Sheep have coats of many colours

Press, 12 October 1979, Page 18

Sheep have coats of many colours

A farmer at Pleasant Point in South Canterbury, who is studying the genetics of breeding sheep with a coloured coat or wool. Mr R. S. Lundy, believes that a report that Soviet geneticists have bred 13 types of Karakul sheep that produce wool in a variety of colours including silver, rose, gold, lilac, bronze, amber and platinum, is not made up or a leg pull.

He believes that they have been doing this for some time, but he says that a colour described by one person could be regarded as another colour by another person.

By' a coincidence Mr Lundy has written to four scientists ' in the Soviet Union this week to obtain copies of papers they have written on this subject and also photographs. Mr Lundy said that Karakul sheen were basically black in colour hut there were also tans among them and a Sur gene sometimes resulted in the tip of the fibre being white, and with the base of the fibre being tan this could give rise to other shades with the tan also

differing from light to dark to reddish.

Where a Down breed like the Suffolk, Hampshire, Dorset Down or Southdown was crossed with a white woolled sheep like the Romney or Corriedale, Mr Lundy said a wide range of colours was obtained on the legs, including a type of tan. Tire Karakul had a hairy body all over so that colour was obtained all over it.

When these colours were talked about, Mr Lundy said that he believed that it would be the lambs of the breed that were referred to. Tire Karakul is also bred in South Africa and wrnrk with the breed has also been done there.

It is understood that nhotographs of sheep seen by people attending a congress on breeding coloured sheep and using coloured wool held in Adelaide earlier in the year and attended by representatives from a number of countries showed that there can be “a fantastic variety of colours in sheep,” including rusty browns in Icelandic sheep.

A proceedings has been published of papers presented at this congress.

Dr D. F. G. Orwin, a principal scientist at the Wool Research Organisation, said that colour in wool was due to pigment and three basic types of product gave rise to the colours browm, black and red.

By manipulation of the pigment genes it might be possible to produce different shades of colour such as black, brown and silver, but he added that he did not know how such colours as rose and lilac were produced and would be interested to see these wools.

New Zealand sheep, he said, had a white dominance and also a variety of recessive black genes which could give rise to a black and white pattern in wool.

The official Soviet news agency. Tass, said that all Karakul sheep were black until the Soviet breeders achieved a programmed colouring of felts in response to the demands of fashion. The Soviet Union was now the biggest exporter of coloured Karakul wool, it said