I purchased this rabbit at an animal swap, from the Amish. I'm curious if anyone has an idea what breed it may be & what this color is called officially? It's also not friendly at all. Any tips on taming it? I'm very new! Thank you in advance.
Breed & color help.
- Thread starter jma87
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What a sweet face!!! Hard to believe that's not a nice bunny. It might settle down once it gets used to where it is and learns that you are not a threat. I'd start by choosing a particular cage, hutch or some other kind of home and keeping the rabbit there consistently; rabbits don't like change, at all, and moving them around can keep them in a state of nervousness. Once it's settled in and feels secure in its home base, so to speak, you will have more flexibility in taking it out to play, etc. I'd also bring it little treats of fresh greens or black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) or something like that daily, though I'd be careful not to give it too much of new foods at first or it might get a belly ache. Start by just dropping the greens into the cage since it probably won't eat out of your hands. Progress toward getting it to taking treats from your hands and maybe letting you touch it. Many rabbits like their foreheads rubbed and will allow that; other are finicky about having their ears touched, and prefer to be petted on their backs. Trial and error will tell you the answer to that. Mostly be patient and gentle, and it may come around.
Wthout any background or pedigree it's very hard to say what breed it is, other than maybe having some dwarf in the background (ears and face are relatively on the shorter side), and likely being a mixed breed.
It looks like either a VM harlequin, a harlequin Dutch mix, or a broken harlequin; it could even be a VM/dutch harlequin.
The patches of dark and light color on its face and side say harlequin; that allele <e(j)> causes the light and dark pigmentation to be separated out onto the different hairs, rather than showing up along the same hair like agouti banding.
Broken almost always results in no color on the feet at all, but I think I see some orange on toes of the back left foot. That would suggest vienna, as would the white spot on the nose. But both of those partially dominant alleles can produce very similar markings.
The other possibility is that it has the dutch allele <du>, which is yet another partially dominant allele that causes white markings in approximately that distribution: two copies <dudu> give a white blaze on the nose, white across the saddle, and white on the hind toes, while a single copy gives markings that are generally similar but less predictable. Dutch is not a dwarf breed but the rabbits are small, and there are a few people trying to breed harlequin Dutch, so that may also be what you have. But again, though dutch crosses have quite variable markings, the orange on the back toes would make me lean toward vienna.
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