# Genetics of brown



## zyrcona (Jan 9, 2011)

A few times on this forum, discussions about brown have come up. Brown is a recessive gene that causes otherwise black dogs to express their eumelanin pigment as brown instead. What is odd about brown colours is that they should in theory follow the same genetics as the black-type colours (i.e. blue and silver and black follow a predictable genetic inheritance pattern) but in practice they do not. People sometimes get brown pups that clear like cafés from two black parents, in which case it's impossible for the pup to inherit the gene for blue, and some browns grizzle heavily despite coming from lines of dark non-grizzled blacks and end up a dirty pewter colour, whereas other browns are born a dark, bitter chocolate colour and stay this shade their entire lives.

Here's a link about the brown gene that some people may find interesting:

http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/dogbrown.html

According to this article, three different alleles have been identified for brown, which means there are six possible combinations before other genes that affect brown (such as d and the observable but unmapped V) even come into play. The article notes that pups born in a litter with variations in shade were tested and found to all have the same alleles, so the genotype apparently doesn't affect the initial intensity of the colour, but it may be that the long-term stability of the colour is affected by particular combinations, as poodles are noted as a breed that can potentially have any of the alleles.


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## lisakimberly (Oct 30, 2010)

I have been breeding browns for a bit and I will absolutely not guarantee the colour- I have been wrong too many times! I have now at least 5 kinds of browns that have matured from my foundation bitch


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