More photos from 22nd January 2009

four colours

four colours

The four colours - topaz, mink, buff and cinnamon.

Why these colours? Lolly is Havana, which means she is mink, but with ruby eyes (and probably some mysterious other things), causing her colour to be lighter and with more of a brown tinge. This means we'd write her genetic make up as aa mm Rr

Nico is cinnamon - and must be carrying ruby eyes for us to get the topaz and buff. Cinnamon is mink but with an agouti base. We know from his family history that Nico also carries black (he only has one Agouti gene, but it is dominant), so with the ruby eyes it would be written Aa mm Rr

So, as each baby gets one of each pair of genes from each parent, this allows us to have...
Topaz: Aa mm rr
Buff: aa mm rr
Mink: aa mm rr (and some are likely to carry ruby eyes - aa mm Rr - which may cause them to turn out to be havana, depending on other modifiers)
Cinnamon: Aa mm rr (some are likely to carry ruby eyes - Aa mm Rr)

Because both Lolly and Nico have mink bases (mm), all babies will have mink based colours - but a double dose of ruby eyes over-rides this to turn the coat topaz and buff. Some colours, such as Havana, sometimes don't show up until the babies have had their first moult.