Haemoglobin D in three rare Dutch breeds of sheep

Summary Electrophoretic and hybridization studies indicated that a haemoglobin found in three rare Dutch breeds of sheep was the a chain variant HbD which had hitherto only been found in three individual native Yugoslav sheep. Two phenotypes, Hb DAB and Hb DB, were detected, and the D variant was always present in lower concentrations than the normal haemoglobins. The calculated gene frequencies for αD were 0.030, 0.082 and 0.029 in the Kempisch Heide, Veluws Heide and Mergelland breeds respectively.