I have been reading through theses posts and i have come to two totally different answers. On one hand i read that you should not breed a yellow with a chocolate bc the pigment is too light and on the other hand i read that it doesnt matter, you could have black puppies all dependant upon the ancestry.... I have two black labs who are only just puppies now but for future reference i wanted to know...the one has a background with half yellows and the others black and the other has a background with half chocolates. Is this going to be a problem or an i just gettin all worked up over nothing??! thanks for your help!

Black is the dominant colour in Labs so if you breed black to black you will get black whatever recessive genes your dogs carry. If your dog carries a recessive yellow and you mate to a yellow you will get some yellows and some blacks. A black carrying choc mated to a choc, to me, gives the best choc's

There are some sites on the net which spell it out rather better than me.

Best wishes, John

Were you hoping to breed them togther and get chocolates?

This is a link to a website that explains it quite well. Lab Colour Genetics.

But please remember there are more important things to consider before breeding than colour. You should always ensure that the health testing has been done and good results recieved. Tests include Hip Scoreing, Eye testing and now possible elbow scoring.

Regards

Tracy

Hi,
If you breed a chocolate to a yellow, ALL of the puppies will be black.
The problem occurs with the next generation, when you may match up to get a genotype of chocolate, but with the "ee" (instead of "EE") and have a yellow with chocolate nose, lips, eye rims. In my opinion, and many others, this is mighty unattractive and frowned upon by the standard as well. You want yellows to have good black pigment. A "good" yellow is actually a BLACK dog with the "ee" alleles which affect color by inhibiting the "extension" of the black pigment up the hairshaft. Hence, only the underlying "yellow" is expressed. The "ee" does not affect nose and lip pigment.
TiaLee

i have to disagree on choc to yellow produces only black, i have a yellow bitch who was put to a choc dog and she had 4 black and 2 choc.

Chocolate mated to yellow can give chocolates, it depends on the genetic make up of the parents. i.e. A yellow carrying both black and chocolate put to a chocolate who has 2 generations of pure chocolate behind it would give an average of 50/50 black and chocolate.

A yellow carrying chocolate( but not black) put to a chocolate, which again is all chocolate breeding for 2 generations back would almost always get 100% chocolate - but these puppies would also carry yellow, so the next generation on, could see these chocolates producing yellow, especially if put to a chocolate who also carries yellow, in turn could give an average of 75% chocolate and 25% yellow. Of course averages being what they are, it would be possible to get all chocolate from this mating. especially in a small litter.

Have to add though that if you want a good chocolate colour that you use only individuals that are chocolate or black and only carry chocolate or black. :-)

Hello,
I stand corrected. Of course yellow can carry chocolate recessively! I was thinking of another breed where the "yellow" is not very common and I don't think any of them carry chocolate.
What I MEANT was, that if the yellow parent is PURE for yellow, when bred to a chocolate, ALL of the puppies will be black. This is because each puppy would receive one "E" allele from the chocolate parent (which is actually black with a modifier that changes the refraction of the color granules in the hair shaft to produce the "chocolate" that we see) which would cancel out the "e" alleles from the yellow parent(so now the puppies have full "extension" of the black pigment). Then the "B" allele from the yellow parent would cancel the recessive "b" alleles from the chocolate parent (so now the puppy has full color black instead of "b"-brown) and voila! All black puppies.
Yellow cannot "carry" black, however. Two yellows will NEVER produce black. Two chocolates will ONLY produce chocolate. Two blacks can produce any of the three colors.
I hope I am being clearer this time. I am not the best at explaining genetic concepts! Sorry!
TiaLee

Have a look here Raggetyanne they have lots of excellent illustrations demonstrating what you can expect from various genetic combinations - assuming of course the genetics of each dog are known.
http://users.tpg.com.au/choclab/cci/cci.htm.