Calling All Silver Fox Breeders! Help Me Out please

I'm a new breeder of pedigreed Silver Foxes and I'd really love some help on some things from someone who is more experienced than me in this department, I am receiving a crap ton of genetic questions from my buyers and some of their questions I just don't know. So here goes:


Do 2 blue silvereds really produce just blue silvered?

Can a black silvered carry all 4 colors?

Does anyone have a photo of a blue silvered with bad silvering and one with correct silvering? How does one properly judge the silver on an animal that is so light?

What can a blue carry and cannot carry?


What is the best way to avoid getting chocolate silvered and lilac silvered when they're in your pedigrees but the actual rabbit is not of those colors? I assume by breeding to only non carriers right?


Thanks! opcorn: :bunnyhop:

These are silvers, and not silver fox, but the amount of silvering is what we're looking at here. The first rabbit has too much silvering, and the second one has the right amount. There is a picture in the standard that says how much silvering you want on a silver fox, and how much is too much and how much is too little. Blues want a dark shade of blue, that should contrast with the silvering well
http://imgur.com/a/5vnDG

Blues will mostly produce blues when bred together, but if they carry chocolate they can produce lilac, and if they carry white, they can produce white.

Blacks can carry all the colors.

Blues can carry chocolate (but they are dilutes, so it would be more like carrying lilac) and white

You can't tell if a rabbit doesn't carry chocolate or not, so the best way to avoid it would be by keeping chocolates out of the lines, if you're really hate chocolates, then maybe looking in the pedigree and seeing if there are any back there. Even if you do end up breeding two chocolate carriers, that's only 25% chocolates, though

Blue and chocolate are 2 separate genes. Blues carry two copies of the dilute gene (dd), chocolates carry two copies of the chocolate gene (bb), and lilacs carry both these recessives (dd bb). If you want to avoid lilac and chocolates, just keep stock and breed for your rabbits to have Bb (chocolate carrier) or BB (black, no chocolate carried).

Blues are always going to be dd B_, which means they can have Bb or BB. Breeding two blues will result in blue (dd B_) and possibly lilac (dd bb). Breeding a blue (dd B_) and a chocolate (D_ bb) could either have lilacs (if dd Bb x Dd bb), blues (if dd BB x Dd bb), chocolates (if dd Bb x DD bb), or blacks (if dd BB x DD bb). Breeding a black to a blue will either result in a 50/50 of blues and blacks (if Dd B_ x dd B_), or blacks that carry blue (if DD B_ x dd B_).

I might make a graphic in a minute; it looks pretty gibberish as a paragraph haha.

Silvering is a pretty variable thing-- you're going to have to select the best of the litter via silvering. I bred a chocolate with almost no silvering to a doe with intense silvering and my litter was mildly silvered to heavily silvered, and I bred two pretty silvered parents and got a baby with almost no silvering. Most breeders say to breed two nicely silvered rabbits together or a heavily silvered to a mildly silvered, though. Here's a grand champion from Graceful Meadows, who has nice silvering. What is considered ideal can vary from judge to judge, but if you have a good body/ fur, you might win over a more silvered individual.

I wouldn't stress about having perfectly silvered babies; if your body types are good and your fur is dense + nicely colored, you can just pick the best out of your litters