Red and Fawn?

Is Fawn (aka Golden) a dilute of Red?

OR

If I breed my red New Zealand doe to my golden Palomino buck, will it absolutely destroy the color? We can't find any more stock and are desperate for new blood.

I believe it is a dilute of red, but with the modifiers for red I am not sure what it will do to your color. I have some light reds in my herd that darken as they age to "orange" and some true dark reds. The true reds are already orange at birth, the light ones start out fawn...

Here is a doe at 8 weeks


Here is the same doe at 3 months


I would like to know more about this subject also. The doe is now at 6 months almost indistinguishable from the true reds--just slightly lighter.

She looks the same color as our Pals lol.

I hope only in the first pic? She has darkened considerably now, I should try to get a recent pic too. She is really solid in the butt and loin, I have kept her in spite of the color. Also her temperament is really sweet.

Rather than fawn being a dilution of red, think of red as being essentially the same as fawn, plus wide band modifiers.

It doesn't look like your doe has a whole heck of a lot of those modifiers, anyway, so breeding to a Pal would retain the base color, (Offspring will likely be a bit more washed out,) but it will require you finding another rabbit with good wideband red color to start working towards getting those modifiers back.

breed them, breed dad back to daughter, keep the darkest, reddest son. Breed son from first mating to that daughter keeping the darkest. AND hopefully in those 4-12 months grow out times you'll have found some new NZR's to add to your herd.

There could be some problems with the belly color. Pals have "light cream to white" bellies. NZR bellies are "to approximate the top color".

But it might get You thru until a red buck can be located...

I have yet to see an NZR with the full wrap like they're supposed to have! Apparently the red color and the ww wide band gene came from the Belgian Hare, is this something that is getting lost in the NZR? Does anyone have pictures of rabbits that actually have red bellies?

The ones that I had as a kid were ORANGE with creme bellies. Beautiful stocky well-built rabbits, but not at all what I would consider a red.

Ok the OP came from Caitlin, who WANTS the light Palomino color...

I was hoping that my doe was just lacking in modifiers since I have those elsewhere...But since she was asking about red/fawn and dilution I jumped in--I want dark, she wants light and is having trouble finding a Palomino buck...other than our interest in the same genetics we have no connection on this.

:sorry: Didn't mean to hijack the thread!

So anyway, if I understand correctly, my doe is not AABBCCddeeww, but is AABBCCDDeeww with very few rufous modifiers?

What would a AABBCCddeeww look like then? Would it stay fawn, or is it another color entirely? Is a Palomino an dd dilute, or just "----" modifiers?

eta: Rachel, I have a few with orange bellies and red backs, but many are more like this doe--orange backs and apricot bellies. I mostly have those lap patches, which come along with the agouti gene I believe. I have only ever seen a few that are half a shade lighter than your thriantas. The darker ones have a more mandolin body shape, I think they look more like hares too, big spoon shaped ears, pretty smaller refined heads. I think you are right, the ones that are closer to the hares have the better color.

The red comes from the modifiers, but you also can have Tan or just regular Agouti colors.
Which results in different patterns of wrap on the belly.

Sorry everyone, I forgot to specify. I'm trying to KEEP the Palomino color. There's plenty of New Zealand reds in our area, and no Palominos.

Sorry for the confusion.<br /><br />__________ Wed Aug 31, 2011 4:00 am __________<br /><br />

eco2pia":2dzouro8 said:

I hope only in the first pic? She has darkened considerably now, I should try to get a recent pic too. She is really solid in the butt and loin, I have kept her in spite of the color. Also her temperament is really sweet.

Click to expand...

Actually in both pictures, more the second then the first. In the first she's about the same as our very young babies. If you often have lighter reddish ones like this, I would be interested in buying some from you for our Palomino program...

well, in that case.... do what I said above, just do it for the colour that you want to keep. If you get more palomino colours, keep those ones. And just keep breeding for the colour and perhaps within the year you'll find new ones.

Palomino is a chocolate-based red and the picture of that 8 week old doe looks like it is a chocolate based. New Zealands I thought would be a black based? But anything can happen lol. So there are THREE TYPES of reds PLUS they could also have their corresponding dilutes.. Black chocolate and wide-band. Wide-band does not always occur in all reds and seems to be prevalent in thriantas. However I know the last decade or so Thriantas have been used to bring red into a lot of other breeds so the wide-band is defiantly floating around out there and is popping up in a lot of other colours.

PS Nice doe Eco2pia!

Thanks! I am unsure where the chocolate would come from. On this doe's pedigree, she is red all the way back on the dam's side, and REW on the buck's. The buck also carried steel, and was culled for it I believe.

The dam also looks more orange than red, but is registered and has an awesome type. I was hoping that my doe would get more depth as she filled out...need to take senior pics of her, she has kits right now.

If she had chocolate crossed in it would have had to come from both parents, and that just seems really unlikely, however, this is the birthplace of the Pal breed--I am wondering if someone crossed Pals into her line somewhere...that seems like a likely thing around here. And having checked out the Pal breed site, YES she looks JUST like one!! O.O

Okay first Palomino's are not chocolate based reds, they are black based fawns. What is called 'Lynx' in Pals is actually a blue fawn. This was very apparant when we(me and my color guru buddy) went over to see my friends new Pals, of which she has about 6, one of which is a Lynx. I was expecting chocolate, instead it was another one of those stupid lets call it this even though thats not what it is situations. I also have bred reds to fawns, and my friend has bred her pal doe to a NZ, so I can tell you what has occurred in those two situations. First off reds, oranges, fawns are all the same color, divided only by name and amount of rufus. Rufus is cumulative, meaning that you can add to it by breeding redder rabbits together, or decrease it by breeding to lighter fawn animals. I've bred Thriantas to a lighter fawn rabbit, and it took three generations to bring down the rufus to what I'd call orange. But thats a really red rabbit. In the case of the Pal outcross the NZ buck they used was a chestnut who carried non-extension, they used him because he was a very aggressive breeder and the Pal doe would not allow the Pal bucks to breed her. They got fawns and chestnuts. Kits so far look very fawn, no smut on their ears yet, have to wait to see how they turn out. This buck that they used has produced very weak colored reds in the past, I saw one of them, definite fawn with dark ear lacing, could probably have passed for a smutty Pal. All of my friends pure Pals vary in depth of color, I think they are wide band, but there are paler and more orangey ones. She was talking about letting her Lynx buck go, too bad your not closer.

Every site I have on genetics says fawn is A- B- C- dd ee with some sites also calling it cream or blue orange as well as fawn. Whether the breeders of every breed applied that name to the same set of genetics though is another matter. Sometimes if something gets close enough in color they use the name from another breed with that color even if they haven't sorted out whether the genetics are the same or not so fawn may not always be fawn.

Honorine":3o0kwlsd said:

Okay first Palomino's are not chocolate based reds, they are black based fawns. What is called 'Lynx' in Pals is actually a blue fawn. This was very apparant when we(me and my color guru buddy) went over to see my friends new Pals, of which she has about 6, one of which is a Lynx.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Golden Pal is definitely a black-based fawn. It's a step down from orange in rufus modifiers, just like red is a step up. And yeah, you can have choc-based orange and red without it being too different-looking, but a choc-based fawn is more noticeable I think. "Lynx" Palomino is definitely a blue-fawn aka cream, not a true lilac-based lynx.

In every breed that recognizes fawn: Silver, Flemish Giant, the Lops, the Angoras, and the breeds that have gold like English Spot and Dutch, it's black-based with brown eyes. The singular exception is Netherland Dwarf, where the color they call fawn is truly a cream, calling for blue-gray eyes.

Fawn: A_ B_ C_ D_ ee

Cream/ Blue-fawn: A_ B_ C_ dd ee