Argente silvering

So, I'm about two months away from being able to apply for a home loan. I'm so excited I can't stand it and tbh can't help but peek at zillow. And homestead plans. And I bought books on raising sheep. Y'all, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Once I've got my own property, we're going to build a rabbit barn. Or, rather, have one dropped off, because I'm many things and handy just isn't one of them. Once I have this extra space, I'm planning on starting up a real meat rabbit project. Champagnes were my first breed, and I've just always loved the silvering and the awkward splotchy phases. I think they're beautiful, and if I'm going to have meat rabbits, they might as well be pleasant to look at, too.

I know next to nothing about color genetics, and tbh don't really have much of an interest in it. I know about dilutes and chocolates, but past that? Nada. So, I'm just curious, if I were to breed a creme to a champagne, maybe mix a brun in there, would there be fun colors eventually, plus silvering? If not, what would be a variety of maybe rex or satins to bring in to eventually see some really odd colors, argente style?

TIA for humoring me. :lol:

Crossing cremes with silver fox could give you silvered steels the first generation, and maybe dilute or chocolate silvered torts after a few generations, if you use color lines.
With all the genes satins carry, I'd think you would be able to make almost anything.

MeadowView":20c6cjnv said:

So, I'm about two months away from being able to apply for a home loan. I'm so excited I can't stand it and tbh can't help but peek at zillow. And homestead plans. And I bought books on raising sheep. Y'all, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Once I've got my own property, we're going to build a rabbit barn. Or, rather, have one dropped off, because I'm many things and handy just isn't one of them. Once I have this extra space, I'm planning on starting up a real meat rabbit project. Champagnes were my first breed, and I've just always loved the silvering and the awkward splotchy phases. I think they're beautiful, and if I'm going to have meat rabbits, they might as well be pleasant to look at, too.

I know next to nothing about color genetics, and tbh don't really have much of an interest in it. I know about dilutes and chocolates, but past that? Nada. So, I'm just curious, if I were to breed a creme to a champagne, maybe mix a brun in there, would there be fun colors eventually, plus silvering? If not, what would be a variety of maybe rex or satins to bring in to eventually see some really odd colors, argente style?

TIA for humoring me. :lol:

Click to expand...

If I am to suggest a rabbit to cross in, I would say the Satins over the Rex. The lady that went through the COD process to get them accepted and I have had hours and hours of talk time about these guys, she is a friend of mine and lives like an hour from me. She's tried to keep the bruns as clean as possible but has on occasion crossed in champagnes and very rarely a satin to help keep the immune systems strong from to much in breeding. A creme is actually genetically an orange so breeding a creme to a brun will give you chestnuts. I've done this personally, they are cute. I've actually seen the champagnes, bruns, blue bruns and lilac bruns, the cremes and the chestnut bruns that I had and I really like them all but my projects require that I put the sanitized versions of those on hold for now.

I don't know how far you wanna go with the colors. A lot of the colors the silvering could be hard to see. It would be interesting to see a silvered sable though but right now there's not a gene for sable in satins. Siamese are chin/tort (sallanders).

Creme x champagne is the same as red x black just with silver and gives you creme, champagne, st hubert (chestnut), and silvered torts. Brun is a basic chocolate so would add the chocolate color to give you chocolate versions of self, agouti with different names in different breeds, and tort. Most argente are not pure though and some new zealand to give rew or occasional other uncommon breeds people are also working on may be used to add some new blood. Chinchilla may slip in there, steel is common in silver fox and champagne are sometimes used to increase the silvering in silver fox lines so it could already be in some champagne lines, and I had cinnamon crossed into some breeds because someone was working with them locally.

With sable not being common in the large breeds it's unlikely to have been mixed in anywhere. There is an American Sable breed I had for awhile that could be used to add the sable and himi gene but silver would not really show on himi. You can't make sable without the white colors of himi or rew because it is a combination of the seal/sable gene and a himi or rew gene. If you only have sable genes you get seals that range from nearly black to a dark chocolate color you can't really see the points on.

Theres lot of cool argente colors out there. There's bleus in the US too, so even if you stick without the argente breeds you have agouti, self, black, chocolate, dense, dilute, full extension and non extension genes

Here's just some pictures of cool argente color combinations (on netherland dwarfs)