Black marten vs Black Otter

Is there an easy way to determine Black Silver Marten vs Black Otter on Wooly babies?


We are just venturing into more tan patterns with our Jersey Woolies. We purchased a REW buck that genetically has quite a bit of silver marten as well as sable marten in his lineage. We bred to a black otter, and to our excitement we got 7 babies. One bun is blue otter, the rest are...

Well they’re all black tan pattern babies. They aren’t sable, they’re black. I can see a couple have light fawn/creamy colored triangles, but definitely not the *orange* of black otter mom. One baby has just the slightest pale brown whisper for a triangle. They all have ticking on their flanks, but again we aren’t really able to discern if it’s white or incredibly light fawn color even in natural full sunlight. Eye rings are pale creamy color. Markings are pretty crisp on all but two, with two having quite a bit of facial nose mealiness/ticking.

We can’t tell if it’s just because they’re woolies that this is so hard? In any other breed, black otter is easily discernible from silver marten for us.

This is the first breeding for this pair. We are considering culling from our herd because of these wonky colors.

Otters have brown/tan trim between the black and white
Martens don't

A REW cannot carry silver or sable marten so the otter parent must be the source

Sounds like your otter kits just have poor colouring which isn't uncommon in chinchilla, sable and marten bloodlines as you want as little brown tones in the colouring as possible

Dood,


If REW cannot carry silver or marten, do you have any guesses why this litter is all wonky then? Something just doesn’t play well in the genes between these two?

Mom is a very nice black otter and she has always had very well marked babies for us, including several gorgeous blue otter babies. This is her first litter of 100% tan pattern babies, she has never produced marten until now. About ~30 kits she’s produced for us and never anything like these kits before.