Agouti colored meat rabbits with SF coat, project progress

[LPH_NY]

Well, I'm about an hour to the northeast of Syracuse, so it sounds like it would be a five hour trip. If there was any chance I could make it, or make it to your two-hours-away point, would you require that I continue trying for the same goals as your program? Because I'd love to have him for his color and cold hardiness and all the work you put into making him a good meaty... but I'd be using him to breed my satins. So some of your hard work would be lost. He's handsome. What's his personality like?

 

[Zass]

That is a long trip for a $10 mutt!!!
and no, I certainly wouldn't impose my personal goals on anyone else.

He's docile, but not-in-your-face friendly yet, and he's only 7 weeks now. So...we're looking at at least a week before he can even be legally sold in PA or NY.

I'm not going to be filling my cages with anything but those little harli doelings...and they won't need their own pen for at least a month or two.
Hmmm, since there is no rush, maybe we could just keep an eye open for someone already making the trip through?

 

[LPH_NY]

Zass, I sent you a PM.

 

[Zass]

The lynx doeling is out of the same buck, and a different doe.

The lynx buckling is from Dovetuft x Frett

The lynx doe is from Feather(or Heather) X Frett

I mixed up those litters when they were small, but Heather and Feather were full siblings...so it didn't really matter much IMO.

Anyway, she was mostly retained for her temper, as I was REALLY trying to get the temper down, but she lacks the standup coat I wanted.

She's being kept with Sushi for now, since he's not at all an aggressive buck and Velveteens really like having cuddle buddies. Far from the first time I've used v-lops for "taming."

She competes with him for attention. (See she crammed her head under my hand when I was trying to photograph Sushi. :roll: )

I don't know if she will grow up to be "hormonal" though. :shrug:

 

[LPH_NY]

I'm RESURRECTING this thread!

I got the Lynx buckling (Bearnaise) and a lovely Squirrel doe (Daisy) from Zass in August, along with a chocolate agouti doe (Schnitzel) from some of the same bloodlines... and I would like to continue this project. The goal is to produce gorgeous fast growing meat mutts with a stand up coat in chocolate agouti, opal and lynx colors. But I have a question...

- Having only one buck and 2 does from the project, none of which have the "stand-up" coat of a pure SF, is it even possible to get much closer? Bearnaise, the buck, has a very dense fluffy coat - he's closer to the goal than either doe. In the litter of 3 week old kits by Daisy x Bearnaise, some definitely have denser, fluffier coats. If I select the BEST of these (for great health and size plus the dense coat) and breed back to Bearnaise, will I possibly get closer? Or is it most likely that progress toward the stand-up coat will wind up at a standstill with the next cross?

 

[Zass]

(For anyone wondering, that same lynx doe turned into a complete psycho at puberty, so I ate her. Breeding her probably would have calmed her down for a bit, but then she would very likely have been psycho again once the kits were born. NO THANKS.)

I scrapped this project due to loving my harlequins so much. Harlequins are tricky, and you have to breed a lot to get anything good, so the whole rabbitry is currently dedicated to just magpie harlequins.

As to the rabbits LPHNY has...
Theoretically, they have modifiers not yet expressed.

A good analogy would be to compare it to NZ lines where reds were crossed with whites. The "red" kits often come out with washed out fawn-looking coats. Breeding them together can produce offspring with more rufus expressed, and progress can be made.
It might be slow...

Those crosses had to be two generations away from Sf in order to get away from super steel, so really, none of them are very high percentage.

Adding another Sf to the program would definitely help.

The hard part would be locating any SF stock that has good tempered does (in this area) and is not genetically super steel. It's impossible to tell if SF have steel without test breeding.

Super steels can be used...It just takes two generations to completely get rid of it. If they were mine still, I'd see if I could get anything good by line breeding, and also keep an eye out SF to add to the bloodlines. Does are best, since their temper is apparent. The bucks typically act sweet, but seem to be able to pass on psycho-doe genes.

 

[LPH_NY]

Adding another Sf to the program would definitely help.

The hard part would be locating any SF stock that has good tempered does (in this area) and is not genetically super steel. It's impossible to tell if SF have steel without test breeding.

Super steels can be used...It just takes two generations to completely get rid of it. If they were mine still, I'd see if I could get anything good by line breeding, and also keep an eye out SF to add to the bloodlines. Does are best, since their temper is apparent. The bucks typically act sweet, but seem to be able to pass on psycho-doe genes.

You know what? I would NOT be heartbroken about steel showing up in this line! I really love steels. I'm on the lookout for a SF breeder around here. For right now, I'll see what Bearnaise and the girls produce, select the most promising does and breed back to him. Maybe keep a promising buckling to put with a SF doe just to see where that gets me. It should be interesting.

 

[Zass]

Adding another Sf to the program would definitely help.

The hard part would be locating any SF stock that has good tempered does (in this area) and is not genetically super steel. It's impossible to tell if SF have steel without test breeding.

Super steels can be used...It just takes two generations to completely get rid of it. If they were mine still, I'd see if I could get anything good by line breeding, and also keep an eye out SF to add to the bloodlines. Does are best, since their temper is apparent. The bucks typically act sweet, but seem to be able to pass on psycho-doe genes.

You know what? I would NOT be heartbroken about steel showing up in this line! I really love steels. I'm on the lookout for a SF breeder around here. For right now, I'll see what Bearnaise and the girls produce, select the most promising does and breed back to him. Maybe keep a promising buckling to put with a SF doe just to see where that gets me. It should be interesting.

:lol: After I did all that work to get rid of it!
Oh well. :roll: Steels are pretty too, and it's often said they grow well.

 

[Rainey]

:lol: After I did all that work to get rid of it!
Oh well. :roll: Steels are pretty too, and it's often said they grow well.

This is probably a dumb question I see lots of discussion of color genetics. Does color affect growth rate? How would steel and growth be linked?

 

[Zass]

:lol: After I did all that work to get rid of it!
Oh well. :roll: Steels are pretty too, and it's often said they grow well.

This is probably a dumb question I see lots of discussion of color genetics. Does color affect growth rate? How would steel and growth be linked?

I have no idea.
It's just something that keeps being mentioned. It may just be a myth, but, many commercial meat breeds,(including NZ, Calis, Silver fox, Champagne d'argents and Americans that I know of) do seem to have very high rates of hidden steel.
All of those breeds have coats that hide steel, so it's usually only turned up through cross breeding. Though occasionally, someone will get a false self that produces visible steel(agouti) offspring...

It seems possible that it could be connected to increased growth or hardiness somehow, and that it is being invisibility selected for in those breeds.
*rambling*
With rabbits, optimum growth seems to be directly connected to optimum digestion.
If I were looking for a link, I'd probably start there, especially since there are color genes known to be linked to digestive problems..
Broken and vienna for example.

 

[Rainey]

When we were first getting started and I saw the first different colored kits--I think gold-tipped steel--I remember thinking that was not good and blaming Sky, our SF buck, after reading your frustrated posts about the steel showing up in your SF crossed mutts. Didn't really matter for us since we're not doing fur, just meat. Now looking back, I realize how often I jumped to conclusions without enough information. And looking at the does we kept from those first litters and then bred this year, the one with the steel is just over 9 pounds now as an adult while her sister is about 7 and a half. But the smaller one has slightly outperformed the larger in number of kits and the growth of the kits. I'll have to keep watching to see if that is a coincidence or a trend that will continue. The juniors I kept this year I think are all "blue" and don't have steel.
And is there any significance to most of the commercial meat rabbits being white? In the wild that is usually a liability but can you see any reason white would align with better growth?

(I can't throw off this cold and I've lost my voice and can't get out for walks so have time for all sorts of rabbit wonderings)

 

[Zass]

Your blues could still have and pass along steel genes invisibly, it's just that self (solid color) coats hide it.

White fur was preferred due to white hair not showing up on a carcass as easily as dark fur, and white pelts were favored due to the fact that they could be dyed any color.

 

[twr]

Regarding ways that colour and growth-rate might be linked, I suspect there is some cross-talk between the A/E colour-switching system and mechanisms for maintaining body weight. MC1R (the rabbit E colour gene) is closely related to MC4R, which has a known role in meat rabbit weight. Similarly, alpha-MSH is another part of the A/E colour-switching system and is a derivative of pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) which has a known role in meat rabbit weight.

Refs for the roles of MC4R and POMC in rabbit weight (so far, I've only skimmed the abstracts):
Fontanesi, L., Scotti, E., Cisarova, K., Di Battista, P., Dall’olio, S., Fornasini, D. & Frabetti, A. (2013) - A missense mutation in the rabbit melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) gene is associated with finishing weight in a meat rabbit line
Liu, W.-C., Chen, S.-Y., Jia, X.-B., Wang, J. & Lai, S.-J. (2014) - Effects of Variants in Proopiomelanocortin and Neuropeptide Y Genes on Growth, Carcass, and Meat Quality Traits in Rabbits

 

[alforddm]

:lol: After I did all that work to get rid of it!
Oh well. :roll: Steels are pretty too, and it's often said they grow well.

This is probably a dumb question I see lots of discussion of color genetics. Does color affect growth rate? How would steel and growth be linked?

Often when we think about animal color, we think of it separate from other traits but this is not always the case. The reason the color is modified is because the function of a gene is modified. What else is modified depends on the gene, the genes function, and the severity of the mutation.

Here is an article I wrote a few years ago about color genes and disease but not all mutations are detrimental (just most of them).

http://colorgenetics.info/general/disea ... coat-color

 

[LPH_NY]

twr - I tried to read the publications on those links. Obviously they aren't written for laypersons. One of them is seems to suggest that specific genes (PMOC and NYP) have shown a correlation to a more productive growth and better dress-out percentage on meat rabbits. Is one of those genes specifically related to steel in rabbits?

If there was actual scientific evidence suggesting that rabbits with the steel gene are shown to grow faster and dress out better than related rabbits that do NOT have the steel gene - well, then I'd be intentionally bringing in some steel!

 

[alforddm]

As far as I know, there has not been a scientific study to see if steel rabbit grow faster, however, there is some circumstantial evidence. Steel is very common in NZW rabbits which are selected for growth. It also seems to be very common in certain lines of Silver Fox and even commercial Californian rabbits that are selected for growth.

What twr was saying is that the mc1r gene (where the steel mutation is located) shares some functions with mc4r. Since MC4R has been proven to hold mutations that affect growth, it is therefore plausible, though not proven, that mutations in mc1r (such as steel) can affect growth.