What is the difference between chocolate - chocolate breeding and the practice of line breeding? How is one good and the other bad. I have read lots (conflicting information) about this and still don't understand fully. I should point out that I am a degree level scientist and teacher, the science doesn't make sense to me. That you shouldn't breed 2 chocolates because the gene pool is small, but you should line breed to prevent 'diluting' the gene pool i.e artificially make it small. Can someone please give me a definitive answer?

Looked at in one direction the entire gene pool of any breed is small. As an example if this, My Anna, on paper, is an outcross in that on a five generation pedigree there is no common dog on both sides. Go back two more generations and the first common dog occurs. By the tenth generation there are seven common dogs and by 1872 there are just four dogs!

Now look at the NATURAL spread of colours in Labradors. In 1875, to all intents and purposes the Labrador was 100% black. Black being the dominant gene that's really only to be expected. By the turn of the twentieth century yellows were appearing, although not in large numbers, partly due to the fact that as a recessive colour the perceived wisdom was that a yellow would carry all recessive ailments going. I was even told that as late as the 1970's! Black held sway for many years, partly due to the fact that the very first breed standard, issued in 1916 stated:- Colour: The colour is generally black, free from any rustiness & any white markings, except possibly a small spot on the chest. Other whole colours are permissible.

Yellows did occur at fairly regular intervals, so much so that the Yellow Labrador Retriever Club was formed and in 1925 a breed standard was issued specifically for yellows. At this point yellows really took off and by around 1945 yellows were roughly equal in numbers with blacks and chocolates forming around 1%. In the 1960/70's we almost never saw chocolates. They naturally occurred in mating which carried the gene but they were few and far between.

Of course, with the dawn of the more materialistic age rarity was equated with desirability in some quarters and people started to breed specifically for chocs. This was rather problematic because most breeders did not really understand the genetics of the thing and mated choc's in a haphazard fashion in the hope that there would be the occasional choc in the litter. Gradually people found that particular dogs, mated with choc could be reasonably certain to produce some chocs and the numbers rose to the extent that finding a chocolate dog was not anything like so hard.

By this time, because there were more chocs around people were mating chocs to chocs and producing whole litters of chocs and of course the puppy farmers were quick to catch on to the fact that if they mated a choc to a black they would on average only have half of the litter comprising of the more desirable chocs whereas if they mated choc to choc they would get the whole litter choc!

Remember, up to this point the chocolate Labrador had occurred from anywhere in the breed as a whole. Any dog carrying the gene mated to another carrying the gene. Now we are talking about breeding Choc to choc. A whole section of the gene pool has effectively been removed from the pool. Blacks carrying choc, yellows carrying choc, at a stroke they are gone! This is what I mean about a restricted gene pool. There are thousands of dogs out there who will never put there genes into the pool!

One of the reasons for line breeding is that you use it to fix traits and characteristics. Problem is, bad is fixed as well as good. Getting back to chocolates for a minute. The stats now are that around 40% are black, 40% yellow and 20% are chocolate.

Whether or not you think the available gene pool of chocolates is big enough to stand on its own feet is your decision. Whether it is desirable for a bred to split, because that would be what would happen in there was no mating between choc's and other colours is a good idea is again, your choice. Personally I don't think it would be, but that's just my thoughts.

Regards, John

Thanks for that, but I'm still not clear about the genetics. More specifically - is coat colour controlled at a single gene locus (with chocolate yellow and black alleles) or is it more complicated. My suspicion because of the range of chocolate colours and the dilution effect that it is controlled by several loci. How many chromosomes do labradors have? What genetic health problems are chocolate's actually more susceptible to? Sorry lots of questions but genetics has always fascinated me.

Should point out we have a choc-choc litter, we took advice from several breeders and were told that breeding back to black every other generation is good practice so we are planning (assuming all is well) to breed again with Jessies daughter with a black stud. We also used a very dark Chocolate stud to go with our very dark bitch again we were advised that this was a healthier pigmentation than the very pale or 'silver' labs.

Labradors, as all dogs and all members of the Canis genus have 78 chromosomes.  The three acceptable Lab colours are contolled by 2 loci.

B locus
B - black dominant
b - brown (choc) recessive

Extension  locus
E - full extention of eumelanin
e - restriction, only pheaomelanin forms (yellow)

There are many other colour loci, obviously Labs have all of these but usually carry the wild type alleles so not important in Lab colour formation.  Except K locus where K (black) is usual, Kbr (brindle) occasionally shows up and recessive k, also occasional, which is the wild type and allows A locus pattern to form - usually sable or tanpoint in Labs.  Dilute also occurs so any of these colours in their dilution could show up eg lilac and brindle tanpoint.

Other rare colours could be due to C locus producing v pale pigment and there is also a pattern which sometimes occurs in yellows.  ee is a particularly unstable mutation and often mutates back to to E (wild type) in embryonic development.  To see this in a low occurrence look through the coat of any ee dog for black hairs - yellow lab, Golden, red Setter, Cocker, White Poodle, Westie etc.  This produces patches of black (or brown), which are somatic mutations, the so called mosaic pattern.

There is  a v good website which explains Lab colours much better than this but sorry I'm in a  terrible rush, wish I had more time to reply on the other points you have raised :-0

Julie

http://www.labbies.com/genetics2.htm

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. Raises as many questions as it answers! Would the same discussions that are happening now about Chocolates have been going on about yellows 100 yrs ago?

I guess they may have but brown (choc) does seem to attract more attention than other recessive colours and not just in Labs.... I'm curious to know why.  I know of no scientific data to support this and the belief that breeding brown x brown reduces pigment has no genetic basis.  A chocolate Lab is genotype bb whether its parents are both blacks (Bb x Bb) or both Choc (bb x bb).  You can't get any more chocolate than bb.

Breeds that mate brown to brown regularly include English Springer Spaniels..... and Irish Water Spaniels, which are all bb brown, the same as choc Labs.  They still have good pigment after countless generations.

The genes for pigment fading are totally separate and can be carried by any colour, you just don't see their effect in blacks and yellows because the dog needs to be choc to show them. 

I'm not advocating breeding choc to choc purely on the basis of colour but if you wanted to improve pigment this would be the way to do it.  By choosing well pigmented chocs you are reducing the chances of passing on the fading genes that could be carried by a black and expressed in its choc offspring.

Julie

I'm feeling reassured that I've not been irresponsible. We chose to breed because we were told Jessie was a very good choc lab and she has an excellent temperament and is quite intelligent (for a chocolate - maybe opening a whole new can of worms with that). It isn't just us who thought that, she was originally owned by a kennel who bought her to breed with (choc-choc planned), we got her at 7 months because the kennels realised she wasn't happy in the kennel environment and wanted her to be with a family (lucky for us). Jessie was part trained as a gundog when we got her and we chose the stud for his similar attributes. We also wanted to keep a puppy, the advice on keeping a puppy varies as well - some people seem to suggest its a good reason for breeding, others a bad reason.

There is so much conflicting information that I was beginning to seriously doubt the advice we had been given before.

In fact by going back to a black dog for every other generation you are doing exactly as I've been advocating, increasing the size of the gene pool. Even if the dog does not carry chocolate and the puppies are black they should carry the chocolate gene and by going back to a choc stud next time you should get the chocolate puppy again. All of this would widen and strengthen the chocolate gene pool. To my mind the responsible way to go.

Regards, John

Thats what I thought, and had been advised. It seemed sensible - but on a different website I put forward the same sort of theory and was 'shot down'. Somehow chocolate - chocolate was always wrong and responsible breeders NEVER did that. I'm not looking at breeding professionally but I do want to do whats right for the breed in my small way.

Thanks for the info and support.

I would never list breeding GOOD specimens of a breed as unethical. I would call REPEATED matings of a minority colour unwise for the reasons I've stated on here so many times. Artificially and unnecessarily reducing the size of the gene pool cannot be in the interests of any breed. As I said, going back out to another colour will bring fresh genes into the pool. Many people who regularly line bred will line for two generations then go outside their lines for the third generation to bring fresh genes in.

Some people on here seem to think I'm anti Chocolate Labradors. I'm not. What I am is anti irresponsible breeding, and let's face it, there is plenty of that going on in the breed! And I'm anti the  "Sticking heads in sand" mentality, that is not in the long term interests of either the colour or for that matter, the breed!

Regards, John

To be fair labsandcats, you were never shot down.  The advice given to the original poster looking for a chocolate lab pup was that if it was a chocolate to chocolate mating to find out the colour of grandparents and great grandparents, and avoid the breeder if continually breeding chocolates.  This you seemed to object to.  Whether or not it was because you were advertising a litter from a choc to choc mating or not I do not know.  No one doubted your scientific background or knowledge regarding colour genetics.
Concerns were raised by a link you provided to the website of a chocolate lab breeder where acknowledgement was given to the loss of pigment and the breeder justified it by stating
<<But if you want a family pet and are not going for the show ring, these "faults" are in the eye of the beholder.>>
Further concerns were raised (and confusion) when you yourself went on to state:
<<Out crossing or cross breeding refers generally to crossing outside the breed not chocolate to black, eg cocker/labrador or labradoodle (though of course they aren't first generation outcrosses either).>>
In addition, the fact that you asked what Sh Ch stood for in a pedigree on this board only last week, raises concerns about the level of research into your own girls background before you bred her, and your query regarding whether you could have another litter from your girl, inspite of your vet saying she should not be bred from does raise questions.  Of course, it is possible to reach the wrong conclusion, but it raise concerns nevertheless particularly when your research into colour genetics appeared to outweigh everything else.

There's no escape is there.

The terminology was a UK/US problem my initial research was based on US practice (I think I stated that on the other forum). The Sh CH question was put on by my wife when someone asked her and she couldn't get hold of me to tell her. I objected to the repeated suggestion that people who breed chocolate to chocolate where irresponsible and the flaws in the science that was being used to justify the comments. The question about the vets advice was because we have concerns about the ethics of the vet bearing in mind we were charged £1000 for the caesarean we weren't sure we could trust the advice. We will get a second opinion in a couple of years but our feeling is the caesarean was uneccessary, a vet who used to work at that practice has since informed us that they have unusual pricing policies and have been known to conduct uneccessary operations. We are currently looking into the complaints procedure and need the info/opinions of others for that.

You can see from my posts in this site that I do intend to breed back to black every other generation and (always have) I was simply putting forward another point of view which apparently is not allowed. The people who we have agreed to sell our pups to are very happy with the help and advice they are getting so I'll take that as a better indicator of what we are doing.

It is easy to jump to the wrong conclusions isn't it.

I don't mean to cause any offence here lablover but I have wasted enough of my time in discussions with you. You are entitled to your opinions and I respect that, I just have no interest in them anymore.

labsandcats,

What is the main objective of your breeding programme?

I greatly doubt that mating chocolate to chocolate has any greater risk of producing poor colour pups than mating to a black, providing you are using parents that have good colouring (and whose own parents are also of good colour).

However, I do believe that by repeatedly mating chocolate to chocolate you reduce the chances of improving other (arguably much more important) elements of your dog. I also feel that just alternating matings between chocolate and black is a bit simplistic.

I'll use gundog work as an example (as that is my field) .

Of the 50 or so labs that qualified for the recent retriever championship the majority would be black, a few yellow, and on the basis of current performance no chocolates come close. I dont believe that this is anything inherent to the colour, just the fact that the lines that produce the best working dog dont carry chocolate.

Working performance (or show success) is far more challenging to breed for than colour, so if I wanted to breed good working chocolates, I would want to get as much of the best working lines into my own line as possible, with just enough chocolate blood to keep the chocolate colour without diluting the working blood. Thus in the earlier generations, I would want to mate to the best working dogs as often as possible (which would most likely be black). However, given some success, in later generations, as long as others worked on the same basis, you would be able to mate chocolate to chocolate more frequently. In the earlier generations I would expect to produce whole litters of black pups, but feel that this would pay ample dividend for the quality of each successive generation.

This is essentially what has happened with yellow labs, to the extent that working blacks and yellows have the same breeding - there is no distinct 'yellow line'. Whilst the majority of FTCh labs are black - many carry the yellow gene and quality working litters can include both blacks and yellows. In my opinion, that is the position the chcocolate fans should aspire to to.

Arr. You would be doing similar to me Havoc except in my case It would be like the road directions,

"Oh yes, but if I wanted to go there I would not start from here!"

The thing is, I don't think Labsandcats is breeding with work in mind. The trouble is, if you breed choc to black without a choc gene, because the puppy would inherit a set of genes from both sire and dam, on average only half of the resultant puppies would contain the choc gene. The further down the road of pup to black the greater the risk of loosing the choc gene completely from your line. I'm not sure at what age you can DNA test for colour gene so dont know if it would be possible to have the answer before the puppies went to there new homes.

It would be quite easy to find show dogs carrying the gene but few if any working people would be bothered with testing for this.

Regards, John

We aren't breeding working dogs but do take on board the ideas Havoc - thanks. It would be good to think that by breeding properly we could help improve the chocolate lines. The actual colour of the pups is not important to me at all it was a debate that I got dragged into or more to the point annoyed about. We chose the chocolate stud because he was the best option for us.

I'd say primarily we are breeding family pets or for show but would have no objection to our pups being used as gun dogs. Our bitch was being gundog trained (but not showing masses of promise!) and has some gundogs in her dams lines so there is an option there I guess.

When we decided to get a lab I wanted a black and my wife wanted yellow. Since we couldn't agree we went for chocolate, (that is a gross oversimplification of the decision making process but it was what made us see choc as an alternative).  Now we are both fans.

Thanks again, I really appreciate the time going into replies and the fact I'm not being preached at.

My approach for show dogs would be much the same. However, I feel that show-bred chocolates are a bit further on than the working variety. I understand that there are more really good stud dogs that carry chocolate, as well as some succesful dogs that are themselves chocolate.

My primary focus would be to pick the best stud availaable. A secondary condideration would be to bring dogs into the line that carry a chocolate gene (if it was chocolates I was after).

I'm convinced that if sufficient breeders took this approach (rather than just focussing on breeding chocolate pups because they are easier to sell and attract a higher price) the standard of chocolates would improve considerably. I'm sure that chocolates bred in this way, could by mated together which much greater success, because they would still contain the most successful bloodlines.

>>The trouble is, if you breed choc to black without a choc gene, because the puppy would inherit a set of genes from both sire and dam, on average only half of the resultant puppies would contain the choc gene>>

No need to DNA test for this, they'd all be black carrying choc (Bb).  Yellow also possible but they too would be Bb.

"Thanks again, I really appreciate the time going into replies and the fact I'm not being preached at. "

Hey ..... we've been good posters this time - gold stars for John & Havoc :D :D :D

Margot

Anyone who wants to breed RESPONSIBLY will get my support Margot. :)

Regards, John

They were! It's well documented that in the 1920's Mrs Wormald of Knaith kennels took a yellow dog into the ring at Crufts and the judge went over to her and told her she was in the wrong ring! That Golden Retrievers were in the next ring! I have to add though that in those days most breeding was done by big kennels. Hobby breeders, and more particulaly puppy farmers were not around.

Regards, John