ARGHHH Steel - Steel Otter?

[RustyPocket]

Hello all.

In february I got myself a beautiful Vienna Blue buck to try to breed some diluted fawns. Knowing how breeding usually works where I am from (linebreeding is fairly common and keeping the "one line-one colour" in mind, especially with breeds that come in only one variation are rather rigid).

So, naturally, I know my buck is aa B_ C_ dd E_ (to be honest, I assumes he was in fact homozygous on every locus).

I did breed the buck to my fawn doe with following genotype: Aa(t) B_ Cc(chd)? D_ ee. I am not sure whether she is homozygous or heterozygous on B and D loci. The reason I am also not 100 % sure on c(chd) is that few years back, her and another doe shared a nest, both were bred to a same black buck and this kit showed up:

Thanks to help from memebers of this site, he (I think it was a he) was labeled "black sable" in my records. Both of the potential dames came from the same granddame, which herself was a chinchilla carrying himi: Aa(t)/a B_ c(chd)c(ch) D_ Ee.

So, few days ago my fawn-blue litter was born and I got 8 kits. I expected majority of chestnuts and some otters, but to my surprise, 5 of the babies look like the kit from few years ago.

I have no experience with either the c(chl) gene (the whole incomplete dominance) or steel, which I feel really confused about, and I feel like I am not alone in it, so I am now questioning whether my doe was missrecorded all along as Cc(chd). She did however produce some silver martens when bred to a solid black carrying the himi gene before, which of I sadly have no photo.

Here are two photos of the current litter with steel/light chinchilla genes, the quality is quite bad, but you can clearly see the difference between the two chestnuts, otter with creamy ears and the rest of the unknown colour:

 

[SableSteel]

The pictures aren't showing up
That being said, people have done genetic testing on blue viennas... One team of reseachers (Fontanesi et al) checked 56 blue vienna rabbits for the steel gene, and found that all of them to be aa EE

 

[akane]

Photobucket no longer display pictures directly for free. You can only link to their ad filled pages unless you pay for the highest level of account. I've been pulling mine to imgur.com for now.

That is kind of confusing... If you bred a doe known to be agouti and got a black sable kit she is Aa and cannot produce otter or marten. If she produced martens your other kit from her was not a black sable or she is not an agouti. She can only have 2 genes and you need an "a" self gene to get sable and "at" tan to get silver martens so no room for agouti.

The sable/chinchilla also contradicts. chl is sable and chd is chinchilla. Mostly and color name could be confusing some of it. chl appears as light chinchilla when you have an agouti gene but all it's other colors are easily recognized as not chinchilla. With self chl shows up as seal or sable and with tan it shows up as marten. chd appears as normal chinchilla with agouti, is not visible with self (a black self chinchilla will appear simply black), and silver marten with tan. So your doe is both sable and chinchilla to get a self black sable and silver martens unless the chinchilla gene came from the buck for the silver martens and she is Cc(chl) instead to make silver marten kits that were chd and chl.

 

[RustyPocket]

Hey, thanks for help SableSteel and akane.

One team of reseachers (Fontanesi et al) checked 56 blue vienna rabbits for the steel gene, and found that all of them to be aa EE

Thanks for the article, I'll be checking it.
I see, and I assume my blue buck is aa EE since he comes from an exclusive line that never produced anything besides blues (I trust his breeder on that one). That been said, I also know most of Chinchillas in my region are genetically Ee, since two pairings of unrelated Chinchillas to random mutts gave me fawns. Also, many Calis regionally seem to be at least EsE, if not EsEs. Those two cases of "strage" genes within purebreed lines I always found somewhat funny. So, it could be that my blue simply isn't aa EE for some reason. If he were aa Ese or aa EsE, what would he look like, would steel be expressed or hidden by self?

That is kind of confusing... If you bred a doe known to be agouti and got a black sable kit she is Aa and cannot produce otter or marten.

You see, that's why I believe she was in fact not mum to that kit (as mentiones, it was a shared colony nest), as on separate other breedings (no shared nests) she gave me lots of fawns, chestnuts (agouties) and martens (when bred to self bucks). She usually gets bred to my pure NZR buck, so I figured Es would show in litters long ago, since he is ee for sure. Here is the picture of the dam in question:

__________ Wed May 09, 2018 10:29 am __________

I found some pictures of the litter sire; he was sold to me by a registered breeder of Vienna Blues, the only breed he has in his rabbitry.

To me, he looks like any other blue. Could he be carrying steel, from what I can find online, steel doesn't have to show on non-agouti buns (his proposed genotype would than be aa EsE I guess).

Sadly, I can not post better pictures of kits in question as I am not with my rabbits, and my family don't feel comfortable with handling them much to take better pics. They do however look ashy (according to my family). I guess I will have to wait to get home and they will grow si it'll be easier to tell.

 

[akane]

Steel does not show on self. They can have 2 steel genes or 1 steel gene and it won't matter. If all rabbits in the line are self you cannot see steel. It alters the bands of color on agouti hairs and there is no banding on a self. There are also hidden steels in some lines in the US. Instead of altering the agouti banding it eliminates all agouti markings so you have an agouti rabbit that looks self due to having steel.

 

[RustyPocket]

Thanks akane,

I get how stee works now. So, I think my blue is actually aa EsE (he did produce three that are absolutely non-steels). Just for the reference, what would a steel otter look like (a(t)a Ese in case of some of these kits)?

Fam told me not all 5 of the surprise colour look the same, 2 are more solid in colour and 3 are somewhat patchy, they say.