Is color important regarding a retriever? I am going to say yes. Keeping in mind not everyone has the same goals when it comes to their hunting companion, I think the question should be how important is color. How important color is should be based on what you are planning to do with your dog according to my early results.

This always seems to be a highly debated topic but with the internet being overloaded with chocolate litters, silver & charcoal litters or people looking for chocolate factored ect... My interest peaked and I started down a rabbit hole. Now I am sure there are more comprehensive statistics but I took the information from the National Retriever Championship and then started on Flight A with the Master National entries. Here is what I have found so far. Buy a black male! If not then buy a black female! All joking aside the numbers so far lean in that direction.

For Flight A in the Master National there were 140 dogs. 55 Black Lab Male's(BLM) 36 Black Lab Female's (BLF) 16 Yellow Lab Male's (YLM) 14 Yellow Lab Female's (YLF) 5 Chocolate Lab Male's (CLM) 1 Chocolate Lab Female (CLF) and 13 other breeds 6 Golden Male's 5 Golden Female's 1 Chessie Male and 1 Poodle female.

Of the 55 BLM's 23 passed for 42%, 36 BLF's 16 passed 44%, 16 YLM's 7 passed 44%, 14 YLF's 7 passed 50%, 5 CLM's 1 passed 20%, 1 CLF 1 passed for 100% and 13 of the other breeds 1 golden male passed 7%. Overall pass rate for the flight was 40%. Overall pass rate for the flights ranged from 32% to 42%.

Regarding the National Retriever Championship:

116 Qualified 104 Entered 12 Qualified, but Did Not Enter 2 Scratches 104 Starters
Dogs Entered by Breed/Sex (Color)

2 – Golden Males

60 – Labrador Males (54 Black, 5 Yellow, 1 Chocolate)

40 – Labrador Females (34 Black, 6 Yellow)

Feel free to chime in. I plan to examine an additional two flights of the Master National(as time permits) as I am sure there will be some variation based on the Pro's entered in the flight. Some kennels specialize in certain things which should have some effect.

Hmm, this is a touchy subject for sure. You can have amazing Labrador retrievers in Black, Yellow and Chocolate. That is a fact. There are FC/AFC's in EACH of those colors.

Black is clearly the dominant color when it comes to competition dogs. Is this because they are better? Not really, but if you look at statistics, that would be the assumption. But, I have seen plenty of black dogs not worth a dang (and yellows and choc's not a worth a dang too.) So, you can't just say all black dogs are great. Or all yellow and choc dogs are not good.

I personally believe the reason you see the numbers like you do is that MOST people who are buying dogs at the highest level for competition choose from the best litter they can find. And naturally, most of those dogs happen to be black because as your numbers state, most of the dogs competing at the highest level, happen to be black. (yes black dogs can throw other colors but I am speaking in general). So, anyway, the more black puppies with super pedigrees being sold... skews the numbers a bit. And lot's of people ONLY want black dogs because they DO believe that they have a better chance with a black dog because of numbers similar to what you posted. But make no mistake...if the "litter of the year" produced 4 blacks and 4 yellows. They would have no problem selling any of those dogs to competition homes.

You also have a select group of people who love brown dogs and yellow dogs and golden retrievers. They will only buy the color they love and they will compete with them, and hope to have great success with them.

For the master national numbers that you posted, I don't believe the pass rate of any color is ANY indication of anything. That is just simply the pass rate. There are MASSIVE variables in the pass rate. Did a dog get a bad break in a series with a tougher flyer than the rest? Maybe a dog got all the good breaks with great wind and visibility when they were running? Maybe one of the dogs has a crappy trainer and the other dogs have great trainers? Maybe the dog SMASHED all of the tests but went out for breaking on honor or something silly? (yes, this is important but has nothing to do with color).

So, long story short, I think there are more black puppies going to competitive homes than other colors but you can have a wonderfully talented dog in any of the three colors. Pick the best breeding you can find and grab a puppy.

I too believe there are too many variables to isolate color but I just thought it was a fun topic to research. I am a proud owner of a yellow male but he is the loner in my kennel. The rest are black on black except one black female that is yellow factored.

However just because it is hard to isolate doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered when buying or breeding a dog.

Regarding the pass rate for the color. I think once I get the other flights complete I have a feeling they will even out and be close to the average for all the flights. Which in the end would allow for the variables you mentioned. Bad bird, breaking ect...

According to your own stats you should get a Yellow Female then Yellow male....
Black is the dominate gene so there will always be more. I have had all three colors, english and Field, they all have had very different personalities. My current Yellow has the highest drive. My retired black was the smartest and made a great house dog, but wasn't great in a field.

But I think Yellow Males are the prettiest.
"Camo"

Looks like the Chocolate females past at 100%...doesn't that tell you their the smartest and the one to get????

I say their are more black labs than any other and colors don't matter near as much as their pedigree...buy the dog with the best pedigree to give you the best chances of getting a good dog.

This post is in good fun. I could care less what color of dog anyone wants to buy. I guess if your going on pass rate from the Master National flight A then a yellow male or chocolate female would be just fine. Kind of proves that you can find a reason to buy any color of dog that you want. I personally believe the number of participants says more than the pass rate. I am really interested if those pass rates hold from flight to flight based on color.

Pedigree's are fine to consider but each one has a story to go with it. My personal opinion is a field trial pedigree holds more weight than a MH or even a MNH. The MH I have participated in or watched my dog in there are many entered that I wouldn't care to own for a variety of reasons. However at a field trial I almost always would love to own the winner even at a Qualifying event.

It's all about the pedigree and then doing your research on the dogs in the pedigree. The letters in front of or behind their name only tell you so much.

All those stats tell me is that it's a lot easier to find a good black pedigree vs a yellow or chocolate pedigree.

Doesn't mean good chocolate pedigrees don't exist it just means they are more rare.

I guess that means y'all need to be watching for when I breed my choc female this spring to that 1 chocolate male that ran in the National this year...

WBF's Man in the stand QAA "Maestro"
x HR Washita's Kimber locked N loaded "Kimber"

Maestro will probably be FC by the time of the breeding (1 point away) and Kimber hopefully HRCH


Coming May/June! Lol!

1 out of 2 Boykins passed Master National for 50%...Boykins must be better than Labs! I knew it!

I posted above as well and just wanted to say I like your post and I love the all the stats you provided as I am a bit of stats junky. I also think it is in good fun.

For instance I find it very surprising there were only 11 Yellow Dogs that ran the National Retriever Championship. That is fascinating to me. And only 1 chocolate dog? That is also surprising. I expect the chocolate number to increase by a couple dogs in the next decade as I believe there has been a focused effort by a couple people to strengthen some chocolate lines. There are some very nice chocolate litters being bred currently and also a few very nice chocolates running right now... Time me will tell I suppose...

Not to derail the thread but sort of related... What about pet homes? I feel like I see more Yellow Labs as pets vs black and/or chocolate? Probably not the case nationally, but around my house it most definitely is...

According to my Aug issue of retriever news, for the national am, 159 dogs qualified, 138 entered. There were 14 finalists. 9 blk male, 4 blk female, 1 yellow male.
I can't find my issue of the nat'l open.

BB, Maestro is the real deal, I've competed against him several times this past year, including the nat'l open. If I was going to get a chocolate, it would be out of one of his breedings.

Robby

% is the number to look at, but you need a bigger sample size than one. But I think Leonardo slept through stats.

I don't know a lot about pedigree, but is this your dogs dad? This is my dogs dad.

http://www.huntinglabpedigree.com/pedigree.asp?id=73894

Good to hear. I have heard a lot of good things about him. I've been in contact with Kate and Misty. I'm hoping the timing all works out.

Guy, your dog was sired by Maestro?

Yes, and this is mom..

http://huntinglabpedigree.com/pedigree.asp?id=103762

Cool deal man! I'm about to send you a PM.

And no my dog was not sired by Maestro. I'm looking at breeding Kimber to him.

I agree, yellow, (white,champaign) were the popular colors bred for pets (color) and not hunting ability. Similar to the new crossbred colors of silver and charcoal. This led to the show dog (short/fat) labs which had little to no retrieving desire.

Interesting difference in times, when I greward up with pointers, if the dog "didn't hunt" it didn't come home, thus taking it out of the gene pool. These days, they are bred to neighbor/friends dogs and the gene pool lives on. People wonder why some colors are weak on retrieving bloodlines. Kinda like the commercial of the chocolate laying down watching the stick being thrown, and not retrieving it.

Robby

Didn't sleep through stats. Just don't have the time to go through each flight at the moment. Plan to do two more so hopefully it will help the sample size. Right now I am having to plug in each dog on retrieverresults.com to find the sex and color. Maybe there is a better place to find the information but I haven't come across it and it isn't on the Master National website.

What would be ideal is to compare the stats of the elite events into the everyday participation. Then we might get somewhere.

Color in of itself does not have anything to do with performance, it’s like asking what is faster, a red or black corvette.

I have had all 3 colors. I never cared what color I got. My first was black. My second was yellow, because my wife wanted yellow. My current pup is choc, and the requirements and traits I was looking for in a pup, color was not one of them, I would have taken any color that met my requirements. It just happen to be choc, but I'm glad I have choc, now I have had all 3 colors. Some positives with Choc are 1) when she sheds her fur blends more with our dark wood floor, 2) I think she blends in better with the places I hunt.

Well I am going to disagree with this statement. Unlike a corvette, what is under the hood of a lab is not always equal. When people breed for color without consideration of the traits you require in your dog. You get a different outcome. Without question there are great dogs of each known color, however if you are a one dog household that is not extremely knowledgeable with pedigrees, do you have a better chance of getting the dog you want by buying a certain color? Maybe or maybe not. But that is pretty much what has taken me down this rabbit hole.

I will post the information from Flight C today.

What is under the hood of a corvette is not the same either, it is what is under the hood that matters, not the color “in of itself”. Go do your analysis and you may find red corvettes are faster, but it won’t be because of color.

That is an issue with the breeding, not the color.

I’m going to add to this. If you did this analysis and did find red corvettes are faster, it wouldn’t be because of color in of itself, but probably the people that buy red corvettes tend to hop them up more, as an example. If this was the case, and you randomly had to choose a corvett, and all you looked at was color, statistical if you bought a red corvette your odds of getting a faster one are better. But if you look under the hood of the cars you want to buy, color would have nothing to do with your decision if performance was what you were after.