Do Creme D'Argent Rabbits have the Wideband gene (ww)?

[fanJhan]

I know they have the silvering gene, but I came across a web page that said they have the wideband gene as well.

Here it is:

https://minifluffsrabbitry.weebly.com/rabbit-colors-across-breeds.html

 

[Alaska Satin]

I know they have the silvering gene, but I came across a web page that said they have the wideband gene as well.

Here it is:

https://minifluffsrabbitry.weebly.com/rabbit-colors-across-breeds.html

Yes.

Orange is typically a wideband color because the <ww> extends the middle orange band up toward the tip of the hair. In combination with the non-extension <ee> which diminishes dark bands/ticking, it helps produce a clear orange color.

Cremes are basically orange rabbits with silvering, so proper Creme D'Argents have wideband alleles. They are <A_B_C_D_ee ww sisi>; they can possibly be <A_bb C_D_ee ww sisi>. (Sometimes orange breeders prefer chocolate-based colors because the appearance of undesireable smut is minimized due to the lower contrast between chocolate and orange versus black and orange.)

 

[fanJhan]

Yes.

Orange is typically a wideband color because the <ww> extends the middle orange band up toward the tip of the hair. In combination with the non-extension <ee> which diminishes dark bands/ticking, it helps produce a clear orange color.

Cremes are basically orange rabbits with silvering, so proper Creme D'Argents have wideband alleles. They are <A_B_C_D_ee ww sisi>; they can possibly be <A_bb C_D_ee ww sisi>. (Sometimes orange breeders prefer chocolate-based colors because the appearance of undesireable smut is minimized due to the lower contrast between chocolate and orange versus black and orange.)

Thank you for the very informative reply!

Can you recommend any links where I can read about this further?

Cremes have surely piqued my interest!

 

[Alaska Satin]

Thank you for the very informative reply!

Can you recommend any links where I can read about this further?

Cremes have surely piqued my interest!

You're welcome!

I haven't seen many resources targeted specifically at the Creme D'Argent, but reading about the underpinnings of orange/red and of silvering should get you most of the way.

Silvered rabbits have been around a very long time, so it's a little surprising that there's not more information about it; or maybe there is, but I just haven't been able to find it. It is thought that there are at least three different alleles that produce silvering, known as si1, si2 and si3. The allele in Champagnes (and I would guess, also Cremes) is s3. That one, at least, appears to be a dominant or at least partially dominant allele (although it was designated <si> as if it's recessive), and also seems to be influenced pretty heavily by modifiers. People argue about its dominance/recessiveness; however, it only takes one allele to produce pretty significant silvering, and two copies act additively to increase the effect of silvering, similar to the broken gene <En>, which is considered dominant. It may be a case of glass half empty/glass half-full...

Here is purebred Champagne D'Argent, Killian, almost fully silvered at about 5 months of age (lacking only a bit on his ears):

and here is Killian's crossbred son, Hot Cross Bun, out of a black Satin doe, at 12 weeks still developing his silvering:


As you can see, at least at this age, Hot Cross Bun doesn't have quite enough silvering to excel as a Champagne, but he would have plenty to fulfill the Silver Fox standard (albeit without the proper coat type).

My favorite beginning genetics resource is a coat color genetics book by Ellyn Eddy called ABC: About Bunny Colors. The first 18 pages can be downloaded for free here:
https://rabbitsmarties.com/Chapter1-AboutBunnyColors2013.pdfThat will take you through the basics of mendelian genetic inheritance and introduce the five gene series at the play in all rabbit coat colors. Those pages don't touch on silvering; that is discussed later in the book. But I recommend buying the whole book anyway. It's got wonderful color charts and color name help (some colors are called different names in different breeds).

And here is a pretty good article, mostly about European breeds of silvered rabbits, but quite informative:
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Breed/Silver_rabbit/Argente_en.pdf
I have also been fascinated by Cremes. My daughter and I debated flying some up to AK, and looked around for stock, but found nothing at a price I wanted to pay to get them up here (it's expensive!). However, when someone else brought a pair up and I finally saw them in the flesh I was underwhelmed. The color was not impressive and the type left a lot to be desired. I am sure Creme breeders are working quite hard on the breed, but there are so few of them out there that it is an uphill battle.

Understanding the genetics behind the colors, it occurred to me that we could make our own Cremes, with color and type more in line with what I hope for in my rabbits. My original plan was to use my Champagnes with an outstanding New Zealand Red buck, but he went away, so I have switched to using my Satins. That will cause problems down the road as I will probably get satinized coats, but my Satins have the type I'm after, and they're closer in size to the Creme, which is smaller than either Champagnes or NZs. The first generation will probably give me coppers aka chestnuts, which I will have to breed together to get silvered reds/oranges (the babies we ultimately want will have two copies of <si>, 2 copies of non-extension <ee>, and 2 copies of wideband <ww>). So it will be at least 2 to 3 generations to get to a rabbit that fulfills the Creme standard. We will also be working on Argente St Huberts, which are currently under an ARBA Certificate of Development so can be shown as exhibition animals; they're silvered agoutis (chestnut, opal, chocolate agouti and lynx), and roughly the same weights as Cremes.
Here's the Argente St Hubert working standard:
https://arba.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ArgentStHubert.pdf

 

[fanJhan]

Thank you, the reason I am asking is because when I get rabbits in the distant future, I would like to produce a large/giant type white rabbit with dark eyes.

I didn't want to use any albino, BEW, or heterozygous rabbits because of either health/eye problems, or inconsistency of type.

I understand that there are other ways to obtain this goal (such as via the Charlie gene + Dutch gene to produce a white rabbit with dark eye spots).

But the route I've decided on is combining the non-extensions (to decrease the black pigment in agouti hairs), Chinchilla (to turn red hairs white and get the ermine/frosty pattern), and silvering (to replace as many leftover dark hairs as possible with white) to produce a rabbit which is as close to a true dark-eyed white as possible.

I understand that the Chinchilla gene causes some issues with eye color, so it's not a perfect route to take, but it'll get me close!

 

[Alaska Satin]

Thank you, the reason I am asking is because when I get rabbits in the distant future, I would like to produce a large/giant type white rabbit with dark eyes.

I didn't want to use any albino, BEW, or heterozygous rabbits because of either health/eye problems, or inconsistency of type.

I understand that there are other ways to obtain this goal (such as via the Charlie gene + Dutch gene to produce a white rabbit with dark eye spots).

But the route I've decided on is combining the non-extensions (to decrease the black pigment in agouti hairs), Chinchilla (to turn red hairs white and get the ermine/frosty pattern), and silvering (to replace as many leftover dark hairs as possible with white) to produce a rabbit which is as close to a true dark-eyed white as possible.

I understand that the Chinchilla gene causes some issues with eye color, so it's not a perfect route to take, but it'll get me close!

Yeah, ermine would be the way to go for a white rabbit with dark eyes. There seems to be a wide range of ticking on ermines; I've had bunnies that were perfectly white other than the tiniest sprinkle of pale gray tips on the nose. You should be able to select for reduced ticking in ermines the same way we do for reds. Adding the wide-band gene would also help reduce the ticking; that's partly why it's so useful in in reds.

Some lines of chinchilla have brown eyes while others give you blue-gray. They seem to be pretty consistent that way, at least in my experience. I prefer the brown eyes for a couple of reasons: I like the brown eye color better; and with brown eyes, my self chins are still showable as blacks. Another thing I've found, is that when I do get an occasional bunny with blue-gray eyes, they usually end up turning brown by about 10-12 weeks old.

Adding silvering to increase white hairs and white tips is a great idea! You could also throw in chocolate and dilute (=lilac), so any ticking left would at least be extremely light, and almost all the loci would hold recessives, so easy to set in your herd.

So <AA bb cchd cchd dd ee ww sisi>? The only real trick would be making sure your rabbits were heterozygous for agouti (chin shouldn't be too hard).

 

[fanJhan]

Yeah, ermine would be the way to go for a white rabbit with dark eyes. There seems to be a wide range of ticking on ermines; I've had bunnies that were perfectly white other than the tiniest sprinkle of pale gray tips on the nose. You should be able to select for reduced ticking in ermines the same way we do for reds. Adding the wide-band gene would also help reduce the ticking; that's partly why it's so useful in in reds.

Some lines of chinchilla have brown eyes while others give you blue-gray. They seem to be pretty consistent that way, at least in my experience. I prefer the brown eyes for a couple of reasons: I like the brown eye color better; and with brown eyes, my self chins are still showable as blacks. Another thing I've found, is that when I do get an occasional bunny with blue-gray eyes, they usually end up turning brown by about 10-12 weeks old.

Adding silvering to increase white hairs and white tips is a great idea! You could also throw in chocolate and dilute (=lilac), so any ticking left would at least be extremely light, and almost all the loci would hold recessives, so easy to set in your herd.

So <AA bb cchd cchd dd ee ww sisi>? The only real trick would be making sure your rabbits were heterozygous for agouti (chin shouldn't be too hard).

I thought about lilac, but decided against it since both chocolate and blue impact eye color. I want the eyes to be as dark as possible in these rabbits so they don't have any vision problems related to pigment. I'll think on it further.

 

[judymac]

Yeah, ermine would be the way to go for a white rabbit with dark eyes.

As with most things, you can select the kits in each generation for the traits you are looking for, in this case for less ticking.

This ermine has the nice dark eye, and a minimum of ticking.

 

[MsTemeraire]

Thank you, the reason I am asking is because when I get rabbits in the distant future, I would like to produce a large/giant type white rabbit with dark eyes.

Historically, there was a large brown-eyed white breed called the Blanc de Chauny, in France. I believe it was made similarly to how you intend to create yours, but there's next to no information about them as they became extinct a long time ago.

 

[judymac]

While ARBA puts fawn/cream/orange/red in the 'wideband' group, the main effect appears to be due to the non-extension recessive ee. The 'E' gene controls how the dark color extends down the hairshaft, and the recessive ee is called 'non-extension' because it doesn't extend the dark color. Wideband ww doubles the width of the yellow agouti band on the hairshaft. When you put the two together, ee turns the shaft mostly yellow (except the tips) and ww doubles the middle agouti band, effectively pushing the dark tips off the hairshaft, which leaves you with a lovely clear all-yellow toned rabbit. Adding chinchilla c(chd)- eliminates the yellow. leaving only the pearl white behind.

How this applies to wanting an all-white rabbit with dark eyes--you need to choose very very clean orange rabbits, no smut. Smut is the remnants of those dark tips, and you don't want any for your all-white rabbit. It is inheritable, so choosing for very very clean, clear orange at the beginning before crossing in the chinchilla will be the secret. Many orange breeders prefer chocolate-based oranges instead of black, to reduce the amount of smut. Breeding to dilute lilac also reduces the orange color, but when you want an ermine, that doesn't matter. With lilac, any smut would be even less obvious.

Look for chinchillas that also carry the wide-band--while they will be born black, they will have little to no ticking on the adult coat, looking almost pale blue, as the wideband has pushed the ticking off the hairshaft. This makes for a much cleaner, whiter coat. In each generation, select for the rabbits with the least ticking.

In the opposite direction, Frosty lops are expected to have an evenly ticked coat, so they carry the chinchilla and non-extension, but can never be wideband to have the proper coat.

 

[judymac]

ee turns the shaft mostly yellow (except the tips) and ww doubles the middle agouti band, effectively pushing the dark tips off the hairshaft, which leaves you with a lovely clear all-yellow toned rabbit. Adding chinchilla c(chd)- eliminates the yellow. leaving only the pearl white behind.

I see I need may need to reword this. While ww does increase the width of the middle orange (yellow/fawn) band, that doesn't necessarily take the dark tips off the fiber or eliminate the base slate band. It just makes the orange band much wider. Forty years ago, we used to have what we called 'fawn agouti' with dark tips, a very straw colored fawn coat, with gray base. That wouldn't be the action of non-extension ee, because non-extension does not extend the dark color down the hairshaft of the main body hair, that's what the term 'non-extension' refers to. When wide-band was added to this color, it became a solid gold shade, like a Palomino horse, with white base band. No dark. This combination is what your are looking for when you want an all-white rabbit with dark eyes, both wideband and non-extension.

Usually, non-extension ee rabbits have a pale/white base to the fiber, and then the yellowish fiber (could be red with rufus or creamy pale with dilute dd). Chinchilla shuts down the yellow pigment factories, so ermines end up all white, with a little ticking where the smut would have been. The English have the term ghost chinchilla for a chinchilla rabbit with wide-band (but not ee) that has the mostly pearl white coat with the dark tips intact. So, you just might get a nicely ticked frosty from chinchilla with wideband alone (no non-extension); but that is not your goal, so go with nice clean red/orange/fawn/cream rabbits with no smut to breed to your chinchilla. Cream (with the dilute dd gene) might be a good choice since any smut will be very pale, but then the eyes will be blue-gray instead of brown.