Possible color?

[Alaska Satin]

I was told he was the offspring of these two...was I given false information?

I wouldn't be able to conclude anything about that.

I suppose there is a possibility that it was the meeting of two different rex alleles. There have been at least three different alleles described that produce rex coats, and they don't always work together in concert.

Or it could be an honest mistake; when rabbits are raised in a semi-colonial situation or when grow-outs from different litters are penned together, mix-ups can happen.

The photos of your pair's current kits look like young rex to me, while the older harlie buck does not. It could be a strange photo, or an artifact of molt, which it appears he is undergoing. Does his fur seem the same to you as the two adults' fur?

More photos might be helpful but you should compare his coat to the adults' coats. There are different levels of quality of rex fur, some thicker and more springy than others, but they all should seem short-haired and more or less velvety, with most or all guard hairs the same length as the underfur. When stroked toward the head, it should not "change direction" or be able to roll back into its original position.

 

[judymac]

I don't see stripes and the face doesn't look like it's split colors left-and right... this is what I've assumed are the patterns of harlequin, so what am I looking for in these cuties, to spot the hidden harlequin?

In a normal extension agouti rabbit, the outer band on a single hairshaft is made of a darker eumelanin color (black, blue, chocolate or lilac), until the hormones change pigment production to the yellowish pheomelanin color. Harlequin (coded e(j) for Japanese, the earlier name for this pattern), simply means that the agouti bands of dark and yellowish, instead of being bands on a single hair, are on separate patches of skin. They can be all mixed up, like a brindle Great Dane dog; or in spots, stripes or splotches. The gene itself doesn't determine the pattern, simply that each hairshaft has either dark or yellowish hair alone, instead of both colors in bands on a single hair.

Now, to be a show-quality harlequin, there is a very specific set pattern that they strive for, with alternating blocks of yellow/dark, with a color change at the midline. That's what we think of when we think of harlequin. But, the gene can express itself in many forms, from the mixed hairs of brindle to narrow stripes, free-form splotches and spots, wide bands, or anything in-between. The tell-tale sign of e(j) is finding sections with all dark and sections of all yellow.

A tortoiseshell rabbit (which is recessive to harlequin) has all yellow on the main body, with dark color on the points. A broken tort will have dark and yellow spots, but you'll only see the dark spots on the points, and the yellow spots only on the main body.

Harlequinized rabbits have both a dominant normal extension and a recessive harlequin gene. They will have the normal agouti pattern, but the color will just seem 'off'. It turns out that the reason it looks off, especially in harlequinized castors, is that there will be sections of the coat looking darker and sections looking more chestnutish--standard castors don't do that. You'll also usually find some mottling of color around the ears, or a slight midline color shift on the face.



The bunny above was born looking like a standard castor, but can you see that the right side of the face has more of a yellowish tint, and the left side darker? The buck below is out of a wild gray chestnut agouti (castors are called chestnuts in English Angoras) and a harlie. See how the color is off? There are some small harlequinized hairs in lighter and darker sections.

 

[Sapphire16]

the parents look rex, longer guard hairs is pretty common on the baby coat and usually goes away after the baby coat is replaced with the junior coat.

 

[reh]

The Steel eliminates most or all of the the agouti markings (light belly, ear linings,etc) and squishes the agouti rings all up to the top of the hair shaft.

the light part of steel hairs is the narrowed middle band, not the tip.

Regarding EeJ rabbits, the japanese can best be seen in young kits/on the belly/on ears.



The japanese gene is causing an extension receptor similar to steel. It causes black or steel patches and is dominant to all nonextension/agouti colors.
In the light parts of japanese the receptor is missing so no dark color can be produced and its recessive to e. Which is causing the torted harlekins.
In my tricolored lines i have no e genes, eJ and E only. Therefore i have never seen torts or torted japanese nor smutty nose/ears either.

 

[reh]

They can be all mixed up, like a brindle Great Dane dog

The brindle in dogs is different to japanese, its caused by a ligand produced in the skin, not a receptor in migrating melanocytes, therefore these patters are different.

 

[Alaska Satin]

the light part of steel hairs is the narrowed middle band, not the tip.

I'm not saying that the hair tip is light; like <E> agoutis, most (though not all) of the hair tips are dark, but there is usually at least some gold- or silver- tipped hairs (called ticking). But in the steels I've worked with, the undercolor is drawn up the shaft and all the bands, including the middle band which of course is narrow, are squished up to the top of the hairshaft. So in a normal chestnut you have five bands (three in a rex) of orange and black, ending in a dark tip. In a steel I still see all of those, it's just that most of them are in the upper half-to-quarter of the hairshaft.

The japanese gene is causing an extension receptor similar to steel. It causes black or steel patches and is dominant to all nonextension/agouti colors.

I have found that in practice, ej is only partially dominant to agouti and non-extension colors, though I do not yet understand how it "decides" to express.

In our Mini Rex we had no harlequin or tri in 11 generations of selfs and agoutis, which included reds. We had surprise harlequin show up after outcrossing a castor buck from this line to a black VM Polish/Mini Satin crossbreed doe. So, I am as certain as one can be that there was only a single copy of <ej> available to this litter; nonetheless, we got clean castors, harlequinized castors, and harlequins in this single litter, as well as black VMs. (The clean castors have breed cleanly since, and the harlie went on to found a line of tris. The castor sire of the litter was known to carry both self <a> and non-extension <e> but none of this particular litter was torted, and none of their progeny has been torted, so I don't think the <e> made it through.)

 

[reh]

They can have very few dark hairs, Robinson (or someone he cites) tells about a yellow eJ rabbit. After very systematic investigation they found very few dark hairs in one place.