Hi guys

Is there a test you can get to determine which colours your dog carrys? I ave toy poodle cocker and shih tzu.

Not thinking of breeding them all are you!? :)  You have a Newfoundland as well don't you?  Busy household :)

No Definately not, I was having a argument with a women in our shop today who was saying she know what colours her dogs were going to be. She said simply she got a test and that predicted what colours she got. I stated I was under the impression u needed to do various tests to find out which colours ie brown, white etc a dog carried. She breeds cockers shih tzu cav and others (think she's a puppy farmer to be honest) just got me thinking was I in the wrong ( and for the record I don't have my newf anymore as I split from my parter and she went to live their but I do still see every weekend)

I'm not sure as I haven't looked at the various testing websites, but surely if you took a cheek swab [per dog] and sent it off asking for them to look for X, Y, and Z colours, that might count as one test in someone's eyes?

Second thoughts - I don't have Breeder's Assistant or similar but I am fairly sure some of them may have a built-in colour genetics utility (based on colours entered in the pedigrees). Could this be what she meant? There may also be online versions or 'colour engines' that can predict.

In Labs a DNA check will tell you what colour genes dog and bitch carry and what those possible combinations would produce.  But generally there is more than one possible combination and breeders can't tell in advance how many puppies will be yellow and how many will be black, or even if they will all of one colour.  However it is possible to tell if the combination might produce a colour you hope to get, or not to get.

http://www.vetgen.com/chromagene-coat-color.html

I don't know if such testing is available for all breeds.  I think it gets more complicated when you have breeds that can be brindled, or merle or pied.  Labs are fairly simple.

Anadune will tell you the likely percentage of different colours for proposed matings for dogs and bitches on their database.

Sorry forgot to add it's for Border Collies

VetGen do colour testing for all breeds even if a certain colour isn't a regular part of the known colours listed, they can use tests from other breeds, know a few EU breeders who use it for my breed due to black and tan's appearing in some lines.

Even if you know the colours the dogs carry it's impossible to forecast what the pups will be... there are fabulous tools like anadune which will give you the percentage likelihoods, but each pup will have a percentage chance of each available colour.

eg Lexie (Black tri border collie carrying dilute and probably carrying brown) and Cody (Brown tri unlikely to have dilute) - possibilities were if Lexie carried brown - each pup would have a 50% chance of being black or brown.  If Cody carried dilute each pup would have a 25% of being dilute (then 50% of being lilac or blue).

In the event there were no dilutes but all the pups were brown!  Confirming she carries brown!

They had a second litter where the statistics were right - 50% black and 50% brown.

They were, of course, all tri-colour as both parents are tri-colour.

Brill thanks guys that really interesting