The ‘Simple’ Guide to….:

Labrador Coat Colour inheritance

(Without a ‘BB’ or an ‘ee’ in sight….wink!)

This is always worth repeating as people get so baffled by it. And our breed only has THREE colours! Imagine the breeds that have half a dozen or more 

You can think of in a scientific way… all big B’s and little e’s and so on, but this makes zero sense to most people (including me who has been breeding for 21 years, but then i’m lazy like that when it comes to anything remotely ‘maths sounding’  It over complicates something which is quite simple, (once you get your head around) it, and I find to most people it helps to picture REAL dogs.

Lets go practical:

A dog AND bitch BOTH have to BE a colour or CARRY a colour to produce a puppy of that colour. So it cannot just come from one…. so for example, if you mated a chocolate and a yellow together, expecting chocolate and yellow puppies, you will be sorely disappointed in most cases as the yellow parent would have to carry chocolate to produce chocolate. And the Chocolate parent would have to carry yellow to produce any yellows. So what happens if that’s not the case? Pink? Green? Stripey?   No, the way to think of Black is as the DEFAULT colour of the breed. Therefore, this above pairing couldn’t produce chocolate…. and couldn’t produce yellow…. so all puppies will ‘default’ to being black (and the owners probably think something crazy has happened or the bitch had been got at by a black labrador, LOL LOL)

Try to dismiss from your mind the idea a yellow or chocolate ‘carry’ black. EVERY Labrador has the ability to produce black because its ‘the default gene’, so they all *carry* black as such. Therefore its just taken as read.

So:

Black Carrying no other colours mated to Black not carrying any other colours = all black puppies.

Black carrying chocolate mated to black not carrying chocolate = all black puppies.

Black carrying chocolate mated to black carrying chocolate = Black and chocolate puppies.

Black carrying chocolate but not yellow mated to black carrying yellow but not chocolate = all black puppies (think about it….).

Black carrying yellow mated to black not carrying yellow = all black puppies.

Black carrying yellow mated to black carrying yellow = black and yellow puppies.

Black carrying yellow and chocolate mated to black carrying yellow and chocolate = black, yellow and chocolate puppies.

——————–

You starting to see the pattern here?

So -:

Yellow mated to yellow = all yellow puppies.

Yellow mated to black not carrying yellow = all black puppies.

Yellow mated to black carrying yellow = black and yellow puppies.

Yellow carrying chocolate mated to black carrying yellow and chocolate = yellow, black and chocolate puppies.

—————–

Then to Chocolate:

Chocolate not carrying yellow mated to chocolate carrying yellow = all chocolate puppies.

Chocolate carrying yellow mated to chocolate carrying yellow = chocolate and yellow puppies.

Chocolate not carrying yellow mated to chocolate not carrying yellow = all chocolate puppies.

Chocolate mated to black not carrying chocolate = all black puppies.

Chocolate carrying yellow mated to black carrying yellow but not chocolate  =  Black and yellow puppies.

Chocolate mated to black carrying chocolate = chocolate and black puppies.

Chocolate carrying yellow mated to black carrying yellow and chocolate = Black, yellow and chocolate puppies.

Chocolate not carrying yellow, mated to yellow not carrying chocolate = all black puppies…..

… and there we are back at the start again 

How the colours are ‘carried’ and ‘passed on’ is a whole other topic of length but the easiest rule is, that a puppy will either BE or CARRY both of his parents own colours. So lets look at the puppy from our example pairing:

Chocolate not carrying yellow mated to yellow not carrying chocolate. So we know the puppy himself will be BLACK. But he will carry both yellow from one parent and chocolate from the other… so he will be Black carrying chocolate and yellow.

There are the odd other colour combination pairing as above but hopefully should that crop up you can now think logically and work out the colour of the offspring.

How do you KNOW if a dog carries a colour before mating – DNA testing is available, and trial matings will only really tell otherwise. Lets say a black dog is the produce of two black dogs. So you don’t have a clue from his parentage what he will carry. And lets say he has a yellow grandparent. So he *might* carry yellow passed down. The only way would be to DNA test to find out or mate him to several yellow bitches or black carrying yellow bitches and see if he can produce yellow. If he does, he carries yellow. If they don’t and all puppies over three or four litters are black then he does not carry yellow. (Simples! (sort of….) 

Diana – July 2014