That is really interesting coming from purebred Americans; to me these look like blue silver martens (a dilute otter with a dominant chinchilla allele) with silvering. I do not see obvious banding, though I wonder a little bit about Chamomile..see below.
All of that white ticking in the blue surface color could come from either silver <
si> or steel <
E(S)>. I would lean toward <
si> for the reason that in that last photo of Happy Girl, there are distinctly white hairs, rather than the telescoped banding of steel.
View attachment 43702
Silvering is more likely to hide in the REW buck(s) as it often functions as a partially dominant allele, so it frequently shows up when there is only one copy, but of course wouldn't show in a REW. However I have recently had some chestnut Champagne x Satin crosses that show no silvering whatsoever, even though I know for sure they carry a copy of <
si>. Also, in my experience, rabbits with only one copy of <
si> tend to have noticeably less silvering on their faces compared to their bodies, which seems to be the case in your bunnies.
On the other hand... in the fur closeup of Chamomile, I wonder if I
might see some of the telescoped banding of steel. Steel could be hiding in the REWs, but it could also hide in the blues as either self steel (selfs have no banding, so no appearance of steel) or supersteels (two copies of the steel allele produce what looks like a self-colored rabbit, though they can have some limited patches of ticking). An agouti allele hiding in a REW (though not so a tan allele) would allow expression of both the steeling and the agouti trim. But, if this is the case and she was a blue steel, she would most likely not have that extensive agouti trim, especially that bright silver belly.
View attachment 43703
If you can pull some of those white hairs and look at them individually, you may be able to tell the difference. Here is the difference between the all-white hairs of silvering (first two pictures), that on a whole pelt look like white tips,
View attachment 43704 View attachment 43705
and the scrunched rings of a steel (third and fourth pictures), which on the pelt looked like white-tipped hairs but actually have dark tips:
View attachment 43706 View attachment 43707
So you could have silvering in one rabbit and steel in the other. And you could possibly have
both silvering and steel in one rabbit!
But again, I have major doubts about steel, seeing that white belly and classic chinchilla/marten trim.
A blue silver marten requires not an agouti but a tan allele <
a(t)> and a chinchilla <
c(chd)>, which together would turn a self blue into a blue silver marten. The REWs could carry the tan but not the chinchilla since REWs are the completely recessive <
cc>. The solid blue does, if they are in fact self blues, will not be able to carry tan <
a(t)>, but they very well could carry - or even
be - chinchilla, since their two self alleles <
aa> would block the effects of the chinchilla allele, as selfs have no banding or trim. If that is the case, they're called self blue chin (aka self squirrel) which look just like self blues. In that case, breeding them with a tan-carrying REW would allow expression of the tan (in this case, marten) markings but preserve the self-colored body.
BTW, looks like you have a nice set-up... and your rabbit pictures were excellent!