My male cocker spaniel is orange roan, my mums bitch is also orange roan, we have mated them and the bitch is in her 4th week of pregnancy. The males parents were blue roan(mother) and father was all golden.
The bitches parents were liver and white(father) and solid black(mother) any ideas what the pups will be, will there be mixtures or will they all be orange roan.

I hope someone has an idea what they will be.

I'd have thought the pups would most likely be orange roan with some tricolours and possibly a very dark blue roan alomost black.

Please let us know what they are.

Fiona

Best to ignore what I've just said - Jane knows a lot more than I do about Cocker Spaniels!!

Hi Malteser

Orange roan is a recessive colour & mated together, 2 orange roans will normally only ever produce orange roan (or orange & white) pups following the normal rules of inheritance. Being a recessive colour, they cannot produce the dominant black needed for blue roan puppies. Cocker colour inheritance can be quite complex as there are a number of different colour genes involved & what colours are produced in a litter depends on what genes the parents carry - so you can get a range of colours appearing in a litter if both parents carry the relevant genes for those colours. However, 2 recessives mated together should only produce that recessive colour. Well that's the theory anyway :-)

Jane

thanks for taking the time to reply to me, i will let you know what they are when they come.
thanks again.