7 Kits, 6 Different Looks! (New to this!)

Hi folks! I'm new to rabbit breeding and I'm super crazy excited about it!

I'm not new to breeding animals (I've been keeping snakes for 10 years) so I have some basic knowledge of genetics and mutations (recessive traits, dom, co-dom, etc.) but holeee crap bunnies have a lot going on! My brain is a little boggled. I'll learn in time (no doubt hopefully by hanging around you wise folks) and I appreciate any help you can give!

I have a pair of what I was told are New Zealand/Californian crossed rabbits. Bojack is black, Princess Caroline is spotted (broken?) black and white. Her first litter froze this winter, four kits, two that looked like mom and two like dad. When she had this, her second litter, I was totally blown away - I had no idea all the fun genetic stuff they were hiding!

Day 1 (Day after birth)


Day 3


Day 5


I'm pretty sure this one is Cinnamon (correct me if I'm wrong!):


Now a couple questions!

I had a happy spasm when I saw the tricolor - how do I get more (other than of course breeding the parents)? Do all the kits in the litter carry the genes for tricolor or just some?

Is Cinnamon both a breed and a color? How does that work? I live way up in the boonies so I'm not planning on showing, just curious.

Any idea what the grey one is?

Is it normal to get this much genetic diversity in a litter?

What would you keep for future breeding?

Thanks for your help!

WOW! What a fun variety you got this time! That's awesome, color me jealous!

Welcome to RabbitTalk, Aurora! :welcome:

Those sure are pretty kits! Nice and plump too.

tort, broken tort, broken and solid siamese??? , Black and broken black. Great colours.

Aurora":3fcqwabv said:

I'm pretty sure this one is Cinnamon (correct me if I'm wrong!)

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That "cinnamon"-looking one looks like a tort to me (to my understanding Cinnamon is a breed, and only called that color within the breed?). But look up "black tort" in rabbit colors and that looks like a match!

Aurora":3fcqwabv said:

I had a happy spasm when I saw the tricolor

Click to expand...

Could you post another photo of the tri? It could be a broken tort, as well, but if the dark spots are irregularly placed all over then maybe someone's carrying an ej gene...

Congrats on the little cuties, they look absolutely spectacular! :in_love:

Fun litter! I love a colorful nestbox - so much fun!

Love the names! I have a Mr. Peanutbutter.

***edit***
That is a rabbit named Mr. Peanutbutter, not an actual Labrador.

If they really are Californian mixes the two light ones should be a (agouti) pointed white and broken pointed white. I also see a tort, a broken tort, a broken chestnut, a broken black (might be just another broken chestnut, hard to see the ears), and a black. The blacks might end up being steels.

Welcome!
I have a small group of Meat Rabbits just for breeding a rainbow box of bunnies!!

<br /><br /> __________ Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:10 pm __________ <br /><br /> The dark ones ended up being a chestnut and a chinchilla.... lots of colour and patterns!

I repeated the same breeding with Little Red Riding Hood X TriHarder.... so we will see if there is a similar mix in the middle of April!

Thanks everyone!

Nymphadora I think you're totally right - black tort and broken tort. Here's the pretty little broken.



I was considering Mr. Peanutbutter as a name for the brown one if it's a boy lol!

I don't think there are broken chestnuts, just broken blacks. What makes a black a steel? The father is very black with some white hairs.

No consensus on the grey and broken grey ones? I'll post more pics when they're bigger. They look to have the same shading (dark and light areas) as the black tort, just all grey instead of brown and grey. Could they be blue torts?

EDIT: I just looked up Siamese Sable Point and they look a lot like that too. I seriously had no idea there was this much variation in rabbit color. Neat! But frustrating haha.

Lovely litter SarniaTricia! I think I will need to repeat this breeding again too. <br /><br /> __________ Tue Apr 04, 2017 9:40 am __________ <br /><br /> This morning I learned that there is mini rex blood in these kits (their grandpa). No wonder the parents were smaller than I thought they were supposed to be, and that probably explains the extra colors? We originally started this venture with meat in mind, so now I'm not sure what to do. Thinking we may sell most of these as pets, including the parents, and start again with new stock. Dang.

The babies are doing great though! They're going to be great pets. Getting lots of love.

12 Days

Oh my goodness, look at those cute little furry babies! They are adorable Aurora.

For meat, do some experimenting... bigger isn't always better. Flemish Giants are larger, but they also have more bone and less meat. Dutch are smaller, but have more meat and less bone. It doesn't hurt to try - and meat is meat, it just might meant 2 rabbits per meal rather than just 1 (people aren't too discouraged by that - they still eat quail, dove, squirrel, etc.). You can do some simple calculations to get an idea on how well they are doing in terms of meat...

They sure are cute, though! That's the one thing that gets me with a colorful litter - my all white ones are much more difficult to get attached to Those colorful ones tend to stick around a bit longer and I can see personalities more with them as well since they are easier to distinguish based on looks.

FourRingCircus":20asca3x said:

For meat, do some experimenting... bigger isn't always better. Flemish Giants are larger, but they also have more bone and less meat. Dutch are smaller, but have more meat and less bone. It doesn't hurt to try - and meat is meat, it just might meant 2 rabbits per meal rather than just 1 (people aren't too discouraged by that - they still eat quail, dove, squirrel, etc.). You can do some simple calculations to get an idea on how well they are doing in terms of meat...

They sure are cute, though! That's the one thing that gets me with a colorful litter - my all white ones are much more difficult to get attached to Those colorful ones tend to stick around a bit longer and I can see personalities more with them as well since they are easier to distinguish based on looks.

Click to expand...

Good points, thank you! I think what we're going to do is keep a couple from this litter and sell the rest, and breed those to a New Zealand cross like we originally planned. This first litter is pretty special so they've been handled a lot. I don't think any of them will end up on the table lol.

Really cute bunch. With easter this week, they will fly out of the cage. Assuming they are old enough.

It's been a while and I wanted to post an update on these guys. I also have a couple more questions!

I'm still not 100% sure what the gray one is, but she's got to be some kind of Siamese sable type right? She's definitely gray, not what I would call sepia. Her dark markings keep getting darker. For a while she looked like she had big thick eyebrows but that color has merged with her ears now, leaving a cute light gray diamond on her head. She and the black tort are my keepers and future breeders, and spoiled house bunnies now haha.

I thought one of the spotteds was just a broken version of whatever the gray one is, but her ears are lighter in color, more "blue." The spots on her spine are lighter too. Thoughts?

Also the two brokens I have left seem to have a shorter coat than the solids. I'm assuming that's due to the mini rex influence, yeah? They're definitely not rex coats, but they are super soft (though they all are).

That's a sallander (or a sable point that just happens to be darker-maybe seal based instead of sable). Cute color, I raised Holland lops in this. Neither NZ or Californian have the genes to make it though, maybe some chinchilla or rex or something in the ancestry <br /><br /> __________ June 17th, 2017, 9:52 pm __________ <br /><br /> The broken looks to be the same thing, just, well, broken

There is mini rex in the mix. I may be able to get a Champagne d' Argent buck to breed with them. What am I likely to see from that?

Out of the brokens, broken black with silvering and black with silvering (about the color of a silver fox). Out of the solids, no broken kits, just solid kits.