NZ rabbit colors

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rhealove

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What are all the colors pure NZ come in? I know red, white, black and broken. Just found about steel and chestnut. My doe was sold as black but I think she is gold tip will have to put a picture up. I fell in love with a amazing big blue mama doe but didn't have the money for her. Any rare colors that creep up? Don't care about show and will never understand why exclude colors that naturally show up.
 
Blue is recognized now :) ! The standards committee decided by unanimous vote to accept it at nationals last fall, the standard went into effect the month after it was published in the domestic rabbit magazine (there was confusion about when it would go into affect -- between January 1 and February 1, but we're past both, so it is accepted as of now either way. This includes broken blues).
Along with red, white, blue, and broken, you can get steels, chestnuts, blue steels, opals and fawns. The brokens can also come in Charlie and booted markings. They do not have chinchilla or tricolor in them: any tricolor, frosty, "blue eyed white" or chinchilla new zealands you get are not pure new zealands. Additionally, the steels can only be gold tipped - silver tipped indicates the chinchilla gene.

The process for getting a new variety accepted is long and tedious (blue just finished it). Right now, the colors that just pop up aren't near the consistency of recognized varieties. Take steel for example: some have just a few flecks of gold, and some are almost light enough as to indistinguishable from chestnut. It would take some dedication and a lot of rabbits to fix problems like that (along with a vote from the national new Zealand club, and the politics surrounding colors is different in every club--Flemish giant will probably never get another variety because they hate crossing colors, where netherland dwarfs seem to get a new color every few years) and right now, all the dedicated show breeders are focusing on the recognized colors.
 
By mixing the 4 recognized NZ colours you can get quite a few unshowable colours :up:

Chestnut and opal
Black Gold tip steel and blue GT steels
Cream/dilute reds
Black and blue torts

In broken and solid varieties

And if there are any hidden recessives from out crosses you could get tan, chocolate, lilac, chinchilla, sable, Himalayan and harlequin based colours popping up :shock:
 

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