Haemoglobin D in three rare Dutch breeds of sheep

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 α^D were 0.030, 0.082 and 0.029 in the Kempisch Heide, Veluws Heide and Mergelland breeds respectively.