Athro, Limited Biology Genetics Shetland Sheepdogs

So let's say you are a Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie) breeder and you have a Shetland Sheepdog that you want to breed. You know what the coat color of your Shetland Sheepdog looks like (the phenotype), but you aren't sure what the underlying genotype is. You want to pick the right mate for your Shetland Sheepdog (to, for example, avoid getting deaf and blind double merle puppies).

Again, we will pretend that two genes explain the inheritance of Shetland Sheepdog coat color. These two genes are the gene for sable coat (with alleles for Sable , Tricolor [Black with tan points], and Bicolor [black without tan points]), and the merling gene. This ignores the gene for the extent of white in the coat, other less important genes, and a range of poorly known genes and complexities.

The basic method for figuring out what genes an individual carries are considering what its parents were, and making select crosses with other individuals of known genotype. This page lets you figure out a Sheltie's genes by making crosses with other shelties. Making test crosses like this is very easy when you are looking at peas or fruit flies, but raising puppies is a whole other story, so here you can try it electronically without all the worries of a responsible breeder.

That Shetland Sheepdog has what genes?

1) First, press begin to generate a Sheltie: 2) Then pick a mate for your Sheltie.   Your sheltie:   Coat Color of Mate: Golden Sable Shaded Sable Tricolor Bicolor Blue Merle Bi Blue Sable Merle Double Merle 2) Next select the mates' coat color genes: Mate's Genes: Agouti Gene: tricolor-tricolor Merle Gene: merle-merle 3) Now:  press again to repeat (up to 5 times) Golden Sable Puppies: Shaded Sable Puppies: Tricolor Puppies: Bicolor Puppies: Blue Merle Puppies: Bi-Blue Puppies: Sable Merle Puppies: Double Merle Puppies: Agouti Gene: sable-sable sable-tricolor sable-bicolor tricolor-tricolor tricolor-bicolor bicolor-bicolor Merle Gene: merle-merle merle-not not-not 4) So what are your Sheltie's Genes? Select the the combinations of alleles for the Agouti and Merle gene that you think your sheltie has, based upon the results of the matings you made.

To try again with a new sheltie, press the begin button at the top of the page

Having Trouble? Take a look at how to approach this sort of genetics problem, and our description of Shetland Sheepdog coat color genes.