I'm trying to identify breeds but they all look the same..

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mygoldendoe

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So i haven't had rabbits since childhood. But I bought 4 meat rabbits few months ago and was trying to research breeds to have a good idea of the breed type I bought at the local livestock sale stand. I plan to keep detailed records as my goal is also pelt driven. So I need a good guess for my records. But besides the obvious differences like size, angora long fur, high arch of the hare, and lop they all look the same. I can't seem to notice the subtle differences like face shape body shape... What are ways to identify them? How long did it take tall to learn?

Through Facebook and another site IV had everything suggested from rex, Flemish, beige on tan, lilac, NZ...When I looked these up I can see the beige on tan one..But all the other breeds i google all have to same coloring options but they look the same to me so how do they tell them apart? <br /><br /> __________ Mon Dec 26, 2016 7:51 pm __________ <br /><br /> This is the 4th one that I can believe is a beige on tan either the other one..
 

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You can't ;)

Unless a rabbit accurately matches a specific breeds SOP you really cannot tell what breed it is

Yours look like quite the mix (affectionately known as meat mutts) as nothing about really stands out

I think you've got a blue and a fawn but the other two are stumping me :hmm: maybe Opal, cream or blue tort otter :shock:

Their coats look unusually dense which lends itself to Rex and the blue, fawn and otter are all colours found in that breed

NZealands come in red and fawn but blue is a less common colour

The wonky ear carriage could mean some Lop breed in their history, possibly Mini or French and both breeds come in a huge variety of colours
 
What Dood said

Looks like a fawn, a lynx (the color from lynx can either be from a cream rabbit with dirty color - most likely, or a genetic lynx), a gold tipped blue steel, and a gold tipped lilac steel

Most rabbits, unless specifically advertised as a certain breed (and even sometimes then) are just mixed breeds. The only one that might fit any breed standards in the one on the right in the top picture, which might (depending on weight, type and fur) be like a lynx palomino (though that is a rare breed - even if your rabbit looks like a palomino, it probably isn't a purebred palomino or even a palomino mix)

The blue steel and lilac steel (steel because the tips of the fur are lighter) look to be a different cross than the other two, with thicker heads and blockier ears. With the coloration and fur, I'd guess probably descended from NZ, satin & something else, or they could be anything. The lighter two, probably has some NZ in them, but they could be anything

Another note: the color "beige on tan" is European term, that isn't used in the US. Here it is called blue fox or blue tort otter. The tan pattern gene is needed to make it, and of the large meat breeds, only satins commonly carry that. Doesn't look like blue fox to me, though - with the one on the left, the color is definitely fawn/orange. With the other, blue fox could be possibly, but usually blue foxes don't have a paler muzzle than face, and usually have a more creamy body, with less of a blue cast. <br /><br /> __________ Mon Dec 26, 2016 6:41 pm __________ <br /><br /> Also, google is NOT a reliable source on rabbit images, especially with different breeds and colors. If you want to compare colors, look up rabbit color guides (Holland lop color guides are often good - rex, angora and satin ones have different color names) and make sure they are from the US. Europe uses different color, & some different breed names, than us

The resource I use is http://www.rabbitcolors.info/int/en/index.html
But it is missing some colors - it seems blue fox is one of them
 
Thanks. I don't care their mutts but since I was strongly pelt driven with meat ratio I hoped to guess heritage so I could going in specific directions in future. This weekend we are driving 2hrs into another state to get supposed pure NZ. They are proven already so I'm excited. (Solid black female solid white male)..Is there a way to tell age? When I first got mine they didn't understand the water feeder (ball drip kind) but I figured they may have been fed with bowl so that's what we had to use for few weeks.. The females dominant each other but last two weeks the male is spraying like crazy. Three times in one check up but since I check them two-three times a day it gets very aggravating. He hasn't mounted that I know of tho. Atleast I haven't seen him do it yet.. <br /><br /> __________ Mon Dec 26, 2016 9:06 pm __________ <br /><br /> Their coat is pretty dense. It's got a super soft fuzzy bottom coat with a almost slick top coat. If I poke them to the skin it's reaches middle of my index finger
 
If you are breeding for show, black NZ x white NZ can give you unrecognized colors.

You shouldn't really house these rabbits together if you are planning to breed them, they can get territorial. Most likely, they are already bred.
 
No, sablesteel, when I said pelt driven I ment for tanning not showing. Sorry I didn't specify. The photo was when we first got them. They were housed together and we're hoping they were pregnant but they werent. I never see the male mount, only sprays constantly. Females are super sweet and lay/sit together all the time. They will be seperated once we can palpate a positive pregnancy n the females.

Thanks zass, I'm hoping so.
 
I'm a bit jealous of the color options you have! ;) I have found that I like that variety in my herd, although it's easier for meat to have all the same color - less temptation to keep one just based on looks, or single out a favorite since they aren't as easily recognized when they are all white :roll: :lol: You'll definitely have some fun hides to play with!!
 
since you are breeding for pelts, and you mentioned you were going to keep good records, - you will be able to develop a meat/ pelt rabbit breeding program to get almost any result you desire, - and with the color you already have-, and NZ to maintain meat conformation, - looks like your possibilities are amazing. -just repeat the breedings that work best - save breed stock from that...
 
I'm very excited for you!!
I have meat mutts and breed them specifically for meat and pelt colour!

Your buck might be ready for breeding, but it sounds like your does are not.
(they look around 12 weeks to me)

I got NZ to add some body to my meat mutts too!
Keep at it and have fun.

(keep us posted with photos!)
 
If you are new to breeding, I wouldn't wait for a successful palpation to separate them. Bucks sometimes manage to get does pregnant without good fall offs.
Even many experienced breeders are not 100% accurate when feeling around underneath a doe, and some can't do it at all, even after years of raising rabbits. :whistle:

Seems like a LOT of first litters are lost when a doe scatters kits around a cage full of other does, and the owner isn't even sure which one had them.
Yes, I have seen that exact scenario described more than a dozen times. It's very common.

Better safe than sorry, and make sure provide each doe with nesting material for at least 35 days after they have been separated from the buck.
I think it was Miss M that had a litter full of 12 week old doelings get bred? If I remember right, every single one of them carried successfully too. She was buried in kits for a while.. :lol:
 
They were seperate already. They were together when we bought them and we left them together for awhile to make sure they would be pregnant while we built their cages and their shed. It was only few weeks and we could tell they were. Just having to store n the garage bc the rains keeping us behind on the shed. Atleast we got the posts in yesterday before the rain.. here's the two new arrivals. They turn 2 next month and had been proven already. And came named already. I number letter mine tho. The cage the male came with is same size as ones we made for ours (30x30) and the females is larger..We put nesting box n at 25days on off chance they were before we got them. I'd rather have extra cleaning to do than miss calculate. Not first rodeo with rabbits, just first time with breeding for variety of colors
 

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The new zealands may disappoint you for colors, unless you get very lucky.
They will most likely throw steel, black, orange, chestnuts and rews. The rew may help express himi, shaded, or chinchilla if the mutts have any c locus recessives.
Sometimes, they have dilute, but I wouldn't count on it. You probably already have steel going on with those pastel mutts though. :)
 
Naw I just got the NZ to keep up as good meat rabbit size. That and I wanted some steel and possible chin markings. Bc I worried my other would throw only blues, grays and creams variations. this way i get great range and keep up my meat size
 
I don't know your genetics knowledge. Some people are great at learning the letter abbreviations and how they impact color and some need to learn by color group because it makes no sense to them. You can find a useful chart at http://www.thenaturetrail.com/rabbit-ge ... pes-chart/ and some links to the basic genes listed there. The color names can be searched but they will vary in some breeds. Often due to coat type modifying the appearance despite the same color genetics (rex is castor, satin I think is copper, etc...) and sometimes because of a special color gene like silver that covers all colors of that breed or breed group. There are further links in one of the stickies at the top of the forum sections. Heritage is not very important in this situation and many of them. In rabbits what you see is what you have. If it looks like x breed you can show it as that and if it doesn't you can't even if the parents are both called that breed. The background is only useful in knowing hidden genes like a black rabbit can carry dilute and make blue but you'd have no idea unless you knew it had a dilute parent or after it produced dilute offpsring with another rabbit that is or carries dilute. If you don't cross 2 dilutes you may never know the black could make blues. Different colors are approved per breed so sometimes that can narrow things but all rabbits can be every color. It's just more or less likely you'll find something in the various sizes. Also there are fur types beyond the obvious like rex, satin, or long haired breeds. The way the coat returns to shape when rubbed backward is called various things such as flyback or rollback. It will impact how the pelt feels. Good rollback fur is harder to get and will be found in breeds like the chinchillas and american sables created from chinchillas should have it but after near extinction the breed was crossed out to flyback fur and mostly lost their rollback. Many of these more minor coat types were originally found in breeds for pelts but when they lost favor to the plain old white NZ and cali they become less common and get crossed out like the american sables. It can be hard to recover the true fur type and color of an older breed but it's something to keep in mind when you research what your rabbits can produce and what you want to achieve so you can choose new additions to get your stock closer to your goals. A mixed breed american chinchilla might still have thick, roll back fur that has benefits depending what it was crossed with or if the offspring were crossed back to the chinchilla parent. I had some cinnamon x american chinchilla I was going to use to recover the coat of the american sables when I fell ill and moved away from the town my mom's stable and the rabbits were in.

Agouti colors are far more complicated. Each hair is made of multiple color bands and you can widen or narrow these bands breeding to other colors so you modify the agouti. You can have a very red chestnut or a very dark chestnut and a bright red, lighter red, or browner (dirty) red... etc... Since pelt color is a major factor you may want to learn what impact some colors have on agouti colors and how to improve them. It is much simpler if you pick a small group of similar colors to work with when aiming for a standardized color but if you don't care you can breed whatever you want and take the variety for good and bad.
 
That is for the links I'll go check them out
Right now I'm just breeding the 4 to see what I get out of them. Them the other two are to ensure I keep up a larger meat size up as we go. After it seems a bit consistent average, and I choose to change, I will. I just thought with a blue male they would and them have blue/grey in their females patches that they'd all turn out mostly blues or greys. But I'm not really going for any standards here. I just want a wide variety to work for tanning crafts, which I think I'll get. I was just mainly worried not knowing their heritage, if i could get me smaller rabbits in there. Then learn identifiers to ensure I got good stock, But since I just got the two pure line NZ I'm not worried about it anymore.
 
Not really how it works. Blue does not make a majority of blues most of the time unless you are breeding 2 blues and other "grey" colors may be entirely unrelated like chinchilla or like putting something such as steel or silver genes on top of other colors. One parent that is not blue may not make any blue or grey colors. It might make all black or the more brownish agouti version of black which is chestnut. Sometimes really random stuff comes out when you don't know the background. Like chocolates popping up even in rabbits with an 8-10generation pedigree of all black and blue based color. I had 1 random harlequin kit out of my rex based meat mutts before and never repeated. That's a rabbit with black and red patches. Unless you add other genes to it and then you can get different color patches. I always liked magpies which are black and white patched. With NZ red, chestnut, steel, and rew (red eye white) are most common results but a rew nz parent might throw all chestnuts on every color of rabbit you pair it with except a few that guarantee something else is possible because they impact the same gene location as the rew. From the same color pairing you could also get a rainbow of those colors, self versions of those colors, dilutes of those colors, or really random things like harlequin which can use 1 red gene to create it so a red paired with a harlequin carrier (that can look like any color) results in a 50% chance of harlequin.

and rabbits are simple compared to some animals lol
 
Yeah iv learned alot with the 2 rabbit sites I use. (This one not so much bc it makes me log in every 3minutes or when I navigate to a new page and gets annoying after awhile.) I wish dad had gone over breeding and genetics when he raised his but I guess that's more my doing than his as I had no interest in seeing them after his bit me lol his were mostly blues and chocolate colored & he never bred for any standards either. We're all meat mutts around our super small town.
 
mygoldendoe":21c1n3yv said:
Yeah iv learned alot with the 2 rabbit sites I use. (This one not so much bc it makes me log in every 3minutes or when I navigate to a new page and gets annoying after awhile.) I wish dad had gone over breeding and genetics when he raised his but I guess that's more my doing than his as I had no interest in seeing them after his bit me lol his were mostly blues and chocolate colored & he never bred for any standards either. We're all meat mutts around our super small town.

I had a big discussion with a Rex breeder friend of mine, about standard. (She Shows)
Although you are breeding for meat and pelts, you should be evaluating your "keepers" based on the standard for meat/commercial rabbits.
WHY? (I'm glad you asked)
Because the standard is designed for evaluating a rabbit's meat potential.
You want:
Fast growth
lots of meat
good recovery with your does for rebreeding

Posing up your rabbits gives a "Comparable" type to look at.
(I often photograph the rabbits so I can take a good look at them and their potential)
Also, start posing them as kits at about 3-4 weeks old... that way they are really comfortable posing for you.

Here is a site I found a while ago that helped me really "see" what I was looking for with "keepers":
http://hillriserabbitry.blogspot.ca/201 ... bbits.html

Also, I have been working on tri mixed meat rabbits and hope that 2017 sees me with a solid tri program in place... love the multi coloured pelts.
 

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