| Summer Wine Dun Dexters – |  |
What colour is dun?
What colour is dun?
Today’s English word ‘dun’ is derived originally from the Saxon ‘dun’, meaning nut-brown. As commonly used in describing animals it simply means brown. “How now brown cow?”
Coincidentally, the Gaelic ‘donn’ also means brown, but it is unclear if the two words have a common origin in the unrecorded past.
 |
Dun Dexters range in colour from a creamy fawn (winter coat)... to a rich deep brown ... |
 |
|
with the colour of most animals lying in between. |
 |
New calves sometimes have a soft grey – almost lavender – bloom to their coats. |
|
When we started breeding Dexters, the genetics of the dun colouring was not understood – dun calves sometimes cropped up unexpectedly, from either black or red parents. However, research showed that the colour is caused by a recessive gene that modifies the black colour gene to produce dun. It is apparently a different gene from that which causes dun colouring in other cattle breeds. See The Genetics of Dun for a summary.
