Red to Red breeding

[sharabear]

Right, I thought I had sorted out the rules of genetics according to cockers but now I am confused.

How can a red male mated to a red female produce a black pup? I thought red was dominant over black and/or liver if both parents display the red gene?

Any help please

Jackie

[spanielcrazy]

Black is always dominant to red (or any other colour-even in partis), so even if one parent is dominant red (Rr) the other one is obviously red recessive (rr) so the black will override.

If you bred a dominant red to a dominant black or even a recessive black, you would still get black. If you bred 2 dominants reds together you would get all red. (In that case you would want to breed that generation back into black as the colour and pigmentation will start to wash out from too much red to red breeding)

Of course there is no way to know this except by what is produced over time, and even then you can sometimes be thrown a monkey wrench! 

[sharabear]

ok thanks but I'm still confused. I thought that if both parents exhibited red (i.e were lemon/gold coated) then both must be recessive (rr) and all pups they produced would be red or red parti colour when mated. The parents and offspring still carry either black or liver but it is not exhibited as the red covers it!!

Have I misunderstood the fundamentals of the cockers genetics or just a small part!!! 

Thanks

[spanielcrazy]

Not quite sure what you are asking, but a red/red mating can produce black, black and tan or liver depending on the genes the parents carry. A red to black mating can produce red or liver as well as black, and a black to black mating can produce red if both parents are black recessive (though usually the litter will be all black)

It does get quite confusing  Recessive basically means that meeting a dominant gene, the dominant one will always "win out", but on the other hand, two recessives do not produce a dominant, they only produce another recessive.