si silvering?

I would love resources on the silvering gene(s). Can anyone point me in the correct direction for the information on the three types?

Unfortunately there is practically nothing in english so I have not kept any resources except to compare the genes designated on rabbitcolors.info. I haven't been active in silvered breeds recently but I don't think we know anything more about how they work than we did several years ago. The only answer that can be given in most cases is "it's complicated".

>.< The only non-English language I might have a shot at is Spanish. So, likely I won't get far in the literature. And of course it is complicated! Why? Because I want to try to figure it out. Ugh. Do you happen to remember what language the research used? Or what publication I might see if I can sort it out?

Most info would be from Europe. The heavily silvered argents started in France and domestic rabbits are from wild European rabbits so there are several genes and breeds there not found in North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argente_rabbit
Probably most commonly I run into breeder websites and articles about genes/breeds not found or at least not common in the US that are in German or Nordic languages.

For the record, Robinson (see first post in the "Links to genetics material" sticky) has a couple of pages on silvering but (IMO) no useful conclusions. It regards silvering as being due to interactions between many genes that are not well-enough understood to assign them symbols. It summarises the results and possible explanations from various papers (from 1912 through 1929) that appear to be in English, German and Polish.

with the links akane posted I noticed that the heavily silvered dwarf looking rabbit says "modifier si3si3". the lightly silvered dwarf looking rabbit says "modifier si3Si".

so.. I got nothing on what that could mean but it did catch my attention.

could it mean there is room in this area for multiple silvering modifiers to hang out?

do these modifiers work the same in a regular punnet square or do they have different rules? because if the si1 and si3 (and maybe the ethereal si2) are the first place modifier and the Si is the second place modifier. since they are variations on the same theme.
someone who is better at this than me would make this sound more intelligent! haha!

if you do a regular punnet square though and using si3Si you end up with 3 out of 4 as si3Si, then the last one is SiSi. which would explain the oddballs especially if people don't know/understand that its a possibility.


ok so this page of all the silvering rabbits has rabbits as si1, si2, and si3..
http://rabbitcolors.info/int/en/entries/si/1.html

the si1si1 rabbits seem to be quite sparse silvering.
the si2si2 rabbits seem to be 'middle of the road' even silvering.
the si3si3 rabbits seem to be 'I'll take a hint of color with my silvering' really really heavy silvering.

when things get mixed and matched there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason just based on those pics of how they affect each other. you got si2Si with pretty heavily silvering compared to the SFs I have seen.

....making more questions for myself..
does this mean that si1/2/3 can take up only the first part of the sequence? so they can not mix between them? only Si can fit in as the second part of the sequence if they are not homozygous for whichever of the si1/2/3?

in which case you can only have si1si1 or si1Si.. same for si2 and si3.. so the homozygous vs the Si is the modifier within the modifier.. :|

It also may depend on whether si1, si2, and si3 are all mutations of the same gene or separate genes. If they are all the same gene, then they are much more likely to have interactions than if they are seperate genes (still possible but not as likely). For example, if all alleles are on the same gene, an s3s1 rabbit could have a variation somewhere between s1 and s3 and still be considered homozygous for silvering as it would have two copies of different silver alleles.

I think the rabbitcolors.info site allows anyone to add photos and I'm not sure how much admin oversight goes into it. It's a good tool, just be aware that there maybe errors.

Silvering in SF is not a one to one inheritance. Two heavily silvered rabbits produce the gamut of silvering. Two lightly silvered Sf can produce a littler of heavily silvered rabbits too.

I'm pretty sure that the 1/2/3 suffixes on the rabbitcolors site are not meant to indicate different genes or even well-defined alleles of a single silvering gene, they are just a site-specific convention to record the degree of silvering. That's what the on-site documentation implies to me (although it is vague), and I haven't seen these suffixes used elsewhere.

Most of my SF cross mutts had very little silver, and didn't throw any kits that silvered out even when bred to other SF crosses who should have had the gene.

What does silvering look like when it is **just** starting? my SF x Californian litter have this crazy tint. at first I was going back and forth on if it was just *barely* visible steel ticking... but it doesn't look like steel ticking at all... It is barely noticeable I don't think I could catch it on camera. Actually it reminded me of another conversation I was just reading about how satin and rex and angora different qualities that make them what they are.. And satin is like hollow etc.. I was thinking when you part the fur some of the tipping looks like its hollow and just the right shade like it is fading away like a time travel movie or something.

It will be interesting with my line breeding to see how the silvering goes, if at all. I am not super worried about how silver they are or anything but it will be very cool to see <br /><br /> __________ Tue May 17, 2016 10:51 pm __________ <br /><br /> WHO HAD THE TWO TONE KIT? I am about to head to bed but there is someone on the "silver fox rabbit breeders" fb group who has a weirdly toned kit as well. Doe was NZ/FG bred to a blue SF buck. the persons explanation of how it looked is "His back is dark blue and his sides n belly are a very light blue color with the SF fur" there is better pics in the comments. it looks almost like someone painted splotches on him and they are heavily silvered and SF type fur then there is almost a saddle like a LH where the fur is not the same and a totally different shade.

Zass":3sao22pm said:

Most of my SF cross mutts had very little silver, and didn't throw any kits that silvered out even when bred to other SF crosses who should have had the gene.

Click to expand...

That's irritating. It's like a gene with no clear rules.

The angora cross doe does have silvering, but it's not that noticeable when she's in full coat.

__________ Wed May 18, 2016 1:16 pm __________

honestly I can't remember if any of the first crosses silvered in, I don't think they had as much silvering as she does now.
Oddly, I don't seem to have any baby SF photos.

To me, it really does sound like there are at least a couple of different mutations and it sounds like at least the SilverFox version is a semi-dominant. This would mean that an animal with two copies of the mutation expresses more than an animal with one. It could also be that the mutations could be co-dominant with one another meaning that an s1s3 animal would express more silvering than and s1s1 animal but less than an s3s3 animal.

Also keep in mind that like all white patterns, well all genes actually, there are variations in expression. It's probable that animals that have been bred to limit random white hair, will have suppressors that could limit the expression of silvering. Especially, if only one copy of the mutation is present.

Of course, all this is speculation on my part. I still think some breeding studies would be really interesting.

That sounds reasonable.

I've noticed too in breeding that the silvering on blacks is usually heavier than on the blues.

resurrecting this thread because my cali x SF litter (first litter) is 9wks old tomorrow and the three does all have silvering coming in. the one with the most silvering so far also has the best shape so she will stay but I think the other two will be headed to freezer camp (or 'north of the wall' hahaha for anyone who saw the chatbox recently, game of thrones reference).

the second litter (same parents) is now 17 days old and I am seeing the fur has that same slight color/shade off-ness oddity and I would guess they will get some silvering too when they are older.

The silvering is peppered lightly on their bellies and very lightly starting to pepper in on their backs. the main area of silvering coming in, oddly enough to me, is right under the tail. I noticed the silvering.. oh, about last week.. I will try to get pics tomorrow.

I am very curious to see what the keeper doe has this fall bred to her sire!