How are colors moved into breeds?

[ckcs]

How do people get colors into a breed that are not already developed in that breed? Say for instance you created a new cross breed. Let's say a Flemish Giant Lop (with English Lop ears). You breed a FG with an ELop and over the course of generation have developed the breed and are happy with the results. At that point you would have a limited number of colors that you could produce as no two rabbits can produce every color. At that point how do you go about getting other colors into the breed? Do you repeat the process with new colors of a FG and Elop or do you cross the FGElop with another breed that carries the colors that you want? My assumption is that it would be best to repeat the process over with new colors of FG and Elops. My reasoning is that if you have developed the standard you want that introducing another breed could alter that standard significantly. I also can see that repeating the process may not produce the same standard.

 

[Dood]

Usually they outcross to a breed with a similar body type - for your Giant ELops a cross to an Elop or French lop might be best as you will only loose size and not the ears. I would not cross to a breed with upright ears.

Then you breed to get back to the Giant Lop standard but it isn't always easy - just look at all the "Silver Fox" who are basically black NZ with a couple silver genes (sometimes not even from SF but from D' Argents :shock: ) When a standard has a unique and popular feature like colour then the other unique traits are often lost, such as coat length or texture, ear carriage, temperament, hardyness, etc ....

 

[skysthelimit]

The SF is a mosh posh of breeds to begin with, not "basically a black NZ". More like Havana, Checkered Giant, Silvers and Champagnes. http://www.freewebs.com/riverwindrabbit ... abbits.htm

The new SF colors are from Satins, chocolates and lilacs. The beauty of blue is it was already in the gene pool, but it's still hard to get consistency, considering the various mixture of breeds it took to create the SF, imagine all those random recessive genes floating around.

If you get a chance, find the comments made during Convention, about the Chocolates presented.

The history of your own Lion heads should prove more useful in this discussion, but since there are so many people working on them, it might be harder to pull data?


One of the best examples is JW, it's pretty well documented and by one specific person. One of the key features is planning ahead, and seeing if the breeds you plan to cross carry the max amount of colors, then you can dive back into those gene pools if you need, but every time you do, you take a step back.

Rex breeders seem against creating new colors, but another way to get new colors, is to breed colors you have, outside of the color crossing rules. Chins and Otters should NOT be bred in Rex, but if I did, I could create Marten without going outside the breed itself.

 

[akane]

If you have a newer breed developped from only 2 established breeds then it is pretty easy to add color. You just breed back to the original breeds or another similar breed that has the color you want. Old breeds are harder. Their details might be farther from any other breed and outcrossing may give you something that really isn't in line with the breed no matter how careful you are. The american sable was a sport of the american chinchilla and they should be identical to amchins except color. Problem is the breed nearly died out and to bring it back instead of reintroducing amchin color they used breeds like cali because the american sable is made up of seal, sable, and pointed white, that is another term for himi or cali color. The cali though has a slightly different body type and a major coat difference. 50% or better american sables still don't have the right coat quality. I had some amchins I was going to cross in to my sables. Then I'd just have to sort the color back out.

The other possibility are the sports I mentioned. Sometimes you just get a random color mutation within a breed. The sable gene popped up in the chinchilla breeds making a lighter chinchilla and a sable version when it's a self color.

 

[ckcs]

Oh if I had the time, space and money, the things that I'd like to do. Thanks for the replies