please can anyone help i have a golden bitch i would like to breed with a chocalate dog i can not find any stud dogs in the north wales/ north west area could any one recomend a stud my bitch has a clear eyes and i i am waiting for the results of hip test from the b.v.a she is due a season in late december any help would be welcomed

Hello Guest!
I guess your girl is a Labrador, and it is good that you've had hips aand eyes tested already - the BVA will give you a sheet with the average scores for your breed, so hopefully she will be within the acceptable range.

Why don't you contact your girl's breeder for advice - hopefully she came from someone who understands the breed and would be best placed to offer advice on the correct mate for her - not every dog, be it your choice of colour or not, would be suitable, for all sorts of reasons that only someone with experience will know - so try to tap into this experience!

A word of warning- Lab breeders , I think, never recommend mating a yellow (that's the accepted name ) with a chocolate - you can get a bad mixture of colour coming out. Best , if you like chocolate, to mate with a black dog who is carrying chocolate - the colours of the puppies will be much more pleasing. Another reason to seek expert advice.

I expect others on this board will advise you on other aspects of breeding - probably with words of warning of what goes wrong!

Jo and the Casblaidd Flatcoats

Completely agree with Jo. Yellow to Chocolate is not a good idea. Unless the choc has an unusually good pigmentation you will end up with very poor pigmentation, (Pink noses and around the eyes) I must admit that I am not in favour of breeding specifically for Choc's you are reducing your available gene pool drastically but at the end of the day the choice is yours. One thing I will say though and that is please be careful. Some good puppies have come from matings of yellow to Choc but some have gone horribly wrong. Remember, yellow is a recessive!

Regards, John

Have a read of the post 'Labrador For Stud' as a lot of the advice will apply, you've taken the first responsible steps by having the Hips and Eyes tested! :)

You may want to take a look at a genetic color chart at VetGen. If I am reading the chart correctly, dependent upon the color genes that your yellow dog (supposing it has a black nose) carries and those of the chocolate dog, you could conceivably end up with a litter of entire black dogs (V x VIII), half black/half chocolate (VI x IX), half black/half yellow (VI x VIII), and quarter black/half yellow/quarter chocolate (VI x IX). If your yellow is a liver nose, the possibilities are: all chocolate (VII x VIII) and half chocolate/half yellow (VII x IX).

Like Jo though, I have always heard from Lab breeders that one shouldn't breed yellow to chocolate. Best bet is to talk to the breeder and I would also talk to someone from the Lab club who could put you in touch with someone that could talk genetics with you.