COAT COLOURS

There are a lot of german shepherd coat colours and patterns, each of them is explained in a 'loci'. A loci gives the dog colours, the dominant genes will always take over the recessive genes. There might even be both a recessive and a dominant gene for 1 colour (eg, black). If you cross a dominant black, with a recessive black and tan, all of the pups will be black. If you cross a recessive black with a recessive black and tan, there's 50% possibility to get either black or black and tan.

Locis:

A - Loci

I - Loci

At each locus (eg this case, the Agouti locus, or A-Loci) a dog carries two genes. It inherits one of those genes from its sire and the other from its dam. If a dog inherits an "a" (or recessive black) from each of its parents it will be a black. If it inherits an "a" from one parent, and anything else from the other parent, it will be that other "color". In other words, a dog that has an "a" and an "as" will be an "as" saddle (or black and tan). A dog with an "a" and an "aw" will be a gray (or sable). The dominance works its way up like this through the whole list. In other words:

a + a = black
a + at = bi-colour
a + as = black and tan
a + aw = sable

at + a = bi-colour
at + at = bi-colour
at + as = black and tan
at + aw = sable

as + a = black and tan
as + at = black and tan
as + as = black and tan
as + aw = sable

aw + a = sable
aw + at = sable
aw + as = sable
aw + aw = sable