked about Icelandic sheep was that you could have all colors and patterns in one breed of sheep. Perhaps with a sheep like Skrauti, you can have all of them rolled into one sheep!
Skrauti's sire is shown above, a white ram out of Iceland ram "Noi."