This bulletin about the inheritance of red coat colour in Speckle Park has been prepared for two reasons.
Breeders need to understand how the red coat colour is inherited so as to make the best breeding choices for the sake of their financial success and the greatest satisfaction of their customers. A case in point is the making and selling of embryos. Customers are not happy when the embryos they bought for domestic use or for export with the accompanying expense of purchase, shipping and implantation produce red ET calves of any pattern. All the more so since this could have been easily avoided as described below.
The Inheritance of the Red Colour
With Speckle Park it is best and easiest to think of the “colour pattern” of any animal has consisting of two parts, namely, a colour and a pattern. The patterns (speckled, leopard, pointed white and solid) are inherited independently of the colour (black and red). The colours and the patterns are inherited independently of each other from different genes. The colours are the product of one set of genes and the patterns are the product of another set of genes. Hence black coloured Speckle Park can occur with any of the four patterns and red coloured Speckle Park also occur as red speckled, red leopard, red pointed white and solid red. White is not considered a colour but part of the pattern.
The inheritance of the black colour and the red colour in Speckle Park is the same as in any other breed of cattle that has some black and some red individuals. Here is the explanation.