Color breeding question

Hi guys, I'm totally new here and I have a few questions about color inheritance if you have a few minutes. First is it best to breed a broken pattern to a solid colored rabbit or another broken? Second, if you breed two different colors together(say chestnut to black) do you generally get kits that are those two colors or do you get colors that are somewhere in between the two? I know it's real basic stuff but I'm just trying to figure all this out before I get any breeders. Thanks so much!

Hello there.

I'd suggest before you buy any rabbits to read the genetic color primer n the nature trail website. http://www.thenaturetrail.com/

Breeding brokens is not always that cut and dry. I bred broken to broken for a long time, then broken to solid. I didn't base my breedings on the pattern but the type.

Broken to broken can cause charlies, rabbits with less than 10% color, which is a problem if you are showing. It can sometimes cause the pattern to get smaller, but not always. Stuff like that is controlled by modifiers you can't know about until you breed. I never had those problems, mine where heavily patterned. you can also get brokens with very heavy patterns from breeding broken to solid, but that too is based on modifiers.

-- Sat May 21, 2016 7:23 am --

For your second question, that's why I recommend reading the website, it's a pretty long explanation and these have already hashed it out. I can find more for you if you need them.

Colors have a hierarchy.

There are dominant and recessive colors, and co-dominant and incomplete dominant colors.

For instance, Chestnut is the most dominant gene. Black is recessive to it. Simplistically, breeding the two would give you all chestnuts. But-- each rabbit carries two genes for each of the gene loci. Just using the 5 most obvious ones ABCDE,

and now it's gonna get long and confusing, lol.
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