rabbits and their colors

Wednesday, Dec. 09, 2009 | 1:25 AM

i went to newburg on monday to finally get a broken mini rex buck. when i got there, she asked me if i wanted a free broken blue doe (i guess they are getting out of rabbits.) so, of course, i came home with both of the rabbits. the doe is beautiful and i am so thrilled!

so here are the new bunnies, with the broken tort buck on the left and the broken blue doe on the right...

and here are my four mini rex...

and ALL of the bunnies! (i had to photoshop dapper in since he didn't join the photoshoot)...

now i have four really nice mini rex that could be used to produce some really nice offspring that i could enter in the fair next summer. all i need is more cages to put them in... which should be easy to get from selling babies that i don't keep.

i've been reading about rabbit color genetics to try to guess what color babies i can get. basically black is dominant over chocolate, and blue is dilute of black while lilac is dilute of chocolate. all other rabbit colors come from variations of that. white is not a color. a white rabbit is created from the recessive albino gene, which simply masks color. a white rabbit is still genetically a rabbit with color.

the tort buck will add his recessive non-extension gene to every baby. i'm not sure what non-extension means, but tort is a non-extension of black, while red is a non-extension of chocolate. fawn (not a showable color in mini rex) is the non-extension of the dilutes. from what i understand.

looking at their pedigrees, i doubt any of the does carry the non-extension gene, so i wouldn't get any torts or reds or fawns. however, all of the babies will carry that gene. so those colors are possible if i do second generation breedings.

in all breedings i will definitely get blacks. i will also definitely get blues because the dilute gene will be present. i'm not sure how likely chocolate will be on the first generation breeding to pocky. i might have to do a second generation breeding to get my desired broken chocolate buck. though i guess, if the buck does carry the recessive to black, i guess i would get chocolates. but i don't know if he does or not. if i do get chocolates, lilac is also possible because of the dilute gene.

so the probable outcomes are as follows...

broken tort buck x chocolate doe: broken and solid black, blue, chocolate and lilac is possible

broken tort buck x white doe: broken or solid black and blue

broken tort buck x broken blue doe: broken black and blue

how exciting.

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