Coat Color of Pups?

[mo'sboxer]

IF A FAWN MALE AND A FLASHY BRINDLE FEMALE BREED WHAT COAT COLOR DO THE PUPPIES TURN OUT TO BE?

[muttersley]

Tess's dad was brindle and her Mum fawn, and the pups were brindle or brindle and white. Tess was plain brindle and we bred her with a brindle and white sire and all the puppies came out brindle and white except for two plain brindle. I think that brindle is the dominant colour.

[muttersley]

two of the puppies (Tess's) were a very pale brindle, almost red.

[Alisha Mobley]

Can get all colors...flashies and plains. Coat color can be tricky and is very hard to say what coat colors will be inherited. One thing to keep in mind is brindle is dominant of the Boxer colors. Crossing a brindle to a fawn is increasing your chances of haveing all or mostly brindle pups...but not always. Breeding 2 fawns will produce fawns only (exception of whites that may appear). A fawn Boxer can not produce a brindle just the same as a white can not produce a brindle or fawn. A brindle crossed w/ any other color can produce any color (2 brindles can produce fawns). Any breeding can produce flashies and plains unless both parents are genetically plain (some Boxers that look plain are not genetically plain therefore can produce flashies). Give up on trying to guess the out come of coat colors yet? It's not an easy task.

[JulieM]

Oh Goody! Quickie genetics lesson - my favorite

It depends on if the brindle female is heterozygous (two different genes) or homozygous (two copies of the same gene). There are two coat color genes in Boxers, brindle (B) and fawn (b). A puppy gets one coat color gene from the sire and one from the dam. Brindle is dominant to fawn - so any dog with at least one B gene will be brindle. So, the possible combination are homozygous brindle, BB, heterozygous brindle Bb, and homozygous fawn bb. A homozygous brindle-fawn (BB x bb) mating will always produce heterozygous brindles (all the pups will be Bb). A heterozygous brindle-fawn (Bb x bb) is expected to produce 50% brindle (Bb) and 50% fawn (bb). (It doesn't always work out 50/50 in every litter, but over a large number of samples this is what occurs.) Two fawns bred together will never produce a brindle.

The amount of white markings is inherited separately, and is influenced by modifiers, which makes it trickier because it's not as obvious whether a dog is a genotypically plain one (no white marking gene) or a lightly marked genotypically flashy dog.

For more information on coat colors and marking pattern inheritance, visit
http://frontpage.lightspeed.net/bixl/color.html
http://frontpage.lightspeed.net/bixl/markings.html

I do have to caution, though - if you don't know the answer to this question I'd strongly suggest you avoid the breeding, as there are many more genetic conditions that are not as harmless as coat color, which should be thoroughly understood before a breeding takes place.

[joanie]

she had seven pups altogether and i lost one which was a brindle. Lebra is brindle and semi-flashy and Zeus i fawn and white pretty flashy and she only had two brindle pups out of a litter of seven, four fawn and white and one white one so i guess maybe she isnt to dominant. But love the variety that she did have beautiful pups.

[JulieM]

Each pup gets one gene from the brindle parent, so has a 50% chance of getting the B gene and a 50% chance of getting the b gene. So in this case, because the B gene is a simple dominant, each pup has a 50% chance of being brindle, yes.

But really what I was talking about was the Punnet square, what outcome you'd expect from such a cross.

Hard to do this without the graphics, but hopefully you'll get the point.

Bb x bb - one letter from each column in a cell, one letter from each row in a cell - and you would expect 1/2 of the outcome (puppies) to be Bb and 1/2 to be bb.


.........B.......b
......________
b....| Bb | bb |
......|----|-----|
b....| Bb | bb |
......------------

In one litter, this may not be the case....but in 10 or 20 or 30 litters, it will run very close to 50/50.

[kassa]

For those whose eyes have glazed over, the
most likely scenarios for fawn puppies are:

Two fawn dogs will ONLY have fawn (or white) pups

A fawn and brindle MAY have fawn puppies if one
of the brindle's parents or grandparents is a fawn

Two brindle dogs MAY have fawn puppies if both of
them have a fawn parent or grandparent

As others have pointed out, however, you can't
actually know if a brindle will produce fawn
(if he is a BB vs. a Bb) until he has produced one.
It's entirely possible to have sired/given birth
to 15 puppies and not had a fawn even though
you're capable of it -- just like those poor people
who have 6 children of the same sex. Just a run
of luck against the odds.

[JulieM]

A fawn and brindle MAY have fawn puppies if one
of the brindle's parents or grandparents is a fawn

Couldn't this be an ancestor anywhere in the pedigree? If a heterozygous brindle is bred to another brindle, a brindle puppy could have inherited the fawn from the heterozygous brindle, (himself being a heterozygous brindle) and can pass that fawn gene along to his pups, who pass it to their pups, and so on and so on and so on (provided any brindle offspring come from a breeding with a brindle). In theory, my heterozygous brindle girl could be carrying Bang Away's fawn gene, couldn't she?

[Donna741]

We had to do a lot of study on genetics when breeding Shar-Pei because of not only coat colors, but length of coat, and genetic diseases that are inherent in the breed.

Most genetics experts I spoke to have said that yes it can be anywhere in the pedigree but the further away from the gene (bb) or (Bb) you get the less likely it will influence the breeding. You have to look at the pedigree as a whole on both sides of the potential breeding.

[JulieM]

Most genetics experts I spoke to have said that yes it can be anywhere in the pedigree but the further away from the gene (bb) or (Bb) you get the less likely it will influence the breeding. You have to look at the pedigree as a whole on both sides of the potential breeding.

OK, bear with me as it's been several years since my genetics courses.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Are they saying that because the fawn gene was inherited from an ancestor 3 (in my bitch's case) or 5 or 7 generations back, it is less likely to be passed on to the offspring? The b is still a part of my bitch's genetic makeup, regardless of where it came from, right?

[Donna741]

It is still part of her genetic makeup but it becomes less likely that she will have a fawn pup if she is bred to a BB.

If you bred her to a Bb male she would probably have at least one fawn pup but you don't have the same 50% fawn ratio that you would have if one of her parents were bb. Bred to a bb she would probably have the 50% fawn ratio.