chinchilla gene confusion

[TJax2002]

I am interested in making a variety of beautiful, natural angora rabbit spinning fibers, but I am a bit confused about the chinchilla color gene.

I am about to purchase a breeding pair of German/Giant Angora hybrids for superior wool production, larger size, and reduced shedding (uniform wool length when sheered). I put the colors into a calculator and got back a wide assortment of colors, and so I put myself down to reserve the two baby rabbits that showed the most promising color variety.

One rabbit is a black (self) with a chinchilla gene. The other is a pointed white. According to the calculator, I will have a broad range of variation from this combination, but I would like some feedback from people with some experience. I have read a lot of material, but I still don't completely understand how the chinchilla gene works.

Will this breeding pair give me the results I am looking for? I really am not interested in show standards, just color variety, wool production, and limited shedding/uniform coat.

I am also on a list for a 100% German black breeding pair from another breeder to guarentee I get some rabbits with high production and quality wool.

Anyone have any experience to help guide me?

 

[Dood]

You likely got those results because a red eyed pointed white (AKA himilayan) rabbit completely hides its colour genetics and you must rely on its parents and siblings for cues to what colour genes it carries so the computer generated every possibility

http://www.oceansideangoras.com/angora-colors.html

 

[Zass]

Unfortunately, color calculators tend to factor in the possibility of all recessive or hidden genes. In real life, a single animal can only carry so many genes

I'm sure, you will definitely gets blacks and chinchilla colored kits. The rest is all dependent on what their hidden or recessive color genes are.

 

[SableSteel]

What are you looking for? With that combination, you might be disappointed if you wanted chinchilla. The chinchilla gene takes away all (or rather, almost all) of the orange pigment, but doesn't really affect the black pigment. On self rabbits - blacks, blue, etc, there is no orange pigment to take away, so it doesn't really make a difference (pointed white is caused by another allele, a version of that same gene - it takes away all orange pigment, and most of the black pigment too, just leaving some black pigment on the points. Normally you need two chinchilla genes to even see the effects of the chinchilla gene, but because they are different alleles of the same gene, you can make do with one chinchilla allele and one pointed white allele, so choosing a pointed white is good if you only have one chinchilla). This pairing will have a very high chance of getting "self chinchillas" - blacks with the chinchilla gene that just look like blacks. To get pretty chinchilla based colors, you need other genes that make rabbits with orange in their color (most common are agouti, found in chestnuts & non-extension, found in torts) - the color "chinchilla" is chestnut with all the orange stripped away by the chinchilla gene. To get chinchillas, first you need to get the agouti gene that make chestnuts in there somehow. One of the easiest ways to do this in your situation would be to get a chestnut with a white parent if you could find it, and breed that to your black with the chinchilla gene. Sorry for the poor explanation.

 

[Zass]

Let me see if I can simplify that.
The Chin gene paired with the pointed white gene can only make chinchillas if you get lucky and your pointed bun happens to be agouti based instead of self based. (Hidden under the white.)

Because they are angora, agouti based pointed rabbits seemed like a fair possibility. You can usually tell by how nice and dark the points are. If they seem faded out compared to some other pics of pointed rabbits, than it could indicate the rabbit is chestnut agouti based and not self. Nice dark points indicate self, which means you will get a lot more self chins.

With luck, you could also get more pointed buns or rews, if either those recessives are present in the chinchilla rabbit.