Saturday

Is your Black Labrador Confused As A Mongrel or Silver Factored?

Let’s say you have gray hair and people around you just assume that you are older when the fact is you are just 20 to 30 years of age. One might think you have some type of deficiency or medical condition. The real reason is your genetics determined what color hair you would have in your life.

The same is with a Black Labrador Retriever. The breed that is naturally silver factored that isn’t quite black is assumed that it could still be a purebred, but that’s false. The standard for Black Labradors states that the colors of the coat are yellow, black, and chocolate color. If there were any other combination they would be disqualified as a purebred. If the Black Labrador has a tiny white spot on it, it would be ok but not desired as a purebred breed. Even if the Labrador were silver factored, it still must meet the standard in order to be a purebred.

Regardless if the black Labrador retriever is silver factored or otherwise just like genetics plays a prime role in humans it plays a prime role in black Labrador Retrievers as well. Genetics works the same in that each dog will receive two genes as humans do, one from the mother and one from the father. There are two types of genes called dominant and recessive. Genetics will determine the hair color in humans as well as the determination of the coat color in black Labrador retrievers. A human may have brown, black, blonde, or red hair and the Labrador retriever actually only has two colors which are black and chocolate even though at times we see yellow as well.

There are 5 certain facts to consider when thinking about the black Labrador retrievers:

The dominant gene in a Labrador retriever will always determine the coat color. It does not matter if anything else is present, because this fact never changes. Let’s say the dominant black gene is called BG. If BG were present then the coat color would be pre-determined to be black.
Let’s say the recessive chocolate gene, which we will call bg, is present. The only way bg will produce a coat that is chocolate colored is if BG is not present. That’s it; there are no more choices. There really is no gene to account for yellow, silver, or other colors that may appear. If the Labrador is silver or other color factored, that goes again the makeup of the Labrador genetics.

There are two more genes besides the black and chocolate genes. These two will determine the darkness of the coat.

Some Labradors are able to express the darkness on their coat due to the other genes.

Some Labradors do not have the ability to show the dark coat. It all depends on the genes that the dog has. If certain genes appear and others do not show up then the dog will be yellow.

There really is no way that silver factored Labrador retrievers can exist with the genes mentions above. There really is no data as of 2007, which found any type of silver gene in a black Labrador retriever.

It has have been noted, that a silver factored dog may actually be a light yellow or chocolate shade Labrador. It is thought that due to the silver shade of a Weimaraner that the silver factored Labrador may be a mixed breed of the Weimaraner and Labrador.

In the standards of the purebred Labradors the AKC only recognizes the silver Labradors as being chocolate and has rejected them due to not meeting the standards for the chocolate Labradors.

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