Tort help

Would these be broken black torts? They look black on the ears, but some of them the markings on the back look more chocolate to me? I could be mistaken, still learning. Would love another opinion!
They are exactly 1 week today.

What magnificent rich color! Are they out of nice rich mahogany coppers or reds? You're right, the back looks brown while the ears are black, but I'm wondering if it is really just very dark rufus instead. It is the ideal to have red New Zealands show that depth of color on the reds, and tort is simply the same genetics for the red without the agouti gene, they are a non-agouti self color.

Oh I’m so sorry! I thought I put lop tort help! These are holland lops. Out of broken black tort mom and black buck.

NicoleW said:

Would these be broken black torts? They look black on the ears, but some of them the markings on the back look more chocolate to me? I could be mistaken, still learning. Would love another opinion!
They are exactly 1 week today.

Click to expand...

Those are some amazing-looking bunnies. The color on their backs is really something!

However, the kits would not be chocolate on that part of their bodies if those were chocolate torts. Rather, the shaded-looking markings on the ears, nose, lower flanks and tail would be chocolate, while the body color would be orange/red just like a black tort.

A black tort is a non-extension self black. It sometimes helps if you think of a self black rabbit as an orange rabbit with a layer of black over the top (i.e., instead of making rings of black alternating with orange like an agouti, the self alleles <aa> cause the black to cover the whole hair, covering up the normally orange intermediate ring). The non-extension alleles <ee> kind of counteract that, by restricting most of the black pigment, allowing the orange underneath to show up again. The black still covers the orange on the shorter hairs, i.e. the nose, face, ears, feet, belly, lower flanks and tail. So, for example, you get this if it's a black tort:

and if it's a blue tort, in which the dilute alleles affect both the dark and the light pigments, you get this:

A chocolate tort would have chocolate where you see black or blue on those rabbits, respectively. Chocolate is not a dilute color, so you would not necessarily expect the orange to change in response to a kit being chocolate-based rather than black-based.

The intensity of the color on a tort can vary quite a bit depending on other factors in addition to the self and non-extension genes. Extra rufus modifiers can intensify the orange to a deep rufus red, like @judymac suggests, and umbrous or darkening modifers can increase the darkness of the dark pigment. Hair length can also affect how much of the rabbit is shaded. And for some reason, some torts have much more torting than others. Here is a very "torted" black tort (called "smutty" color, also due to being in molt), who also had wonderful intensity to her rich rufus body color:


To me, your bunnies look like black torts with very rich orange/red like the Mini Rex doe above, except maybe the kits pictured in -9368, -9373, and -9380. Those have shaded parts that look more blue, and their orange color is more muted, as you would expect in a dilute.

Alaska Satin said:

To me, your bunnies look like black torts with very rich orange/red like the Mini Rex doe above, except maybe the kits pictured in -9368, -9373, and -9380. Those have shaded parts that look more blue, and their orange color is more muted, as you would expect in a dilute.

Click to expand...

I agree, torts only show their fawn/orange/red color on their back and main body, shading down to their genetic self color on the points (ears, face, feet, tail). A rabbit with black points is a black tort, chocolate brown face is a chocolate tort, blue face is a blue tort, lilac face is a lilac tort. At birth, you don't usually notice the points much, but by the time the eyes are open, the points are visible. What you do notice at birth are the lack of agouti markings--no white inner ears, no light belly. Self patterned rabbits have inner ears at birth with color, and the belly is colored as well. Once the coat starts growing in, the fawn/orange/red main body color becomes obvious.

As @Alaska Satin noted, the depth of color on the main body can vary widely, yours appears to have great rich color, just lovely! I once had that kind of rich color, until I fell in love with some very pale pastel-shaded rabbits. They weren't dilute (like black to blue or chocolate to lilac), simply had poor color depth. All I knew is that they looked lovely, and I added them to my herd. By the time I realized that I had lost my deep rich color in the kits, it was too late--the damage to the genetics was done, and I never did recover the rich color.

They say that the dark coloration works like the rufus (red) factor--think of there being, say, six slots that can be either plus or minus. An average rabbit might be +++---, balancing out the color depth. Those super pale pastels I had decades ago might be -----+. Super dark rich colors might be +++++-. Each rabbit can donate three of the six -/+ slots to its offspring, a random chance. If you breed two rabbits with rich color, the odds of the kits having rich color as well are good. Save the deepest colored kits, and you can continue have rich colored kits. However, once you mate to a very poor colored rabbit, it has little to offer except minus signs, meaning odds are that even mated to a spectacularly deep colored rabbit, odds are the offspring will only be mediocre. If you mate two of the mediocre rabbits, you could end up with both contributing what little of the plus signs it has, and get a nicely colored offspring, but odds are you will get more mediocre rabbits (color-depth-wise, this has nothing to do with the other traits like body conformation, hair type, mothering ability, temperament, etc.), and perhaps some very pale ones.

This is why they say to breed reds to reds, as both have plus rufus factors. Breeding to a rabbit with mediocre to negative rufus factor will result in poor to non-rufus offspring. I know a breeder that had the most spectacular rich red rabbits. She fell in love with an albino white buck, and bred all of her rabbits to him. She soon had a barn full of conformationally wonderful rabbits that won blue ribbons, but the rufus factor was almost gone, her 'reds' were really just fawns with a smidge of rufus, not the mahogany rich red she used to have.

I think I must have forgotten about the Rufus factor! Well, and grouping them all black tort, because until today they all did appear to be identical color. To me anyway. After reading both of your responses, 3 black tort and 1 blue tort. Is that correct? Ugh, it feels like every time I start to think I’m on to understanding something, I forget another factor and then I’m just confused. Then frustrated with myself! It looks like it should be feasible info to absorb, genetics, but I’m having issues with it sticking.

Thank you for being thorough and explaining in different ways! It does help to better understand.

Now that the fur has come in a little more. I believe this is the one I was questioning. Would she be a black tort as well? Her face markings are just not as dark as the litter mates.

It’s hard to tell with the lighting. In certain pictures, she looks like a blue tort, but in others I’m not so sure. I have a broken blue tort that I’m growing out to breed, and this is what she looks like. This is a picture of her when she was 12 weeks, I don’t have any more recent photos, but her blue colors really started to pop when she got older. She’s really very pretty, I love blue torts.