Color Crossing Rules...fabulous resource!

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I love this site, and have visited it before. I just noticed you have the option to print it out, which I am doing now. :)
 
Is that ALL the recognized colors? Its lovely and clear so will make breeding some of the colors I have easier but I have several that don't seem to be in the chart! :shock:
 
I was curious about the whole varieties and what was considered acceptable so I was reading through this. This is said about the chinchilla.

Do not breed them to Castor, Lynx, Opal or Red, as traces of the orange color will remain for generations. They should also never be bred to any shaded rabbits such as a Himalayan.

Why? It doesn't make sense that "traces of the orange color will remain for generations" since chin removes the pheomelanin from the coat. What am I missing?
 
Rufus factors, which are selected for in those colours, will create "smut" in chinchilla rabbits.

The chinchilla gene only eliminates 3 of the 4 yellow pigment cells and Rufus are on that 4th site.
 
I can honestly say, EVERYONE told me if I bred a Broken Castor to a broken Chinchilla (Mini Rex) two things would happen: 1. Being that they were both "broken" patterned, most, if not all, of the babies would come out Charlies. 2. The babies would all come out "smutty" ( I HATE that word).
My last litter, I didn't pedigree, because of this, and I figured if they did come out the way I just said, they would be pet bunnies, which is fine. Healthy babies are healthy babies, I'll take what I can get. They are now almost 7 months old, and none of them are smutty, and only ONE was a Charlie. I kept her, and named her Chappy. She was born in the feeder, and spent her first 20 minutes of life in my mom's bra. I decided then, that if she lived, we would keep her. Just figured I would throw this out there. :)
 

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Dood":f5hvjs5g said:
Rufus factors, which are selected for in those colours, will create "smut" in chinchilla rabbits.

The chinchilla gene only eliminates 3 of the 4 yellow pigment cells and Rufus are on that 4th site.


:lol: Dood is also an awesome resource!
 
I found this a long time ago in my search of rabbit genetic colors.

I'm assuming this works for all breeds of rabbits, not just mini rex?

Also, as someone who breeds to show (ultimately), I've found there some variety in the different SOPs for breeds. For example the chinchilla color on an American Chinchilla has more of a salt and pepper look where as my Satins have an all over medium grey. Would you say that this is because of additional genes or just selective breeding?
 
It's due to both modifiers and coat type. Just like chinchilla rex and American Chin have a different look. Also, consider castor in rex. It has a complete different look than most breeds chestnut but genetically, they are the same. The difference is the modifiers that have been selected for to create the darker coat in rex.
 
American chinchillas aren't supposed to have a salt and pepper look. They're supposed to have a lot of contrast between the tip and intermediate color (which gives the distinctive surface color) but it's supposed to be almost more wavy than salt and peppery. With satins, the hair shaft is slightly transparent, so the surface color and intermediate color blend together more and you get that more even gray color. It's partially selective breeding (american chins have more distinctive surface color than, say, mini lops) but also largely due the fur structure.
 
alforddm":1cyp5b79 said:
It's due to both modifiers and coat type. Just like chinchilla rex and American Chin have a different look. Also, consider castor in rex. It has a complete different look than most breeds chestnut but genetically, they are the same. The difference is the modifiers that have been selected for to create the darker coat in rex.

SableSteel":1cyp5b79 said:
American chinchillas aren't supposed to have a salt and pepper look. They're supposed to have a lot of contrast between the tip and intermediate color (which gives the distinctive surface color) but it's supposed to be almost more wavy than salt and peppery. With satins, the hair shaft is slightly transparent, so the surface color and intermediate color blend together more and you get that more even gray color. It's partially selective breeding (american chins have more distinctive surface color than, say, mini lops) but also largely due the fur structure.

I had considered coat type and structure to make somewhat of a difference, I just didn't know how much.
 
The short coat of a rex is going to have a slightly different impact on the appearance of the same colors even without the more rex specific modifiers. I think castor is also held to a bit higher standard than chestnut often is in various breeds due to how heavily the specific shade has been selected for. I can't say it mattered half as much what I mixed chestnut with in the other breeds I kept that had chestnuts but you cross a castor rex to the wrong things and you'll immediately have a change in the amount of rufus (red) modifiers and possible weird banding or under color that drops your rabbits in placing on show tables. Various breeds also put different points to things. With rex or satin the coat is the major defining trait of the breed while in something like netherland dwarf the size and type are and then in other breeds provided you don't have an outright DQ or unhealthy look to them the rabbit with the worst example of coat or color could end up winning their breed category sometimes.

It's far easier to just plain not cross agouti rex and a select few other colors and buy good examples of the color from a line bred specifically to produce the same results instead. Red is a common one in several breeds that you don't want to cross much, if at all, due to the shade usually being quite specific from extremely dark to what looks like it should be a dilute(dd) orange rather than a red and some requiring the wideband gene that gets rid of the agouti belly and makes a red look like a self. It's just not the most fun way to do it if you like color genetics instead of perfecting one color. Partially why I went for the self colors except for chinchilla ND that I used more in my ermine/frosty projects (not a recognized group of show colors in any breed as far as I know) and trying to find american chinchillas. If I liked working on one pure color I wouldn't have ended up with a silvered tort. :lol: The argente breeds are broken up by color and only the same color bred to the same color is the same breed. Creme d'argent that is basically a very light red with silver genes crossed to champagne d'argent that is black with silver genes gets you chestnuts (st hubert breed) and torts with silver(not a breed). Among other possibilities since they are rarely pure and even if they only have argente breeds in their background champagne is often used to help establish new lines of blue and chocolate with the scarce bruns and bleus available out there.
 

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