Poodle breeding

[Miss cavalierking-poo]

Hello

Looking for advice from poodle owners/breeders,

If a merle poodle was to breed with a brown with a tiny amount of white on chest poodle, am I right in thinking I should be dna testing the brown poodle for the merle gene to avoid double merle gene and is the test (M-Locus) merle? That I should be using?

Thank you

 

[Hemlock]

If the dog is a true merle, then there is other blood than poodle in it. I would be very wary of breeding from such a dog because a) pups will be mongrels (nothing wrong with mongrels - I've had them all my life - but I knew their exact breeding and you won't know what else is in yours b) merle colouring brings some serious inheritable health conditions as you are clearly aware c) nobody who knows about breeding poodles is likely to allow theirs to breed with yours and the pups will be unregisterable.

If she is not a true merle but a pied poodle, pups will still be unregisterable with KC but that may not matter to you. However colour inheritance is a complex issue (or you wouldn't have asked) and you'd need to know of parents and grandparents to get a likely bearing on the pups' colours.

 

[CoCo2014]

"
Registration of dogs of merle colouring
Published on 9 January 2020 at 11:28am
The Kennel Club has announced that it will no longer accept registration applications for merle-coloured dogs in breeds where there is no documented evidence of the colour having been well established over a sustained period.

This decision has been taken by the Board following requests from a number of breeds, most recently the Poodle Breed Council, that the Kennel Club disallow applications to register merle dogs, including those imported from overseas.

As merle is not a coat colour recognised as historically occurring in Poodles as well as most other breeds, and there is a precedent of refusing registration applications in at least ten other breeds, the Kennel Club Board has agreed that it will not accept the registration of any merle dogs with immediate effect, except in those breeds where the colour is well established."
If your bitch is not a Merle any non standard puppies will be registered as non standard colours