An introduction to the basic color pairing system to determine how rare French Bulldog colors come together. Watch now:
Hey everyone, Justin with BluFrenchibles here, and today we are going to have a look at how rare colors combine and how you can predict which colors will be displayed on a French bulldog litter.
But Before we get into the colors, it’s important to know how Color genes are passed from the parents. In the simplest terms, every Frenchie is made up of a 2 – part gene pairing that is responsible for anything from brain functioning to coat color, and everything in-between. Each gene is completed by receiving one copy from mom and one copy from dad. In the case of coat color, a pup will need a matching set of genes from both parents to display that color, if they only receive one copy. They are known as carriers.
You will see coating color referred to in a few different ways, but usually, it’s represented as a capital letter indicating the dog is negative for the gene and a small letter indicating the dog carries the gene. Each copy is separated by a slash.
in the case of the brown gene, two lower cases b’s, separated by a slash would indicate the dog carries two copies of the Brown gene, which means the dog is going to display the Color in its coat. in the case of two capital B’s separated by a slash,
the dog would not carry the brown genes at all and it would be impossible to produce offspring showing that color. If the dog shows a lower case b and an uppercase B in either order, that would indicate the dog carries only one copy of the gene. The brown color would not appear in its coat, but it could pass along copies of the brown gene to 50 percent of its offspring. These dogs are known as carriers.
Continuing with the example of brown, and returning to visible brown Frenchies. They are again represented as little b/little b as it carries both copies of that color gene. When it comes to reproduction, it will pass along a copy of brown to all of its offspring. If this dog is mated with another visibly brown Frenchie, every dog will be born with a complete pairing of the brown little b gene and they will all show that color.
A carrier, again represented as little b/ big B will only pass along the brown gene 50% of the time, so when paired with a visible brown dog which would be carrying two copies, you will only produce that color half of the time. If you pair two carriers together, the odds are multiplied together and would give you a 25% chance of producing a dog that has two copies of the color. Your odds of producing more carriers would be higher, but can only be guaranteed if a visible colored, 2 copy dog is involved in the breeding.
This type of two pairing system holds true across the various other Color genes, such as blue, cocoa, and cream. If a dog carries two copies of multiple colors, you’ll end up with different combinations or find one Color dominating the other. In the case of a dog with 2 copies of blue and two copies of cream, the cream gene will dominate and white is pretty well all you
will see.
In other instances, the Frenchie will produce more rare colors, such as isabella, lilac, and platinum. A lilac occurs when the dog carries 2 copies of blue, and 2 copies of cocoa. An isabella
Requires 2 copies of chocolate and 2 copies of blue and A platinum occurs when a dog carries 2 copies of cocoa, 2 copies of blue, and 2 copies of cream.
There are more subsets of these colors, but any visible change in color to Frenchies will only happen when it carries both sets of the genes.
It’s worth mentioning that the Color naming conventions may be confusing as colors will be referred to in different ways depending on your source of information. For instance, the brown gene we referenced in our examples would be known as the B-locus as it would appear on a DNA test, or chocolate, new shade chocolate, or testable chocolate in the Frenchie breeding community. The blue gene would also be better known as the dilute gene or the D-Locus. Once you understand the basics, you’ll be in a much better position to grasp the different terminology.
When we dive deeper into various pairings, you will find that some other attributes such as brindling, and merles will break away from the two gene pairing requirement and will only require one copy of a gene to create a different look all together. We look at this deeper in another video, until then, Thanks for watching, please be sure to subscribe for more awesome Frenchie videos and let us know what you think in the comments.
