How to keep the red

Rabbit Talk  Forum

Help Support Rabbit Talk Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Dec 17, 2022
Messages
173
Reaction score
137
Location
Maryland
I have a red doe, very large. I like the color too. She is supposed to be 75% NZ and 25% Flemish Giant. I imagine the NZ was red, since she is flaming red.

At any rate, I know that any rabbit color genetics are co.plicated, so my question is this: what do I need to breed with this doe to get more red rabbits?


I have these bucks:

REW Flemish Giant
Light Grey Flemish Giant
Light grey 75/25, but smaller, so I question his usefulness
Gold tipped steel/black NZ
REW TAMUK, just alomst ready to breed, is about 15 weeks and good sized already.

I also have a smaller breed BEW, but I doubt I would want his genetics.

I have a friend with a Californian buck as well.

Would any of these get me red?
 
For reds, you need the double recessive non-extension ee gene, as well as a strong dose of rufus modifiers, which turn the golden tan shades into reds. So lets start with the essential non-extension gene. There are two main versions of the pigment melanin that tints hair and skin. Eumelanin is dark, can be black, reduced in intensity to blue, or phased down to browns such as chocolate or lilac; pheomelanin is light, the yellowish shades of fawns, torts and reds. Non-extension eliminates the dark color on the body hairs (not the points in the case of torts). In a fawn agouti, the dark color is eliminated entirely (except maybe for a few stray dark hairs called smut), and you have a yellow-tan rabbit without the rufus (called fawn or orange depending on the breed), up to orange to dark red rabbits (called reds). If you add in recessive color dilution, the color becomes more pastel, beige.

In non-agouti rabbits, you get tortoiseshell with the ee non-extension gene. The body color is still the same beige, yellow to red fawn shades, but the face color reflects the black/blue/chocolate/lilac genetics of the black/chocolate 'B' gene and the 'D' color dilution gene. Your doe can only pass along a recessive fawn gene, because that is all she has to offer. BUT, your other bucks are unknowns in the 'E' gene department. You need two fawn genes to get red.

Red New Zealand rabbits are fawn agouti with a lot of rufus modifiers. So your doe will be A- for agouti, and ee for non-extension, with +++++? we'll say for rufus. Two of your bucks are REW, which is simply any possible genetic with the albino recessive that shuts off the melanin factories, so no pigment is produced. We have no further information on them based on their color. Light gray is a chinchilla Flemish. The chin gene removes all fawn shades from the hairshaft, so that would be a terrible choice. Gold-tipped steel tells us two things. One, the rabbit has a dominant color 'C' gene, not chinchilla, because steel + chinchilla = silver tipped steel (remember, chin removes the the gold shades, leaving only pearly white, the 'silver' in the name.) The other thing is that there are five possible choices on the 'E' gene, and steel is the second most dominant, even more than the standard agouti and self colors like castor, black, chocolate, etc. It is coded with a capital E for being dominant, and a small super or subscript s for steel. What we don't know is what the second 'E' series allele is that goes with his E(s). BEW would definitely not help this at all, as the BEW albino gene also removes all color, and when it is combined with a more dominant non-BEW gene, often leaves white mismarks on face and toes.

So, the big question is, what do you know about the parentage of your bucks? Do any of them have tort or fawn/orange/red parents? An albino can throw red, but only if it genetically carries red, it's only an albino because recessive cc turns off the pigment cells.

Rufus modifiers are cumulative, think of them as plus and minus signs--the more plus signs, the darker the red. If you imagine a dark red as having five or six plus signs out of six, and a pale tort as having only one or two plus signs (or maybe none), the kits will have a good chance of being anywhere in the middle, not a super dark red. You'll want to keep the darkest kits of each generation, to work your way to consistent reds.
 
For reds, you need the double recessive non-extension ee gene, as well as a strong dose of rufus modifiers, which turn the golden tan shades into reds. So lets start with the essential non-extension gene. There are two main versions of the pigment melanin that tints hair and skin. Eumelanin is dark, can be black, reduced in intensity to blue, or phased down to browns such as chocolate or lilac; pheomelanin is light, the yellowish shades of fawns, torts and reds. Non-extension eliminates the dark color on the body hairs (not the points in the case of torts). In a fawn agouti, the dark color is eliminated entirely (except maybe for a few stray dark hairs called smut), and you have a yellow-tan rabbit without the rufus (called fawn or orange depending on the breed), up to orange to dark red rabbits (called reds). If you add in recessive color dilution, the color becomes more pastel, beige.

In non-agouti rabbits, you get tortoiseshell with the ee non-extension gene. The body color is still the same beige, yellow to red fawn shades, but the face color reflects the black/blue/chocolate/lilac genetics of the black/chocolate 'B' gene and the 'D' color dilution gene. Your doe can only pass along a recessive fawn gene, because that is all she has to offer. BUT, your other bucks are unknowns in the 'E' gene department. You need two fawn genes to get red.

Red New Zealand rabbits are fawn agouti with a lot of rufus modifiers. So your doe will be A- for agouti, and ee for non-extension, with +++++? we'll say for rufus. Two of your bucks are REW, which is simply any possible genetic with the albino recessive that shuts off the melanin factories, so no pigment is produced. We have no further information on them based on their color. Light gray is a chinchilla Flemish. The chin gene removes all fawn shades from the hairshaft, so that would be a terrible choice. Gold-tipped steel tells us two things. One, the rabbit has a dominant color 'C' gene, not chinchilla, because steel + chinchilla = silver tipped steel (remember, chin removes the the gold shades, leaving only pearly white, the 'silver' in the name.) The other thing is that there are five possible choices on the 'E' gene, and steel is the second most dominant, even more than the standard agouti and self colors like castor, black, chocolate, etc. It is coded with a capital E for being dominant, and a small super or subscript s for steel. What we don't know is what the second 'E' series allele is that goes with his E(s). BEW would definitely not help this at all, as the BEW albino gene also removes all color, and when it is combined with a more dominant non-BEW gene, often leaves white mismarks on face and toes.

So, the big question is, what do you know about the parentage of your bucks? Do any of them have tort or fawn/orange/red parents? An albino can throw red, but only if it genetically carries red, it's only an albino because recessive cc turns off the pigment cells.

Rufus modifiers are cumulative, think of them as plus and minus signs--the more plus signs, the darker the red. If you imagine a dark red as having five or six plus signs out of six, and a pale tort as having only one or two plus signs (or maybe none), the kits will have a good chance of being anywhere in the middle, not a super dark red. You'll want to keep the darkest kits of each generation, to work your way to consistent reds.
Thanks so much!
I know this:

The chinchilla rabbit is from more chinchilla rabbits for a few gwnerations at least.

The BEW rabbit fathered litters with a broken tort and threw broken torts.

The REW Flemish giant has steel, black and white in his pedigree, but no fawn in the generations available to me.

I may be able tonget a sable point buck that looks more orange to service the doe. Would that help?
 
I suppose my new question, then, is to ask what type of buck will it take to get some red offspring? I will see what I have access to. Obviously a NZR, but I am leary due to stories of bad mothering genes in the NZRs. Anything else?
 
I suppose my new question, then, is to ask what type of buck will it take to get some red offspring? I will see what I have access to. Obviously a NZR, but I am leary due to stories of bad mothering genes in the NZRs. Anything else?
To get red, the critical genes you need are agouti and non-extension. There is another gene that is fairly important, which is wideband. That stretches the middle orange band on the hairshaft and seems to be what helps make an orange into a red, along with those rufus modifiers.

To get the best reds with your NZR doe, the ideal would of course be another NZR. Bad mothering genes are heritable, but it's surprising to imagine a commercial meat breed having too much trouble with it since a meat breeder would not be very successful if they didn't cull poor producers. Maybe it's an issue with the particular reds in your area? Since your doe did what she needed to do, if it was me I'd a NZR buck if I could. You will probably get all reds, or at least mostly reds. Then just watch the babies as they grow into your breeding program, to make sure they perform the way you want them to.

You could also find a red in another breed if you're too nervous about the NZRs. Satins come in red, or you might be able to find a red rex crossbreed.

I always prefer to breed reds to reds as exclusively as I can, because as @judymac implied, the rufus modifiers seem to add up over generations to give you the deepest red color.

The BEW you have now might get you some reds. If it threw torts, you know it's got at least one non-extension gene; if it threw torts plus some agouti colors it's <Aa>. If it threw only torts and blacks with the broken tort doe, you know it's a self <aa>. Neither is what you want ideally, but the NZR doe's agouti <A> allele will overpower the self <a> and you should see at least a red or two in the litter. The negative to this pairing is that if the BEW is <Aa> or <aa>, even the reds you get out of the cross may carry self, meaning more torts down the road. Of course the NZR doe might carry <a> as well. There will be those VMs and VCs of course, but that's not super hard to deal with since there are clues to those kits, and you could probably eliminate the vienna gene within a few generations. I personally don't care for blue eyes on a red rabbit, but some white markings on red can be pretty attractive (in the short run).

You could also look for a chestnut, and if you're even better off if you can find a wideband one. Look for a chestnut that is redder than normal and has a middle orange band that is wider than the other bands. This pairing would probably give you all chestnuts (unless the chestnut carries a hidden <e>), but all those bunnies would be able to give you reds from there out.

I wouldn't mess with the chin, steel or the sable point. Chin allele prevents any orange from expressing, so that's not at all helpful. You already know about steel. And even though the sable point is <ee>, that sable allele can really mess up other colors.
 
Last edited:
And even though the sable point is <ee>, that sable allele can really mess up other colors.
Sable is one of the options on the Color 'C' gene. Full color, which is what red is, is dominant C. All of the options (called alleles) that are more recessive to that have a loss of color. Not what you want when you're searching for a vibrant red. Chinchilla removes all of the red color. Sable removes all of the red, and even some of the dark colors, making dark blacks into sepia browns. Himalayan/Californian/pointed white removes ALL of the color off of the body, leaving only a little color on the points, and the most recessive albino just plain shuts off the pigment producing cells, leaving a ruby eyed white rabbit. So I would definitely avoid anything chin or sable.

Ideally, you would want another red buck, for the quickest and deepest red kits. Next choice would be a fawn/orange agouti, with as rich of color as you can find. Breeding to chestnut with as rich of a fawn/red color is another option. As Alaska Satin said, you'll probably get mostly chestnut at first, but breed back for reds. The only problem with breeding to chestnut is the probability of getting smut, unwanted dark hairs ticking the red, especially on the face and ears. You could also breed to tort, again, as rich of color as possible, the red's agouti should be dominant over the tort non-agouti recessive.
 
Breeding to chestnut with as rich of a fawn/red color is another option. As Alaska Satin said, you'll probably get mostly chestnut at first, but breed back for reds. The only problem with breeding to chestnut is the probability of getting smut, unwanted dark hairs ticking the red, especially on the face and ears.
That is the common wisdom, but I have found that breeding red to chestnut will sometimes, but not always, make smutty reds. In my experience it seems to have more to do with the wideband contribution and the rufus modifiers. I think the reason chestnuts will often produce smut on resulting reds is that a) most chestnuts don't have the wideband genes and 2) chestnuts are not quite as heavily selected for the rufus modifiers as reds are.

Chestnuts usually do not have the wideband gene because when they do, their bands are not correct - there's too much orange in the middle ring, which also makes their surface color too red for a proper chestnut. Although I actually prefer the color myself, judges basing their choices on the SOP do not! :LOL: Wideband chestnuts usually come out of a red program; I have found that they can be useful to breed back into a red breeding program, because not only do they carry that wideband gene or genes but they also carry rufus modifiers from their red progenitors.

The key is finding those wideband chestnuts. The good news is that when show breeders have them, they tend to be culls (read: less expensive) since they're not really correct.
I suppose my new question, then, is to ask what type of buck will it take to get some red offspring? I will see what I have access to. Obviously a NZR, but I am leary due to stories of bad mothering genes in the NZRs. Anything else?
The other thing that occurs to me is that you might find a REW that carries what you need. Red Satin breeders quite frequently use REWs in their red breeding programs to improve type, texture and density. Using REWs that you know bring what you need can be very helpful - the trick is finding a REW that you know has red in its background.

Do you have any way to find other breeders in your area? The ARBA has a list of breeders from across the country here: Find a Breeder It's not all-inclusive since members pay to advertise there, but it might be useful to you. If it was me, I'd write everyone in my area who had any of the meat breeds that come in red, and tell them what I'm looking for. There is a wide range of breeders out there, and some wil only be interested in selling purebred show stock, but if someone wrote me looking for a meat cull that would help them produce red, I'd try to help them out. Might be worth a shot. You might find just the right connection, and be able to find good stock as well as learn a ton from someone who is experienced and interested in the same things...:)
 
Last edited:
That is the common wisdom, but I have found that breeding red to chestnut will sometimes, but not always, make smutty reds. In my experience it seems to have more to do with the wideband contribution and the rufus modifiers.
Excellent information. I've always had trouble with the smut on fawns out of chestnuts, but wasn't dealing with rufus or wideband, which would help move that smut off the hairshaft.
 
I second the NZR advice, but also suggest that if you cross to the REW you MIGHT get an agouti son that will then give you reds when bred back to mom. With a doe that color I would probably find a NZR buck though. She is lovely. It would be a shame to muddy it up for generations when you have a great color already there.

Also, for funsies, if you breed a red who happens to carry REW (Cc) to a chinchilla who maybe carries wideband, (Ee), you might get frosties, aka ermine (Chdc, ee). The Chin gene blocks the red pigment, and the ee blocks the black pigment, and you end up with these silly little white easter bunnies with dark eyes. Some folks LOVE that. I did it by accident once, it was a surprise!
 
Last edited:
I second the NZR advice, but also suggest that if you cross to the REW you MIGHT get an agouti son that will then give you reds when bred back to mom. With a doe that color I would probably find a NZR buck though. She is lovely. It would be a shame to muddy it up for generations when you have a great color already there.

Also, for funsies, if you breed a red who happens to carry REW (Cc) to a chinchilla who maybe carries wideband, (Ee), you might get frosties, aka ermine (Chdc, ee). The Chin gene blocks the red pigment, and the ee blocks the black pigment, and you end up with these silly little white easter bunnies with dark eyes. Some folks LOVE that. I did it by accident once, it was a surprise!
Now to find a NZR buck and a place to house him, lol.

Should I consider a broken with nice red to him, or only a solid for
this experiment?
 
Now to find a NZR buck and a place to house him, lol.

Should I consider a broken with nice red to him, or only a solid for
this experiment?
As long as you don't dislike brokens, either solid red or broken red will do, just find the best red color you can. The broken color pattern comes from a completely separate gene that won't affect the red color. You'll get roughly half broken kits and half solid kits; you can always just keep the solid red kits if you don't care for brokens.
 
I second the NZR advice, but also suggest that if you cross to the REW you MIGHT get an agouti son that will then give you reds when bred back to mom. With a doe that color I would probably find a NZR buck though. She is lovely. It would be a shame to muddy it up for generations when you have a great color already there.
Agree 100%!
Also, for funsies, if you breed a red who happens to carry REW (Cc) to a chinchilla who maybe carries wideband, (Ee), you might get frosties, aka ermine (Chdc, ee). The Chin gene blocks the red pigment, and the ee blocks the black pigment, and you end up with these silly little white easter bunnies with dark eyes. Some folks LOVE that. I did it by accident once, it was a surprise!
Just a minor technical note, wide band is <w> and stretches the middle band across the length of the hairshaft. It's the other critical gene for reds, the non-extension gene <e>, that you need for ermine. Wideband can help "clean up" the bit of smut some ermines have so that they're pure white instead of frosties, but it won't actually make ermines.
 
Do note that broken X broken gives 25% Charlies and they can develop a genetic condition known as megacolon i.e. intestinal deformity that is deadly. I have a nice broken buck that i love the the traits from but the broken part i'd like to breed out so i can pair up does and bucks more freely.
 
I second the NZR advice, but also suggest that if you cross to the REW you MIGHT get an agouti son that will then give you reds when bred back to mom. With a doe that color I would probably find a NZR buck though. She is lovely. It would be a shame to muddy it up for generations when you have a great color already there.

Also, for funsies, if you breed a red who happens to carry REW (Cc) to a chinchilla who maybe carries wideband, (Ee), you might get frosties, aka ermine (Chdc, ee). The Chin gene blocks the red pigment, and the ee blocks the black pigment, and you end up with these silly little white easter bunnies with dark eyes. Some folks LOVE that. I did it by accident once, it was a surprise!
I have one sandy/chestnut kit from her first litter for me (with a light gray/chinchilla buck) and she is now bred with the REW. We shall see what happens, I suppose. I plan to keep anything really nice. If I cannot find a good NZR or Satin red buck in t I me, her next breeding will be with my TAMUK buck just to have some good meat genes in the herd. Then maybe some future kits can breed with some red and make red babies. We shall see.

I spoke with a local ARBA lady and she said there are not many Nzs at shows lately, and no red NZs.
 
Agree 100%!

Just a minor technical note, wide band is <w> and stretches the middle band across the length of the hairshaft. It's the other critical gene for reds, the non-extension gene <e>, that you need for ermine. Wideband can help "clean up" the bit of smut some ermines have so that they're pure white instead of frosties, but it won't actually make ermines.
you are right, I totally mixed up non-extension and wideband--I have gotten rusty, no pun intended, lol. Should have said "that carries non-extension, (Ee)".

As for ermines vs frosties, I thought they were the same thing--this is what happens when someone only understands the genetics and not the show names for things. I am clueless about the names of the colors even if I understand how they get made. I should just speak exclusively in punnett squares! :ROFLMAO:
 

Latest posts

Back
Top