Willow Blue
Well-known member
He was solid white until recently. Now he has a little bit of black on his face and maybe more coming in on his ears. What kind of marking is this? He’s not a solid anymore I guess. Is he a Charlie? Something else?
Help me identify this bunny please
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Cosima
Well-known member
He‘s probably a frosty.
Agreed. Albino REW (ruby or red-eyed-white) rabbits have pink/red eyes. Vienna blue-eyed white rabbits have blue eyes. But ermines, also called frostie or fawn chinchilla have dark eyes, often gray, just like your rabbit.
There are five options on the 'C' color gene. The most dominant is full-color, like blacks, chestnut agouti, tortoiseshell, or orange agouti. The next one down is called chinchilla, which removes the yellow tones from the hairshaft. Blacks still look the same, since they never had any orange/yellow, but a chestnut agouti becomes a chinchilla, with the agouti bands all in shades of gray with pearly white where the fawn/yellow would have been. Tortoiseshells become pearls with chinchilla, since the orange body hair becomes pearl white while the points retain their original dark color.
Your rabbit is what happens when an orange agouti meets chinchilla. The chinchilla removes all the yellow/orange coloration, leaving only white behind. The dark hairs you are seeing now are what would have been called 'smut' on an orange rabbit, that little bit of dark hairs that shows up mainly on the face and ears. Depending on the breed, this color is called 'ermine' or ''frostie/frosty'.
Willow Blue
Well-known member
Thanks so much!
Looks like an ermine aka frosty. It's a non-extension chinchilla <A_B_cchd_D_ee>. His sibling in pic #2 looks like an orange, which is a non-extension chestnut <A_B_C_D_ee>.
Willow Blue
Well-known member
I now have one that is completely solid white. She's about 7 months old now, I've kept her to be a Doe in our rotation. She's solid white, no black anywhere, and blue/grey eyes. Is she also considered a frosty?
As far as I know, if you have a pure white rabbit, or a white rabbit that looks white with "points" or color on its nose/ears/feet/tails or sprinkled across its body, but has anything other than pink eyes, it's a frosty. (Note - unless it's a Vienna - aka blue-eyed-white...thanks, @eco2pia!)
"Frosty" is a common name for a non-extension chinchilla <A_B_cchd_D_ee>; it's also known as ermine in some breeds (there may be other names for it as well, and note that "ermine" is a different color altogether in some other countries). Basically what's happening is that the chinchilla gene blocks yellow pigment, and also results in eyes that are either brown or blue or sometimes marbled. Then the non-extension gene blocks most black pigment in the fur (but does not act on the eye color) - so you end up with a chinchilla rabbit with little or no black in its fur: no yellow + no black = white. It's different from the albino and himalayan genes, which always produce pink eyes, in that the non-extension gene does not affect eye color.
Because of the development of the chinchilla coloration, there can be increasing amounts of black that show up in frosties as they age (chinchilla rabbits aren't born shwoing ring color). There are also undoubtedly some or many "modifiers" that act on the non-extension gene, which is why you can see various amounts of "smut" on non-extension colors like orange and red. Because of these modifiers, frosties can range from pure white to heavily "veiled," which is what Czech Frosty breeders call the sprinkling of black hair tips known as "smut" to red breeders!
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Really? Even BEW? I did not know that...I thought that was a whole different thing, involving the vienna gene...Sorry if that is complicating your explanation, because otherwise it is totally beautiful.
I stand corrected! You're absolutely right - BEW is a completely different gene that results in a pure white rabbit with other than pink eyes!
Somewhat ridiculous that I completely forgot about that, since we breed BEWs...
Thanks for the heads-up - I corrected my first post.
