| 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.
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Dun Dexters range in colour from a creamy fawn ... to a rich deep brown ... |
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with the colour of most animals lying in between. |
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New calves often have a soft grey – almost lavender – bloom to their coats. |
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Until recently the Genetics of the dun colouring in Dexters was not understood – dun calves often cropped up unexpectedly, from both black and red parents. However, recent research has shown that the colour is caused by a recessive gene that is a mutation, the first brown mutation to be discovered in cattle, which is an alternative to black. It is a quite different gene from that which causes dun colouring in other cattle breeds.
