Sorry that my first post is a cry for help.

I have a puppy, Mum is blue merle. Dad is red tri.
Lovely chunky male merle puppy, but base colour is the pinkish fawn of a red merle and the patches are absolute jet black!! I am baffled, it doesn't appear to be red merle or blue merle. Not tri as that would give the eyebrow patches etc and they are not present.
Has anyone any suggestions as to what he might be, as I have no idea what to register him as "Merle" on its own doesn't seem to be an option unfortunately lol

I have a couple of pictures of him on my website but don't know if I'm allowed to put a link on here

Can you PM me a link? I'm not an expert on BC colours but have 30 yrs experience of all small animal species coat colours :)

Had a Look from your website link....it is really hard to tell his colour from the photo...he looks like a blue merle from it....but he is a lovely wee thing...:-)

Cheers
J

I'd say Red/Chocolate/Liver Merle the patches on merles are the solid colour so black or Brown.

If the one parent is a Brown Tri and the other Blue merle then ti has the colour of one Brown, and the merle pattern from the other.

There is a facility to change a pups colour at a later date on the registration if necessary, and I think it doesn't cost anything.

No I'm tentivaly going to disagree with Barbara and say puppy will be blue merle as the patches are black  and the muddy colour to the merling may well clear somewhat as the coat changes however would like to see more photos in a couple of weeks in natural lighting.

Having bred blue merle shelties and been around quite a blue merle rough collie litters. I would agree with satincollie that she looks like a blue merle and that in time the colour will clear, but difficult to see in a photo.x

Been a long time since I'v3 been near merles but looks like a blue to me, although the colour is not very clear on the photo.

He definitely looks like a blue merle to me ;-)

Yep with camera settings tending to go to the red side the caste to pictures may be camera and like you say,a dn the pup will be blue as I would expect the patches to be brown for Red Merle, but then the brown pups look very dark in those photos.

It couldn't be Lilac with Blue and Brown in the mix could it, I had that with my Rabbits when I used a black doe with blue background mated to chocolate????

I don't know whether it would be possible with that pairing (probably not) but for future reference, sable merles can look like you describe. They will have a brownish tan background colour with darker (often black if the sabling is heavy) merle patches.

But I agree that he is most likely to be blue merle.

Erm I am assumming you mean shaded sable and heavy shading Cutewolf. As sable itself can mask the merling making it difficult to tell they are merle.

Thanks for all your replies.
For those who have looked at the pictures, I have just added new ones with better colour clarity and have added a couple of the two merles together to give a colour comparison.
Shame that I can't keep another boy as I would like to see how he grows up. I will just have to be very careful to find an owner who will keep me updated

Well they look the same colour in those.

Yeah looks the same colour as the other one to me on the latest photo's.

No one definitely has brown patches and the other black it will still need more time for the merling to clear.

It's the base colour I was talking about not the patches.

Cannot a merle have black or Brown patches in the same way some brown dogs have black pigment and some brown?

Unfortunately different animal species do have slightly different colour inheritance, and I have never gone too deeply into that of dogs with my current breed only coming in grey with wolf pattern and dark mask and ears.

Cannot a merle have black or Brown patches
In Roughs, sable to merle mating is generally frowned upon (although some will do it!) because the blue in the merles produced will have a brownish tinge and not be desired clear blue.  The black merling in these dogs tends to be dark grey or brownish rather than black.  The sables produced in these litters will be a muddy brown rather than the desired rich sable.
We don't have red tris like this male, just black tris, so I wouldn't know how these pups will mature.

Put simply the patches are the base colour though and  the merling is where the merle gene has acted upon the base colour.

So what makes that male a red tri as I can't see a third colour to make it tri?  It doesn't have the typical tan Collie markings. 
We don't have that sort of colour in Roughs but to me it looks more like a rich sable? 

It isnt showing up on the picture of him very well but he does have tan markings that would be easier to see from a profile shot
If you look at the dog under boys it is more obvious.

I would say he's most likely a blue merle, based on the black patches, but I'd love to see what colour he grows into.

I think Merle is a very odd gene anyway. My own blue merle was the product of a blue merle father and a blue (slate/grey) mother. He's blue merle with very definite black patches apart from 1 large and 2 small patches that are actually blue not black!

Thanks :)
Our tan markings would be cheeks, eyebrows, tops of legs etc, as here http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/services/public/picl/display.aspx?id=a0171a90-b3c2-4878-b162-d42a653a2c84
Any reddishness (is that a word?) on a tri would be a fault.  The black must be very black and the blue must be blue and not grey.
Interesting learning. :)

PS  I'm interested to understand why he is red tri and not red sable?? :)

The father of the pups doesn't have huge amounts of tan, but he has small cheek patches, eyebrows and his hind legs have tan. So he is definitely red tri rather than just red. The 3 red pups don't have any tan but I think that both parents have to carry the tri gene for it to be visible, so Sapphire obviously hasn't got it.

I have never seen a sable BC but doesn't that involve the individual hairs being shaded, rather than red down their entire length?

> PS  I'm interested to understand why he is red tri and not red sable?? :-)

Sable is a shaded pattern, tri is self coloured apart from the tan and white.

I have never seen a sable BC but doesn't that involve the individual hairs being shaded, rather than red down their entire length?
Interesting the difference isn't it?
In Roughs sable can be any brown colour from a clear bright golden sable, to a dark mahogany sable.  You then (rarely these days) can get a shaded sable, which is what you're thinking of, where the ends of the hairs are darker than the rest.  I can't enlarge the Kennel Club link that I posted before. :(

This is a sable boy.  He has darker shading around his collar because one of his Grandmother's was a tri.
http://www.hanvale.com/  If you click the 'History' page, you'll see bright golden sable bitches. :)

he is beautiful :-)

He's Dougal!! :)

Well with BC's its complicated further as you can have black shaded sables, blue shaded sables, chocolate or red shaded sables and Lilac shaded sables.Then introduce the Aussie red BC and it makes for some colour debates :-D

Suddenly just dawned on me but what colour is his nose and his eye rims.

Eye rims are black and his nose is pink at the moment with black freckles - I'm hoping that it might be like the noses on red merles and gradually come right !!

Then I'm most definitely sticking with blue merle.
My own blue merle bitches nose didn't fully fill in until she was about 4 years old.

ditto with black pigment it's going to be blue not red/brown merle.