Pearl's Popples at 1 Week! (Pics!)

Everybody seems happy, healthy, and active! The past couple of days, the popples have been digging tunnels in the hay. Yesterday, I found half of them in the opposite corner, cuddled together at the bottom of the box under all the hay. I knew Pearl would be jumping in to feed them soon, so I relocated them to the nest and closed the tunnel so they wouldn't miss their feeding. I don't know if they would have, but I figured they'd be beneath her and the hay, and I didn't want to take the chance.

Here are all of them together:



Closeup of 4 -- Smokey, top left, is very slightly not white, possibly grey. Blaze is the red(?) one with the white ...um... blaze on its forehead. Pinto started out white with black spots, but the spots are turning more bronze now. The white one is Kisses.



Closeup of the other 4 -- Piglet, the largest and fattest, is at the top. Below Piglet is Caramel, then Squeak, who is by far the most vocal. Squeak was named Blackie until some grey/white and tan hairs started showing. We have no clue what color Squeak will ultimately turn out to be. Sable (like Thumper), perhaps? The red/brownish one at the bottom (in motion) is Hershey, so named after the milk chocolate coloring (actually more like cafe au lait), which is turning more reddish now. Same color as Blaze and the spots on Caramel. Hershey is the runt. This may not be obvious because he's closer to the camera than the rest of them, and stretched out.



Here are a couple pictures of Pearl, a Flemish giant cross; sorry I don't have natural light pics for Thumper and Pearl yet:



Demon bunny!



And here's Thumper, presumably a Minilop:





I don't see any red coloring in Pearl's spots, which are more like faded taupe and grey. So I'm guessing the red comes from Thumper, whose fur has a more reddish tone.

We have so much fun with them! The kids do know and understand that they are meat buns. They know that they will be butchered and cooked and that we will eat them. We were going to do like the lady we got Pearl from, and name them Rabbit Stew, Rabbit Cacciatore, Rabbit a l'orange, etc., to keep things in perspective, but that didn't work. :lol: We plan to keep one or two does from the litter.

Nice looking popples! I can see that Caramel is much smaller than the others, but seems to be doing fine, best I can tell. I take it Thumper is considerably smaller than Pearl... perhaps Caramel gets the small size from him.

I'm glad you're having fun with them while keeping your goal (Dinner!) in mind.

You have a broken chestnut and a solid chestnut just like dad. There is a red and a broken red which is non extension agouti. Plus a booted red (broken but with a lots of colour).The whites are rew which came from both parents, although you said one was off white,its too hard to see in the pic. Pearl looks like a broken chinchilla or ermine so the reds don't have her chinchilla gene but the chestnuts may carry it.The ermine is actually a red with the chinchilla gene so that came from mom and also from dad as he must contribute at least one non extension gene!Thumper is a nice looking rabbit I can't believe that someone abandoned him!!!

Awwwe they are so cute.

oh gosh. They're adorable. Pearl is lovely Just LOOK at the meat on that hind quarter!

Thank y'all!

Maggie - yes, Thumper weighed out at just under 5 pounds a couple months ago, so he's considerably smaller than Pearl, who, at the same time, weighed a tad over 6 pounds. Interesting how big a difference in size a little over a pounds makes!!

Ann - I've been looking at her hind quarters too! :lol: Here's hoping she produces like rabbits!!

Devon's Mom Lauren":17qxkif0 said:

You have a broken chestnut and a solid chestnut just like dad. There is a red and a broken red which is non extension agouti. Plus a booted red (broken but with a lots of colour).The whites are rew which came from both parents, although you said one was off white,its too hard to see in the pic. Pearl looks like a broken chinchilla or ermine so the reds don't have her chinchilla gene but the chestnuts may carry it.The ermine is actually a red with the chinchilla gene so that came from mom and also from dad as he must contribute at least one non extension gene!Thumper is a nice looking rabbit I can't believe that someone abandoned him!!!

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WOW! I had to do some research after reading this; it's been a long time since I had Biology (and it didn't focus on rabbits)! So, if I understand you correctly (and I do want to understand!)...

Squeak (formerly Blackie) is the solid chestnut, and Pinto is the broken chestnut. (These are, by the way, the only ones that were not solid pink at birth.) Would the whites be rew, since Pearl has black eyes (I know there's the red glow in one, but that's because of the flash)? The makeup of Smokey remains to be seen, since it's hard to tell whether he's just not bright white, or whether he actually is grey or something else. Hershey, the runt, would be the red, and Caramel (the mostly white with red spots) would be the broken red, while Blaze would be the booted red. Agouti means the hair shafts are banded, and yields a pattern like wild rabbits. Non-extension agouti means the pattern does not extend to the skin? ...and so Caramel would be a red non-extension agouti, but broken.

Chinchilla is an agouti (like the chestnut) in greyscale, while ermine is a red agouti... do I have that right? Pearl's spots appear to be at the tips of the fur only (which would indicate agouti, right?), and have little brown in them. They seem to be mostly grey and black with just a tinge of taupe or tan to warm them up. She started out all white with black eyes. Her fur is over an inch long, and is very plush, but not to the point of standing up like Rex fur.

Thumper is a chestnut, not a sable. (Not sure where I had picked that one up!) He's darling, just a fine example of a sweet-tempered rabbit! We have at times allowed him on our bed, on our daughter's bed, on the sofa, and on the living room floor. Mostly, when he's inside, he's being held by our daughter, whom he loves. He was litter trained before he was abandoned, which I could tell because when we had him in a Rubbermaid tub before we got a hutch, he kept looking for somewhere to pee, finally one time in desperation settling on the drip bowl for his water bottle!

The people just skipped out on their rent and left. Thumper managed to survive outside for a week or more (only because of his color, I'm sure). We learned that he had been fed carrots by a couple little girls that lived in one of the apartments close to the one Thumper had been in.

We had been thinking about raising rabbits for meat; really, the only thing standing in the way was how to go about it in an apartment. When my husband showed up with a large tub and announced, "Hey, kids!! Come look what I've got!!" Somehow, I just knew it was a bunny. And that's how it all started.

Lovely litter and your doe is gorgeous, too!

Lauren

Beautiful bunnies! Thanks for sharing!

Thank you!!! It's so exciting!! :bouncy:

(I'm sorry I got so long-winded above!)

Hey you did it! Looking at Pearl again she is definatly an Ermine which means she was a (broken)red but because of the chinchilla gene supressing all red/tan colouration you get white where the red/tan would be. The dark spots I am sorry to say would show up as "smut" on a red rabbit! (black colour on the fur tips)The non-extension means there is no black extending down the tips (or very little see "smut" above lol)Thumper is a very nice agouti chestnut with a fair amount of the rufous modifiers.If the white popples have red eyes when they open it means both parents passed on a "c" to make "cc".Normal colour rabbits have either two "CC" or "Cc"

Great pictures! Thanks for posting them.

Emily

Thank you!!!!!

Devon's Mom Lauren":2ibsm8nu said:

Hey you did it! Looking at Pearl again she is definatly an Ermine which means she was a (broken)red but because of the chinchilla gene supressing all red/tan colouration you get white where the red/tan would be. The dark spots I am sorry to say would show up as "smut" on a red rabbit! (black colour on the fur tips)The non-extension means there is no black extending down the tips (or very little see "smut" above lol)Thumper is a very nice agouti chestnut with a fair amount of the rufous modifiers.If the white popples have red eyes when they open it means both parents passed on a "c" to make "cc".Normal colour rabbits have either two "CC" or "Cc"

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Really? You mean I got it mostly right? This is all really interesting, and I never thought I could understand any of it well enough at all. I'm still not quite getting extension/non-extension. But that's okay. Rufous took me a while, but if I've got it right, this factor determines the saturation of red/orange. So saying that Thumper has a fair amount of rufous modifiers means that he is a bit redder than an average colored chestnut.

I'm really interested to see what is behind those white popples' closed eyelids. I got a better look at Smokey today. He is definitely not all white. So far, there appears to be a rather even scattering of grey hairs throughout his white fur. The suspense is killing me! :bounce:

It's funny that the very spots that make Pearl so pretty are the very spots that would lower her score in a show!