I have a litter of VMs, none of their eyes have opened yet. Both parents are VM, with blue eyes.
There are a couple pure white kits, eyes unopened, with black fur around the eyes. They do not appear to be Charlies. I'm wondering if they're BEW, or if those black markings already DQ them from being BEW.
I could just wait... But I'm so excited
LOL!
Tia!!
It surely does look like they've got black fur around the eye, which almost certainly means they're not actually BEW but have only one copy of the vienna allele <
v>. If both parents were VM, it's possible - I'd say maybe even likely - that one of the parents was also a broken-colored rabbit <
Enen>.
We've had Polish that looked like that (we called them "diva bunnies"), that resulted from a BEW buck, who was actually a broken chestnut genetically, bred with a VM black doe. They had small chestnut eye rings and a tiny sprinkle of color on their ears.
One thing to look at is the markings or your VMs. If one of them is also a broken, all four of its feet will most likely be white. I've not yet seen a broken that has colored feet. If they are truly VM, they
may have all-white feet, but not necessarily, so it's not a sure-fire way to identify broken vs broken VM, but if they have colored feet, that is a reasonably sure way to determine they're
not broken colored.
There is a breed called the Dwarf Hotot (say it "oh-toe"), which has exactly those markings: all white with colored eye rings.
Photo from
https://www.raising-rabbits.com/dwarf-hotot.html
The Dwarf Hotot coloration is produced by a combination of broken and Dutch genes. As far as I know, there's not usually vienna in the mix. But here's the interesting part: certain Dutch alleles carry along a tendency to what's called "china eyes," which are blue (though usually lighter blue than the typical BEW eyes). Since VMs and mismarked dutch can look very similar, it may be within the realm of possibility that you've got dutch in the mix, with or without vienna.
In addition, if you bred two VMs and did not get a single BEW kit, that would make me a little suspicious. There's no guarantee you'll get BEW from two VMs every time, but given what you've said about the litter, I'd be wondering about that.
How many kits were in the litter, and do you know what the parents of the sire and dam looked like? And can you post photos of the sire and dm of this litter?
If you'd like to read more about the genetics behind Dwarf Hotot markings, this is a really good article:
https://www.adhrc.com/Forms/Color Genetics of the Dwarf Hotot.pdf
