Some body clue me in on Silver Labs

bballard

bballard

Well-known member
I have been aproached by a fella who wants to donate a silver lab pup to a fundraiser dinner.

I've never heard of the color phase but the pic he showed me looks like there was either a Weimer, or a dead grass Chessie in the wood pile.

Any body have one, or hear anything about them?

Ballard
 
I googled silver labs and they claim it is a color phase like chocolates or black. they are accepted by the AKC according to silver star kennels website.
I thought they just crossed a weimereiner to lab
interesting
korey
 
They are just chocolate labs. Well sort of. They are chocolate like red and white labs are both yellow. Just a variation of the chocolate color. They usually charge a lot for them and it is a very recessive color...or so I understand.

Tim
 
Maybe I am all wrong, but last I checked, most of the so-called silver labs were traceable back to a weimeramer cross, and one kennel did get in trouble with AKC years ago over it. I guess there could be legit silver-phase chocolates, but I'd be VERY careful. If two parents are AKC registered Labs (regardless of what they look like), and the pups are proven to be from those two parents, then AKC will register them ....even if they're purple. I have bred out foxfires/fox red/reds/whatever...but they were registered under the yellow color class, as Tim J stated. There is evidently tons of debate still going on about this, and you can search up a lot of stuff on the internet...but here's one:http://www.geocities.com/silverlabs1/faqs


The bottom line is : Do you want a lab bred for hunting, personality, training, dimeanor-type traits, or do you want one line bred for a cool color?
 
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I agree with Bill, avoid breeding fads if you want a good hunting dog. Not saying they won't hunt, most labs will, but in my opinion if you get a black or yellow lab you are puting all the odds in your favor.
 
Must've had a type there. Black, yellow or brown. Black is dominant, Yellow and Brown are recessive. Black or yellow is no more "pure" than brown.

Titan
 
I dug into it a few years ago. I read what I could find and the one thing that stuck was there was a Kennel that got in trouble for crossing and calling them purebreed. This Kennel was located in US. and silver labs keep poping up in the US. Silvers have never shown up in the UK. Seemed strange to me since it seems like it should show up in both countries if its just a rare color.

Like I said it was years ago and I have not read much since them about them but if someone is trying to breed for silver labs so they can make money they dont have the interest of the breed at heart.
 
Silver labs are a cross between a chocolate lab and a weimeramer, the papers are then fudged , they are not pure labs
 
I haven't researched the silver labs but there are a lot of labs that are being selectively bred from the yellow side to be very white still labs but anytime we select just for color I think we give up sometime on the hunting side so I would be very careful as to what I would buy.
 
We had a pretty heated debate on the ukc website about silver labs several years ago. A lot of claims proved to be out right lies, no pedigrees ever posted, and the breeder threatening to whip me if ukc pulled his papers over it all (dunno if ukc ever pulled his papers, but for some odd reason the guy never showed up to whip me either way... go figger). The whole thing is shady, and thats the nicest word I can put on it.

silver registered as choclate was a loophole. white & fox red are listed in the breed standard, as possible dilutes. silver is not. the breeders hide behind choclate when they want too, and brag silver as unique when they want too. They are too many dogs that fit the breed standard, that have backgrounds above reproach, and have proven themsevles in performance events or the field itself, to ever get involved with something questionable at best. travis
 
Years ago we had a Weimreiner that looked like a Lab. He was a big blocky dog that had a lab muzzle and ears. He didn't have a tail. He was a stud and took down our female shepherd guard dog...that was a tough ass bitch and porked he. She had 9 pups and they were HUGE. Most were black with white stars on their chests and looked like Dane sized labs. He hooked up with Dad's beagle and was pulling her around with her back feet off the ground, we took her to the vet cause we figured pups from him would kill her. He was a good bird dog and probably would have made a fair duck dog had we hunted them back then. Half the time, dad would get his limit on the state ground put/take without firing a shot. One time we were hunting and I was in a thicket, Spike came over and spit out two quail and looked at me..the quail shook it off and flew off unscathed.
 
I googled silver labs and they claim it is a color phase like chocolates or black. they are accepted by the AKC according to silver star kennels website.
I thought they just crossed a weimereiner to lab
interesting
korey Sorry to be contrary but.....Not acceptable. http://www.akc.org/breeds/labrador_retriever/index.cfm Color
The Labrador Retriever coat colors are black, yellow and chocolate. Any other color or a combination of colors is a disqualification. A small white spot on the chest is permissible, but not desirable. White hairs from aging or scarring are not to be misinterpreted as brindling. Black--Blacks are all black. A black with brindle markings or a black with tan markings is a disqualification. Yellow--Yellows may range in color from fox-red to light cream, with variations in shading on the ears, back, and underparts of the dog. Chocolate--Chocolates can vary in shade from light to dark chocolate. Chocolate with brindle or tan markings is a disqualification.
Silver, Gray, White are all colors that are not acceptable "for registration purposes". However color means virtually nothing when it comes to the ability of the dog as a waterfowl dog. I know some people just want to be different. You could spend a good deal less money and get a really nice registered lab from a field pedigree. As far as the claim that they "are" acceptable......if you call it chocolate on the paperwork.... AKC ain't gonna come check it.
Click to expand...
 
I know you couldn't register pup in AKC that was out of anything but a registered Lab bred to another AKC registered lab. If you bred any AKC registered labs male and female, whatever color and some puppys came out Silver, I think you could register those pups and they would be able to run AKC field events, but would be disqualified from conformation events. If you truly did cross a Weimeraner with a lab, that wouldn't be a pure bred dog, and short of some kind of fraud, I don't see how you could get paperwork on the pups. Of course there are Labra-doodles (Labs x Poodles), Golden-doodles (Golden x Poodle) and people pay a lot of money for them even though they aren't a recognized breed.

In my experience black and yellow train the same while chocolates are a bit different, seen a lot of good chocolates though. I'm no genetics expert so I'm just repeating what I was told which is the Chocolate phase is double recessive, so you are really breeding for color perhaps at the cost of some other important traits. Those of you with great chocolates please don't flame me, I run Goldens for pete's sake. I haven't seen the original poster in a while so he might have all the answer he needed.
 

As I understand it, genetics of lab coat color are very well understood and easy to express in basic terms.

The chocolate lab phenotype happens to be the least likely of the the three breed standard colors to get, and the black phenotype is the most common.

The black gene (B) is dominant over the recessive chocolate (b) gene. Then there is the epistatic gene which can blot out the expression of black or chocolate. E is dominant and e is recessive. EE means no yellow. Ee means the dog displays black or brown but carries yellow. ee produces a yellow lab.

Black = EEBB or EeBB or EEBb or EeBb
Yellow = eeBB or eeBb or eebb
Chocolate = EEbb or Eebb

But then again, I may just not understand it because it is advanced genetics that goes beyond my basic understanding.

Charlie
 
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