eye color and hidden color

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Zinnia

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In my rabbitry I have several Opal juniors out of a few different does and bucks, so they are not all the same lines... They started out with blue-gray eyes. By the time they got to be about 3 months old, (at least this is when I noticed it) some of them have changed to brown eyes.

In the changed rabbits, I know they carry Chocolate for certain. In the ones that have not changed (still blue-gray), there is a good chance they are all BB. Is there a connection here? Could it be that wrong eye color could be due to the hidden color?
 
Hidden genes can cause eye color changes. Rabbits carrying chinchilla but not expressing it often still get blue-grey eyes. Sometimes to the point people think they are carrying vienna (BEW). I haven't seen a problem with chocolate carriers but then the rabbits I had who came out chocolate from those lines didn't really have red to their eyes like I've heard in some others.
 
Hmm, my chocolate carrying opals all still had blue grey eyes. I've had lots of those. I haven't had any opals that didn't carry chocolate, so I can't really compare.
 
I haven't noticed a different eye colour in my black AmChins who are known to carry chocolate and those who don't :shrug:

All of my chins and self chins have blueish grey eyes when they open but in about 70% of them the eyes darken to brown by 10 weeks the others keep their blueish eye colour
 
Interesting.

i'll let you know in a week or two, I have 10 day old opal kits from my Choco Agouti x Opal breeding.
 
I'm curious!
I am watching my siamese sable grow up and I often see reference to a ruby sheen in the eye and it being acceptable... my doe has blue-gray eyes, very like my blue and lilac buns, which makes me wonder how that relates to the final coloring (depth etc) she will have.
 
As far as I can tell, eye color doesn't seem to affect body color, but body color does affect eye color. I have chins with all kinds of eye color, blue gray, gray, brown, amber. Some differ in body color and some don't. I also have some that have chocolate in the chin line, but don't have a ruby cast to the chin eye. The body color difference is explained by which line, those that have the chocolate chin also have a Chestnut in the line, which causes smut, and heavier black surface color. The lighter ones have a wideband gene. Both groups have the range of eye colors.


All my Siamese Sables have brown eyes with a ruby cast. The Sable Rex and the Siamese Sable JW have completely different body colors, mostly because of Rex furring, but specifically because of the modifiers present in the breeds. I could in theory lighten the Rex coat to something similiar with the right modifiers.
 
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