can color indicate problem?

[Rainey]

Casco's 9th litter is now 5 weeks old. When newborn I thought we had 5 black, 2 grey(which I guess you call blue) and 2 white. By the time they opened their eyes and left the nest box I noticed that a couple of the blacks looked sort of rusty--more dark almost reddish brown than black. I've been told that black goats look that color when they have certain mineral deficiencies and now wonder if that can be true of rabbits. A couple of the black kits have steel and so look speckled but by now I'm used to that--Casco has it and so have some of her other kits. But I haven't seen this other thing before. One of the greys has some sort of brown going too but not so dark, maybe just steel although before that has mostly shown up on the blacks. Not breeding for pets or pelts so color doesn't matter to me. As long as it doesn't indicate something I should be doing something about. I tried to get photos of 3 "black" kits today--one with steel, one plain, and one rusty? Hoping someone can explain what I'm seeing and tell me if I need to worry--or not.

 

[EnglishSpot]

The could just be really dark agoutis. i’ve seen poorly fed rabbits that were still black despite their feed (just the hair shaft was in terrible shape) so perhaps some genes are coming into play.

 

[shazza]

looks like heat bleaching to me. black animals will turn brown when they are in the sun or exposed to high heat. it's really common in black cats and dogs that spend a lot of time outdoors too. all my black rabbits turn rusty in the summer but they usually moult it out in fall. some steels can look like that too.

 

[Rainey]

looks like heat bleaching to me. black animals will turn brown when they are in the sun or exposed to high heat. it's really common in black cats and dogs that spend a lot of time outdoors too. all my black rabbits turn rusty in the summer but they usually moult it out in fall. some steels can look like that too.

I'm in northern central NY so September isn't that hot here. This year we did have 3 weeks of very cool weather at the end of August and beginning of September and then warmer than normal weather for a couple weeks after that. But not as hot as we usually have in mid-summer. And they're not really in the sun, but do you think this sun or heat bleaching could happen when it suddenly switched from quite cool to quite warm just when the hair is starting to grow out?

 

[shazza]

it apparently doesn't need to be very warm, i hear of people having bleaching in cooler areas too. they will also brown up right before they moult seasonally too, i forgot this when i posted originally.

this is one of my silver steel boys who looked like a bad siamese sable right before he moulted the first time: