Chinchilla Rex at last!!

[seashore]

We finally have a little chinchilla in our latest Rex litter!!

But it has us puzzled a bit. We understood that chin babies were black; this one was more blue and pink before the fur grew in. We figured it must be going to be a blue chin... however the fur is definitely looking black and white.

Parents genetics for reference: Father is an unshowable blue (frosty) point, Aa B_ cchl c dd ee. Mother is a black self chin, aa B_ cchdc Dd Ee. Both are almost definitely BB according to the breeder we got them from, though the buck has a bit of chocolate way back in his lines so you never know. (Note: here a REW Rex is called ermine, the same name is applied to non-extension chin in most other breeds which we call frosty in Rex here, or more commonly "another messed up chin"! I'm going to avoid the word ermine in this thread to avoid misunderstandings.)
Historically from this pairing we have gotten blue and black selfs, lots of REWs, many variations of frosties, a sable runt that died, and an extremely beautiful but unusual pale sepia doe - if sable tort is a thing, that's the closest we can guess. Two other little chinchilla marked kits have been born and not made it.

So, our current kit in question, 3.5 days old when we found it in the nest:


Now 12 days, passing its health check with flying colours:


It's very early days of course, but the ear lacing (and the adorable little tail) look black to us, not blue.



Were we just misinformed about the colour a black chinchilla kit would be before its coat grew in, or do we have something else going on??

 

[judymac]

Were we just misinformed about the colour a black chinchilla kit would be before its coat grew in, or do we have something else going on??

I vote for something else going on. The top kit is a black self chin (out of two chins), the bottom is a (black) chin, you can see the white inside the ears, and the banding on the hairshaft has begun. The kits are one week old.



Here is the black chin a little older. No shading. The hairshaft is banded, but no shading on the body.

Now look at your kit below, lots of shading on the body and down the leg. Looks like the sable gene at work, and you have had sable kits before, so the genetics is in the background. To test to see if this is indeed a sable, you could breed back to a REW albino. Since sable is dominant over albino (and Californian pointed white pattern, aka Himalayan), the kits should be only sable, Cal, or albino if this is truly sable. Normal chin is dominant over sable, so breeding chin to REW albino should also give chin patterned kits.

A closeup of the ears (albeit blurry) shows those sepia tones, not black and gray.

So, my guess would be sable chin.

 

[seashore]

Thanks very much @judymac!!!!
Sable chin makes sense now that you suggest it. Will be interesting to see how this little coat grows.

We'll keep hoping for the genetics lottery to give a proper black chin one day...

 

[Alaska Satin]

We finally have a little chinchilla in our latest Rex litter!!

But it has us puzzled a bit. We understood that chin babies were black; this one was more blue and pink before the fur grew in. We figured it must be going to be a blue chin... however the fur is definitely looking black and white.

Parents genetics for reference: Father is an unshowable blue (frosty) point, Aa B_ cchl c dd ee. Mother is a black self chin, aa B_ cchdc Dd Ee. Both are almost definitely BB according to the breeder we got them from, though the buck has a bit of chocolate way back in his lines so you never know. (Note: here a REW Rex is called ermine, the same name is applied to non-extension chin in most other breeds which we call frosty in Rex here, or more commonly "another messed up chin"! I'm going to avoid the word ermine in this thread to avoid misunderstandings.)
Historically from this pairing we have gotten blue and black selfs, lots of REWs, many variations of frosties, a sable runt that died, and an extremely beautiful but unusual pale sepia doe - if sable tort is a thing, that's the closest we can guess. Two other little chinchilla marked kits have been born and not made it.

So, our current kit in question, 3.5 days old when we found it in the nest:

Now 12 days, passing its health check with flying colours:

It's very early days of course, but the ear lacing (and the adorable little tail) look black to us, not blue.

Were we just misinformed about the colour a black chinchilla kit would be before its coat grew in, or do we have something else going on??

I agree with @judymac - that looks like a sable chinchilla. It has sepia coloring rather than the crisp black and white of a black chinchilla.

I'll post a series of photos below that show the amazing color development of sables. This pattern is recognizable whether they are sables, sable martens, or sable chins.

Sables (chinchilla or otherwise) start out looking like a washed-out blue. Here is a sable, on the bottom of the photo (with a himi siblings on the top):


As they develop, they go through a brief frosty-blue phase (sable at 4-5 days)

and then a chocolatey phase. You can see that it still looks frosty, or tipped with white, and very similar to your kit (below is broken sable at a little over a week):


Here are sables at 2 weeks, when the shading starts to be very apparent:

and here is one of them at about 5 weeks:

and again at 6 months:

 

[seashore]

I'll post a series of photos below that show the amazing color development of sables. This pattern is recognizable whether they are sables, sable martens, or sable chins.

Thank you @Alaska Satin! The photos are most informative, especially the last two and the difference maturity makes to the shading.

In the interests of getting a proper black chin, would the best idea be to one day pair this sable chin with one of our black self chins?
May not be able to achieve judymac's suggested REW breeding without crossing with an NZ, as we don't have a REW Rex doe at present and our REW Rex buck is suspected of being ee which would muddy the waters a bit more when crossed with this sable chin!

 

[eco2pia]

Sables (chinchilla or otherwise) start out looking like a washed-out blue. Here is a sable, on the bottom of the photo (with a himi siblings on the top):
View attachment 36780

As they develop, they go through a brief frosty-blue phase (sable at 4-5 days)
View attachment 36781

A great mystery has potentially been solved for me.

I had a mutt doe with some weird genetics going on, she looked like a chocolate chinchilla, and I crossed her on my American Chinchilla buck who carries REW--but who should not carry self. She had one kit who survived for only a few days and he looked like that.

I am guessing that she had Cchd,Cchl, and the kit was Cchl, c (from dad), and would have been shaded. I could NOT figure out how I got a blue self out of them to be honest, and I was just baffled. And a little concerned. Many test breedings later I am fairly confident that the buck is indeed AA. I never again got a self out of him.

 

[Cotton Rabbitry]

My pic, what color would you call this boy. He was born black and silver out quickly at 3 weeks. I have been calling him Chinchilla because he looked like my pet chinchilla when I was younger. He was my surprise, from a tri male and gray Dutch/Californian momma that have only ever given me whites, blacks, tri and one blondie

 

[eco2pia]

My pic, what color would you call this boy. He was born black and silver out quickly at 3 weeks. I have been calling him Chinchilla because he looked like my pet chinchilla when I was younger. He was my surprise, from a tri male and gray Dutch/Californian momma that have only ever given me whites, blacks, tri and one blondie

Hmmm, not easy to see in the small pic, what color is the belly?

 

[Alaska Satin]

My pic, what color would you call this boy. He was born black and silver out quickly at 3 weeks. I have been calling him Chinchilla because he looked like my pet chinchilla when I was younger. He was my surprise, from a tri male and gray Dutch/Californian momma that have only ever given me whites, blacks, tri and one blondie

Hmmm, not easy to see in the small pic, what color is the belly?

I don't see a picture at all...?

 

[Cotton Rabbitry]

He is uniform in color, his belly is not lighter or darker. The only indicator is he has half white tail on the underside

 

[kusanar314]

I don't see a picture at all...?

I think they are talking about their profile pic

 

[Cotton Rabbitry]

yes my profile pic, Bruiser is now twice that size And sired tan-grey version of himself and 4 blacks on a chocolate doe

 

[eco2pia]

He might be some kind of steel? not a chinchilla...what do you think @Alaska Satin? If you click on the profile pic a few times you can make it a little bigger.

 

[Alaska Satin]

I think they are talking about their profile pic

Love rabbits, not so good with tech...

He might be some kind of steel? not a chinchilla...what do you think @Alaska Satin? If you click on the profile pic a few times you can make it a little bigger.

Yes, now that I can find the picture , that's what he looks like to me - a silver-tipped steel. I have noticed that steels do sometimes have remnants of agouti markings (slight eye circles, faint ear lining, light undertail, like that), but they don't have that telltale creamy belly. Although I have heard that they occasionally do, I've never seen it.

yes my profile pic, Bruiser is now twice that size And sired tan-grey version of himself and 4 blacks on a chocolate doe

I'm guessing that the tan-grey offspring is a gold-tipped steel, meaning Bruiser gave it the agouti <A> and the steel <Es>, but not the chinchilla <cchd> that removes the yellow pigment (or he gave the <cchd> but the mother gave a dominant <C> which produced full color). The four blacks could be self blacks or self steels (meaning they may carry steel but not express it, since it needs an agouti allele to present as steel) or some of each.

Chestnuts, chinchillas and steels all start out looking black (with lighter ear linings and bellies in the first two), but fairly quickly start to show the ticking in their coats.

 

[Cotton Rabbitry]

Thank you, the little blacks have the same frosting as Momma but not as pronounced (very few white hairs streaking them like their grand sire). All mine are mutt rabbits so I know coloring is a guessing game. Momma looks like a coco cream puff with a dark chocolate nose.

 

[seashore]

Hello,

Some updated pics of our little Rex lady, who hasn't gone very sepia at all...!! @Alaska Satin and @judymac is this look still consistent with sable chin? Photos taken Saturday, she will be 5 weeks old on Tuesday.
Bit blurry as she's good and active. She has the ruby light in her eye like sable often gives.

 

[Cotton Rabbitry]

Pretty little gal

 

[seashore]

Pretty little gal

Thank you!!
She's definitely winning in the genetics lottery here nice little personality so far and closest we've come to a chinchilla yet.

 

[Julie Stade]

closest we've come to a chinchilla yet.

My husband fell in love with the Chinchilla coloring on a Rex coat this weekend at the Mini Rex National, so now he's determined to pull black Chinchilla (the only Chin we can show in Rex) from our herd. LOL As if we don't already have a whole slew of varieties to work on.

I do have two fake Seals (self-black Chins) we'd been showing to provide the cchd gene for him that we'd bought from a show breeder up in IA. When I'd test bred the "Seal" doe to my daughter's GC White buck, we had two Whites, two more fake Seals, and a Silver Marten (which we can't show), so she's definitely not a true Seal (cchl cchl) as that should have produced a whole litter of sables if she had been. So I'm pretty sure she's aa B_ cchd/c D_ E_.

His current plan now is to find a Castor Rex that carries White to cross with the fake Seals/self-black Chins and provide the Agouti gene component to make black Chinchillas. He's excited about it, but I'm mentally counting all the cage holes I'm going to lose to another side project. LOL We were already showing Blacks, Blues, Brokens, Otters, Seals (the fake ones), and Whites and have top-quality bucks coming in June of additional varieties as well (plus, we have the chocolate gene b spread throughout our herd, so it's only a matter of time on Chocolates and Lilacs popping out too). At this rate we'll be raising all 16 showable Rex varieties!!