WAITING PART 2: Possible colours of the little ones

31st January 2019 /

I know that it is not only me that is waiting for Oonah to get in heat, we are several that are waiting for that to happen. I don’t know what you are doing to get your time to go faster but for me there were some pleasant tasks I could do. One of them was to check which possible colours could Oonah’s and Chili’s puppies get. I will share my findings with you below, but first let me write a link to >>an article<< written by Caroline Coile that explains the basic genetics of saluki colours. It will help you understand things I write below. Please read it before you continue to read this post if you lack knowledge about colour genetics.

Very short explanation is that there are two loci that are important for Oonah and Chili combination and these are A locus and E locus. There are other loci as well but these are the same for all salukis, regardless of their colour, so I will leave these out.

Some colour codes’ combinations:

  • Eg/e at/at will result in grizzle saluki
  • Eg/Eg at/at will result in grizzle saluki
  • Eg/E at/at will result in grizzle saluki
  • Eg/e with at/ay or ay/ay will result in fawn or red with fringes saluki
  • Eg/E with at/ay or ay/ay will result in fawn or red with fringes saluki
  • Eg/Eg with at/ay or ay/ay will result in fawn or red with fringes saluki
  • E/e with at/ay or ay/ay will result in fawn or red with fringes saluki
  • E/E with at/ay or ay/ay will result in fawn or red with fringes saluki
  • e/e with at/at, ay/ay or at/ay will result in cream or red saluki
  • E/E or E/e together with at/at will result in black and tan saluki


Now here is what I know about our couple. The bold characters below means that I am 99% sure of them being right. Only by testing for these genes we can be 100% sure of them being there.

Let us start with what we know about Chili:

His father is red, probably e/e ay/ay
His mother is red grizzle with Eg/e, Eg/Eg or Eg/E and at/at

This actualy means that Chili is either e/e, Eg/Eg, Eg/E or Eg/e and has at/ay. If he is e/e he could also be at/at and still be red. In another words we don’t know so much about Chilis colour genes.

What about Oonah?

Her father is red, probably e/e ay/ay.
Her mother is black and tan with E/e or E/E and at/at.

This means that Oonah is either e/e or E/e and has at/ay. So we don’t know much about Oonah’s colour genes too.

However, people do say that if your dog had one black hair when puppy it is not e/e. So can you see on this picture of Oonah if there is any black hair?

Photo: Sven Elen

And to summarise it all: the good thing is that both Chili and Oonah have at least one at locus. This means that if Chili also has one Eg locus there could be grizzle puppies. In the same way, if Oonah has one E locus there could be some black and tan puppies. And if they don’t have these loci there will only be cream and red puppies.

BUT, and it is a big but, some people say that there must be one more gene, that we are not aware of today, which regulates the depth of coloration e.g. the difference between cream and dark red dogs or black and tan and black and white dogs just to give some examples. This gene could also make all puppies look cream or red even if Eg or E are present. Unfortunately there is a high possibility that Oonah and Chili carry that unknown gene.

So, as I prefer to base my assumptions on facts I sent a way Oonah’s DNA sample to Davis University of California today. Hopefully they will be able to tell me which of all E-loci she has.

But even then we will not know which colours puppies will have. So we will still need to sit tight and wait until they are born.