Genetics and color genes - Page 3

I believe this could certainly happen (bicolor bred to black producing dark black/tan) however such a breeding would be unusual - as bicolors (true bicolors) are more unusual.  Perhaps in that case the "tag" remains attached to the black/tan gene when the parent is actually a bicolor.

molly

Molly,

I was going to email you, but I might as well ask that question here. How can you differentiate a bicolor puppy from a black & tan? I have my litter out of V-Alex vom Eisenhaus and my black female. Four of the puppies are solid black with a tiny amount of white on the chest. I was a bit shocked when they were first born, since my previous black litter had no white hair anywhere. But I learned that the difference is because my previous litter was out of two solid blacks and now I have one black & tan parent. The little tiny white has already faded. So, my guess is that it will totally disappear. But one female is a black & tan. First,  I called her a bicolor because she has little tarheels, but was since then corrected that she was a blanket black & tan. So, what do you look for in a 5 or 6 week old puppy to make that determination?

She looks just like Alex :).  I say she is a bicolor.  But, it can be difficult to tell until later, when the "true bicolor" markings come in stong and true :).  Toemarks and tarheels.  Often a bicolor pup will get darker - they sometimes lose a lot of the tan on the cheeks, over the eyes, and chest, and sometimes become almost completely black except for the feet/lower legs.  Others keep their tan markings but lose the "shading" around them - making them have very distinct striking tan markings - different than the "black'tan" markings that seem to fade from tan to black a little.

All black/tan and bicolor puppies are born very similar - only sometimes a bicolor will be born solid black except for a patch of tan around the vent.  But others are born black/tan and get darker and remain bicolor.  Your pup has "smutty" feet - black/tans will also have this - but if you look closely, you can look through the "smut" on the feet and see the blacker-than-smut toemarks already there.  The lines running up the toe from each toenail - those are toemarks.  Unless they fade, your pup is a bicolor.  Also the "tarheel" behind the lower hind leg, will get blacker and more solid, while the black/tan pups will fade and become tan.  Black/tan pups will also lose their toemarks, while bicolor will keep theirs and get the distinctive "pencil line" up the toes, as I can see on your pup.  Bicolors also will not have or develop any brown around the ears or on the head other than the eyebrows and cheeks, under the throat.

molly

It is difficult when you have a dark bunch of babies we were fooled last summer with a litter from 2 black sables turn out 3 bicolor females, 2 black sables 1 gray sable. the bicolors looked like all black or just extreme double black sables and then we noticed beige coming between the toes but the tan toes kept black pencil marks. then I thought more tan would come on the faces and chest but it did not so I would call any puppy with tan markings above the feet a blk/tan and it does take until a couple of months to see tan coming in on some melanistic black and tan.

On the comment about red undercoat on black sables we have Slovak imports with a rich consisitent under colour.  As puppies these will look almost brown and black. A strong black and red saddle bred with a black sable or all black will often produce this depth in colour. 

Many years ago I read an article written in 70's by von Arlett and he discusses adding sable coats to showlines to increase pigment and health I have searched for this since and unable to find it, it included statistics for how many  sable coats were being used in Europe at that time. Love to find someone with a copy or link to this info.

Molly,

thanks. So, we just have to wait and see. Pedro is thinking about coming out to look at them, too.

Strongbond,

Arlett is a she, not a he. And here is the link to the article you are looking for: http://www.arlett.de/sables/index.html

If you want to look at some showline sables, go onto my homepage http://vomsilbersee.com  . Our titled Arlett-male has a dark red undercoat and produces it.

Chris

Had to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my beautiful bicolor Max who passed away this past January.  Best GSD I've  ever had...

Thank you, Preston.
Yes,Silbersee, the puppy looks bi-color to me. The greyish coloring of her markings now will either turn tan or red, depending on her breeding background-puppies with that sort of color don't usually keep it. And I've had that situation happen with repeat breedings: one breeding produced solid black and blk/red puppies with NO white at all, 2nd breeding of same parents produced some white spots on the chest of some pups. It's just a fluke of a thing.
GSDs are interesting, too, in that they produce varying degrees of coat colors. Some bi-colors are almost blk/tans, and some are almost blacks. So that 'marking' varies with ancestral breeding. Just like some blk/tans are borderline blk/reds, or they can be a super-washed out blk/tan where people mistakenly register them as blk/creams.
Bi-color female(SO pretty!) we produced at 5wks old

 Same bi-color girl at 10mos old. Still pretty as ever!

Preston, I'm not familiar with Ghenghis you mentioned, but it sure sounds like he could produce some lovely pigment. The richer the better to me, too. I'm not certain on strong pigmented sables current.
Pic of litter of 9 born 11/03 between the black female (both black parents) x sable male (black sire x sable dam) I mentioned earlier. These pups are very nice caliber working lines (WGR working-line-bred 4-5 on Fero plus Nick Heiligenbosch, DDR-Tino FelsenschloB, & Czech-Chuna Policia, Titus, etc.).
My F @7mos from that litter.

This table gives an excellent breakdown of the genetics of coat color. There's not to much more I can add to this, everyone else has pretty much said it all.

View the Chart: www.ehretgsd.com/GSDcolorGenes.pdf

Preston,

My father bred a black and red  American/ German bred male that was a son of Manawore to a dark female sable that was out of the Ghengis bloodline in the early 70's.The male we kept was black and red, the red was very rich like a rottie or dobies deep mahogoney. He was one of the richest looking shepherds I have ever seen. I have a litter now that is almost a duplicate in colors of the parents my father bred . The out come is almost the same . Half the litter is red/sable half is black/red. The only female is colored 90% black with very little red but it is deep red/mahoganey.

Thanks to everyone for an excellent discussion of color genes and the influence of dominant  vs. recessive color and pattern. It was very interesting and in-lightning.

Sincerely, mahon 

You're welcome; it's fun & educational to discuss things and swap experiences and learn things from other peoples' experiences. Best wishes to you, Mahon, and I bet the litter you just mentioned from decades ago sounds truly fascinating and would've been really cool to have seen.