My previous comment got kind of hidden because it fell on the mod queue, but I've been working a bit more on decoding the genes and I'm just stumped at the E locus, I fail to understand it.
So far I've gotten this:
| Ton (Sire) | Chocolate Orange? | A | | b | b | C | c(chl) | D | | e | e |
| Saturno (Dam) | Black Himalayan | a | a | B | | c(h) | c(h)/c | D | | E | |
| Ran (The kit) | Sable Agouti Siamese? | A | a | B | b | c(chl) | c(h)/c | D | | | e |
I understand the red buck was ee because he was red, and I understand black himalayans are E_ because... that seems to be what calculators say. But I just can't wrap my mind on how to identify what this kit is just by looking at it. His hairs are grey-black-brown. Is that what people mean when they say "gold-tipped", and his belly is brown instead of white, does this make him steel? Or does he have non-extension and his brown belly means he is somehow aa instead of Aa?
As an extra note, before I had to cull the sire he had one more litter with this doe. One of the kits has this same mystery colour and a stillborn had grey skin, so in total they had 6 black self, 2 sables and one something-with-paler-skin (plus some more dark-skinned stillborns), if this helps at all.
I saw your post and have been mulling it since my original response, but I've not replied again because I am a bit mystified as well!
Off the top, two comments. This is the first I've ever heard of the Fauve de Burgogne breed - thanks for expanding my world. Beautiful rabbit!
So, I can't comment on the typical genotype of the breed, but chocolate-based oranges/reds are common in the U.S. because, in a nutshell, chocolate smut is less noticeable than black smut. So I'd buy the idea that your red is chocolate-based; and also, unless it's a trick of lighting, he does have the suggestion of chocolate lacing (on a red, that's smut
) on his ear.
The other comment is that while the typical Californian is self and black-based with normal extension <
aaB_c(h)D_E_>, there are other possibilities at that E locus that would still result in a himalayan phenotype. For instance, steel <
E(S)> can actually hide in a himi since the self alleles block its expression: a self steel looks like a self black. In the last few years I am discovering steel in many lines where I did not expect it. This baffled me until I started talking with some old-timers (even older than me!) and heard the suggestion that a steel allele can increase the depth and intensity of undercolor in blacks.
So, on to your mystery bunny. He does look very, very burnished, more than even the worst sunbleached black I've seen. Sable does jump to mind, and the blotchy molt pattern and those footpads look sable-y too. But overall, the rabbit it just doesn't look quite like the sables I've known. I'm especially doubtful when I learn he started out black. In my experience, sables start out pale bluish-gray as newborns, turn chocolatey, then slowly develop the shaded sepia, tending to get darker as they age, rather than lighter. Do you remember what color that kit was as a newborn?
I can't see anything that looks like banding in the fur photo in the original post, but reading that his belly is brown, that sounds either like a self sable or a steel. Is his belly the same brown as his back? There have been a couple of discussions in the last year or so about a possible interaction between steel
E(S) and non-extension
e. It's the best explanation I've heard for the color of one of my own mystery bunnies, which started out looking like a black but then developed a kind of haze of gold tips. Here he is, in front of his GTS and black siblings:
I don't know what this bunny looked like at maturity because he was sold at 8-9 weeks, but I wonder if he might have ended up looking more like yours; the gold haze seemed to slowly intensify over the time I had him.
There are at least two more threads where this is discussed:
https://rabbittalk.com/threads/sable-chinchilla-qs.37680/#post-365785
https://rabbittalk.com/threads/self-blue-or-otter.36722/#post-357843
So...
If your Californian doe just happens to be a self steel <
aaB_c(h)_D_E(S)_>, your bunny could have ended up
<AaB_C_D_E(S)e>. I don't have any evidence other than the above-referenced discussions that
E(S) and
e are co-dominant, but that E series does have other co-dominant alleles, and so far it seems like that is the most logical explanation of what I'm seeing in these other situations.
I like your genotype for the red buck, and also the one for the Cal doe, with the caveat that maybe she's a self steel <
aaB_c(h)_D_E(S)_>. For the bunny, I guess it depends on what you decide he actually is. I'm not sure about using "Sable Agouti Siamese," though. Your bunny isn't agouti - no trim or obvious bands - so I'd drop that; and at least in the U.S., "siamese" means different things in different breeds. (For instance, in Satins, the Siamese variety is a sable point (non-extension sable), while a Siamese Sable in Netherland Dwarfs and Holland Lops is a normal extension sable.) For my part, I like names to be as descriptive as possible, so if I decide he was a sable - which is a self variety - I'd just call him Sable. If I decided he was a non-extension steel, I'd call him that (one of the infamous "unrecognized varieties" of record-keeping programs!).
If you're keeping him anyway, breed him back to his dam. If he is a sable <
aaB_c(chl)c(h)D_Ee>, most or all of the bunnies should be sable and himi (or REW if the dam was actually <
c(h)c>, and he got a <
c> instead of a <
c(h)>). But if he's a non-extension steel <
A_B_Cc(h)D_E(S)e>, with the agouti <
A> from the sire and the steel
<E(S)> from the dam, you would likely see GTS and self steels (which would look like self blacks) as well as self blacks and himis...but no sables.
Regarding your questions about banded hair in a steel, they do have a ring pattern on each hair, but the pattern is pushed up to the top. Steel goes through some interesting changes as the color develops (so does normal agouti, for that matter). The GTS shown above, sibling to the mystery bunny, was born solid black with a hint of a nape triangle, but by 3 weeks had rings like this:
and at 4 weeks they looked like this:
In spite of the name "gold-tipped" steel, the hairs are not actually tipped with gold. They still have a dark tip, but the intermediate band being pushed so far up the hairshaft makes the surface color look different from, though similar to, a chestnut. These are photos taken with a microscope of the fur from a fully mature GTS doe:
Also, the belly on a typical steel is darker than an agouti, but it is not self colored. It often has "lap spots" but doesn't have the gold-tipped look like the back does. Here's an example of the same bunny as above:
Could the sable have been carried by the Cali dam instead? her coat is the whitest white on the body while the points used to be black in winter and are now a mix of grey and muddy brown with some black. I see some examples of seal point that look very similar to Himalayan
As
@MsTemeraire points out, Cals can't carry sable since himi is recessive to sable. Himi is the next step down the genetic ladder, under sable, so it does make sense that while Californians are called "black," their color is actually an extremely dark sepia (ideally, anyway). The ARBA standard implicitly acknowledges this, where it specifies color is to be "as near black as possible." And since the himalayan allele's effects are temperature-dependent, Californians often have darker and more extensive points in the winter, and paler and less extensive points in warm conditions.
