Can anybody shed any light on whether roan puppies are born roan or if they are born white with solid blocks of colour and then the roan comes through?! Hope this makes sense! Thank you

They are born white with solid patches and the roaning developes. HTH

Born white with solid patches, if blue roan 'normally' pads of the feet will be black and black nose, or black & white have pink pads and pink nose.....but light blue roan can be very confusing.....lol.

the way to tel if you have roan or parti colours is with the nail, if they are to be roan they have dark nails, if they are to be parti coloured they have white nails

Roan IS parti-colour????

no roan is roan ie, orange roan,  particolour is '..... and white' ie orange and white

Parti-colour is any colour other than solid.....ie. roan or & white

Page 3 on the Cocker Spaniel Club explains it well. :)
http://www.thecockerspanielclub.co.uk/colours3.htm

Thanks for the helpful replies, great help!

Following on from this, can anyone perhaps shed any light on 2 otherwise identical gold coloured puppies, one having well pigmented dark almost black nose and pads and the other having pink nose and pads?  Does it just mean although the same at the moment, one will be darker than the other at maturity?  I've tried googling to no avail!

Hi Molezak

If the B-locus is 'B', the coat will be black UNLESS the dog is also 'ee' where the coat will be red.

If the B-locus is 'bb', the nose and coat will be brown UNLESS the dog is 'ee' where the dog will be red with a brown nose and pads.

Chris

Cockers sound very complicated.

:-)  Yes the colour genetics can be complicated, simply due to the wide variety of coat colour combinations found in the breed.

I can barely cope with the 4 colours in my breed, or really 2 as I'm only into partis not solids personally. I have a lot of friends on an American cocker forum and the genetics completely blow my mind!!

As Chris said..... One (the darker) is a black-based red.... the other is most likely a liver/choc-based red hence the pink nose etc.

Okay thank you.  That's interesting and makes sense.  I think we're going to try and explore the colour genetics further although that might be easier said than done by the looks of it!