Basic Genetics: Coat colours black,
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Gene group B, b, bl |
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BLACK gene BGene B is responsible that the coat colour gets black. |
Alleles |
CHOCOLATE Gen bGene b is recessive to gene B. Your cat must have either bb or bbl that its coat gets chocolate coloured. |
Possible gene combinations
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CINNAMON Gen blGene bl is recessive to gen b, and of course also to gene B. |
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Black you find in almost all breeds, Persian and Exotic,
Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest, British shorthair, Rex, Oriental, Javanese, etc.
Chocolate you'll find in Persian and Exotic, British shorthair, Rex,
Oriental (called Havanna), Javanese.
In the so called natural breeds, like Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest Cat or European
Shorthair chocolate - and consequently also lilac - is not allowed in most federations.
Cinnamon you'll find mainly in Abyssinian
(called Sorrel) and Somali, Ocicats, Rex, Oriental
and Javanese.
Now breeders have started to breed cinnamon
pointed Siamese and Balinese, too.
Which cats could be used to reach this goal ? How can you detect, if you'll ever get
chocolate kittens from your black female ?
Example 1
The easiest way - of course - is to use a chocolate female and a chocolate male. Are you
really sure only to get chocolate kittens out of this mating ? I wouldn't.
Let's have a look !
Both the chocolate female and chocolate male can be either homozygous for chocolate (bb)
or heterozygous for chocolate (bbl).
| Let's take the worst case, both are heterozygous. |
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You see, you'll get a cinnamon cat, too. Only 1 cat will be homozygous for chocolate,
2 will be heterozygous for chocolate like their parents. But you can't see this from
outside and your chance, not to keep the homozygous chocolate from the 3 chocolate kittens
is 66%. Only test mating with a cinnamon cat will help you to find out, which chocolate cat you've kept. |
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Example 2
But what to do, if you don`t have 2 chocolate cats ?
Your female is black, and you want to know if she can produce chocolate kittens, that
means if she carries chocolate (gene b).
It would be wise to mate your female with a chocolate male to find this out easier.
Otherwise, if you mate her with a black male, you propabely don't know if the stud male
carries chocolate, too.
Let's cross our female with a chocolate male. The genetic fingerprints of our female can
be either Bb (she carries chocolate) or BB (she will never produce chocolate kittens).
Note, we'll skip the fact that our female might carry cinnnamon (Bbl), this will
complicate the case unneccesarily, we will come to cinnamon later on.
| Case 1: Your female carries chocolate - her genetic fingerprints are like that: Bb |
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You see, you'll get 2 chocolate kittens out of this mating. But you can be also sure that all the black kittens carry chocolate. | |||||||||||||
| Case 2: Your female doesn't carry chocolate - her genetic finger prints are: BB |
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You'll not get chocolate kittens in the first generation, but all the kittens are chocolate carriers. You must be a bit more patient. Mostly this is a good method, if someone starts to breed chocolate and doesn't want to buy so many cats, to cross the female with a chocolate male and produce kittens, which are all carrying chocolate and to keep one kitten. Next generation this kitten mated with a chocolate male or a chocolate carrying male will produce chocolate kittens, too. | |||||||||||||
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Last modified on 99-02-24