How many kits does an English Spot normally have? I know there’s a range. How many are showable? I think you can breed basically any color of ES to any color from what I’ve heard. as long as it’s recognized.
I've not raised English Spots but most medium-sized rabbits have 6-8 kits per litter. It will depend to some extent on the characteristics of the particular genetic line your rabbits come from, as well as the age of the doe. They're not a dwarf breed, so you don't have to worry about peanuts.
English Spots are a broken colored breed, with the proper pattern resulting from a single copy of the broken gene
En, so a show quality rabbit has a genotype of
Enen. When you breed two
Enen rabbits, the litter will be roughly 50%
Enen (broken), 25%
EnEn (charlie) and 25%
enen (solid) kits. These are statistical projections so you may very well get different proportions of these markings in any particular litter. It is within the realm of possibility (though not likely) that you could get all brokens, all solids or all charlies.
Showable rabbits will only come from among the
Enen kits; however, within that group , there may (probably will) be mismarked rabbits, further reducing the number of showable kits. Basically, if you're breeding a broken colored breed like English Spot, Checkered Giant, Rhinelander or Dwarf Papillon, you need to expect to produce a relatively high number of mismarked culls/pet-quality bunnies.
Since there are almost always mismarked culls in every litter, some broken breeders like to keep a solid sport to breed with a show-marked rabbit. This will result in approximately 50% brokens and 50% solids (same proportion of culls), but no charlies. Many breeders try to avoid producing charlies because the
En gene, especially in the homozygous state
EnEn, is associated with a health condition called megacolon. This is not only uncomfortable/sometimes fatal for the rabbit, but it often does not appear until later in life - which can be after you've sold the rabbit to someone as a pet. That is a bummer, to say the least. Not all charlies have this condition, but it is always a possibility waiting in the wings, so to speak.
As far as breeding any colors together, you can do so, of course. But if you want to maximize the number of showable kits, some crosses are not advisable.
Gray and gold, for example, are agouti colors that have requirements which are very specific to the English Spot breed, and crossing those with other colors (i.e. selfs) may end up diminishing those colors' quality in terms of the banding pattern (gray) or clarity (gold). Although I can see where crossing gold with self chocolate might be helpful in cleaning up smutty color, you'd probably chance making the gold color a little less deep and intense; you'd also eventually get chocolate agoutis and chocolate torts, neither of which are showable colors.
Similarly, breeding chocolate or dilute colors (blue, chocolate, or lilac) with gray, gold, or tort will, down the line, end up producing dilute and/or chocolate agoutis (i.e. opal, chocolate agouti, and/or lynx), dilute golds (aka cream), or off-colored torts (chocolate, blue or lilac torts, when only black torts are showable). And since all of these colors come from recessive genes, once you've got them in your line, it can be tough to get rid of them.
