Agouti Rings and agouti coat colors?

[skysthelimit]

At what age will the agouti rings develop on my broken opal kit? When will I know if the ring color will be deep enough (or at least as deep as I want it to be?

When will I know if the gray on the sides of my castor kits is just coat growing in, or whether they are castors with too much gray?

 

[curlysue]

Sometimes they dont ever.if i dont see any by ten weeks i cull it.because thats when they are changing coat.if they dont have it when they get the adult coat you are out of luck.i have seen many opals dqed for this reason.

 

[skysthelimit]

Sometimes they dont ever.if i dont see any by ten weeks i cull it.because thats when they are changing coat.if they dont have it when they get the adult coat you are out of luck.i have seen many opals dqed for this reason.

Ok, so stick with the 10 week rule for the opal and the castors. I really don't want to feed any rabbit to 6 mos to find out the coat isn't right. the last castor buck I culled at 12 weeks, too much gray, predominant guard hairs and not a nice guy.

 

[Jack]

depends on the genetics
basic is this
agouti = rings, that's the main hallmark
self = no rings, same color all along the hair shaft with a lighter undercoat

but then you work your way past A_ B_ in to C
the color gene, where you have C-colored ,chl - chin light, chd - chin dark, and some say chh - Himalayan, and then you get the interplay of whats on the other side of the incomplete dominate, is it COLOR, c- no color ( red eyed white ), or another chin gene?

Then you work into D, dilute, makes black into blue, Chocolate into Lilac (shiny light gray with pinkish eyes)

then you work into extension, which will partially or completely remove the rings, or in the case of ej (harlequin) turn them sideways
and lastly you have wideband that extends the middle band up and down the hair shaft.

so you see, it gets really interesting, and you can actually make some colors a number of different ways, weird eh
I've had rabbits that didn't get decent color till after their first shed, others that looked great with their baby coats, and lost it as an adult.

 

[akane]

You wouldn't really know until they are adult but yea, somewhere in the 10-12week mark you can usually tell if they are likely to be off. My reddish castors look really red and my grey castors look really dark by 10-12weeks.

 

[skysthelimit]

You wouldn't really know until they are adult but yea, somewhere in the 10-12week mark you can usually tell if they are likely to be off. My reddish castors look really red and my grey castors look really dark by 10-12weeks.

I'm culling for meat at 16 weeks, I'm culling castors for fur sometime much later. But if I need to wait that long, I will wait. The possibility of breeding my own opals is worth the wait.