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Steel is a type of agouti. ARBA uses the word 'tipping', as in Gold-tipped Steel and Silver-tipped Steel, because that is what the color looks like, you'd swear that the hair is tipped in gold or silver. In reality, what makes steel look different from regular E agouti, is that in steel the band...

I'm so sorry to hear of your troubles, predator problems just break your heart. Weasels can fit through 3/4" holes, rats fit through amazingly small holes as well. The normal 1" x 2" or even 1" x 1" sides often used for cages just doesn't work in this situation. It isn't fair. It isn't easy to...

Dd and DD would look the same. If she is DD and bred to a dilute dd buck, the kits would all be Dd and look full dense color, as it takes two dd to make a dilute kit. E(S) E(S) is a supersteel, and would look more like a self black. E(S) E is the proper steel genotype. E(S)e tends to look more...

Just look to see if the band is yellowish (orange/fawn) or silvery white. Yellowish is agouti, chinchilla c(chd) will be silvery white. An easy place to look is the triangle behind the ears, it will be yellowish or silvery white. C with any other color option will look full color chinchilla...

The chestnut coloration is an optical illusion, it is a mixture of the outer hair color and the middle yellowish band. To determine whether you are looking at black or chocolate based colors, use the newborn color. If you don't know what the newborn color was, look around the edge of the ears or...

The agouti gene (coded 'A') is a switch that turns on special patterning. The dominant choice is agouti patterning, wild rabbit color, with white eye rings, light inside the ears, light belly, and bands on the hair shaft. As @reh has pointed out, the bands consist of a dark tip (either black or...

Chinchilla is just the regular agouti colors (black, blue, chocolate & lilac) with the yellowish bands removed. So the black-based chestnut/castor becomes a chinchilla (black chin), blue agouti (opal) becomes blue chin (squirrel), chocolate agouti becomes chocolate chin, and lilac agouti (lynx)...

Great photo comparison, it will be interesting to see how the color changes as they grow. Please keep us posted!

You can compare the fiber sample from her son: With the doe's sample: On her son, the silvery band below the tips is quite noticeable, makes a visible band. But on the doe, without the closeup magnification, you don't even see that tiny little band near the tip in a side view. You only see it...

Ah, finally, a real good test to distinguish steel (which is an agouti variation) from silvering (which is what Silver Fox have)! If you click on the photo and use the 'enlarge' button, look close at the tips of the hairs from the doe, you can see that there is a short black tip, then the short...

What a fabulous idea, that is so helpful. Thank you!

I don't do much in the way of showing, but I believe they generally have different judges for each section of the show, each with their own philosophy of what it most important, so the results can definitely vary. Judging has the Standard of Perfection to work with, which is an objective guide...

Great idea! I'll give it a try.

Thank you for this explanation. And yes, I wondered. When you read human hair color studies, they suggest the reason we have so many different hair colors is because the hairshaft is colored with a blend of pigments. I've read a number of technical journal articles on this, but I think Wikipedia...

Thank you @reh for your reply, I appreciate that. So, I checked a regular chestnut agouti to compare (see photo below)--I noticed two differences: The agouti bands were all wider in the normal chestnut. The black tips were longer in the chestnut, and the orange (fawn, yellowish) band wider as...

I was editing some hair sample photos, and noticed something else that may affect the wild gray chestnut color. I think I now know why the color looks so gray overall. In the chestnut agouti rabbits, the middle yellow (fawn/orange) band really looks yellowish But the wild gray samples I had...

I see I need may need to reword this. While ww does increase the width of the middle orange (yellow/fawn) band, that doesn't necessarily take the dark tips off the fiber or eliminate the base slate band. It just makes the orange band much wider. Forty years ago, we used to have what we called...

This makes sense, I've been suspecting chocolate genetics as a possible cause of the poor color depth on the hairshaft as well. It would make sense, since catalase B is an enzyme that revs up (is a catalyst) melanin production. Without it, the color is more anemic, just brown. The bb recessive...

Sorry to ask so many questions, but I want to get this right. @reh could you explain the process of how non-extension ee really works? It seems to turn off the eumelanin (black, blue, chocolate, lilac) and pigments with pheomelanin (yellow/red/orange/cream/fawn) instead. I've seen fawn agouti...

Okay, so another question--I think the normal active-growth period for rabbit hair is about six-weeks, but for Angora rabbits it stretches out to double that (about 13 weeks). Does the melanophore that produces the little melanin pigment packets (melanosomes) have a limited amount of melanin to...