Silver fox with white undercoat?

[mrscllc]

I was given this doe, told she was a silver fox, by a homesteading friend who was closing their rabbit operation down. She has standup fur, but she otter markings and her undercoat is white. The litter with her was bred with a chestnut agouti, her son. Some have stand up fur, some have fluffy agouti style ringed fur, but all have tipping on the fur.

My questions are:
1.can a black silver fox have a white undercoat?
2. If not what is the likely breed she is? The other rabbits I inherited from this rabbitry were a californian and broken new zealand(possibly american?) buck.
3. Does the density or fluffiness of the undercoat point to a specific genetic marker like the color alleles do?

Thanks so much for any help, I find these color genetics difficult to grasp but oh so much fun!

 

[Alaska Satin]

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I was given this doe, told she was a silver fox, by a homesteading friend who was closing their rabbit operation down. She has standup fur, but she otter markings and her undercoat is white. The litter with her was bred with a chestnut agouti, her son. Some have stand up fur, some have fluffy agouti style ringed fur, but all have tipping on the fur.

My questions are:
1.can a black silver fox have a white undercoat?
2. If not what is the likely breed she is? The other rabbits I inherited from this rabbitry were a californian and broken new zealand(possibly american?) buck.
3. Does the density or fluffiness of the undercoat point to a specific genetic marker like the color alleles do?

Thanks so much for any help, I find these color genetics difficult to grasp but oh so much fun!

Those don't look like silver fox and they don't look like they have silvering - they look like steels. Steels are agoutis (hence the markings) with a gene that reduces the markings and ring pattern on the hairs. Silvering involves both silver-tipped hairs and silver hairs. (You can have both steeling and silvering, as they come from different places on the genome.) If some of your rabbits have stand-up fur and others don't, they are probably mixed breeds. Reasonable guess would be Silver Fox x New Zealand (many NZ whites carry steel).

To answer your other question, silver fox should not have a white undercoat, but the shade and extent of the undercolor can vary quite a bit.

 

[mrscllc]

Those don't look like silver fox and they don't look like they have silvering - they look like steels. Steels are agoutis (hence the markings) with a gene that reduces the markings and ring pattern on the hairs. Silvering involves both silver-tipped hairs and silver hairs. (You can have both steeling and silvering, as they come from different places on the genome.) If some of your rabbits have stand-up fur and others don't, they are probably mixed breeds. Reasonable guess would be Silver Fox x New Zealand (many NZ whites carry steel).

To answer your other question, silver fox should not have a white undercoat, but the shade and extent of the undercolor can vary quite a bit.

Thank you. I have read enough here that I knew that some of the babies were steels and some were agouti, based on the absence or presence of hair shaft rings, but I was confused by the stand up fur and white undercoat of mom. Only my chinchilla and chestnut agouti colored bunnies have white undercoat. Most have a black undercoat and then silver or gold tipping.

 

[Alaska Satin]

Thank you. I have read enough here that I knew that some of the babies were steels and some were agouti, based on the absence or presence of hair shaft rings, but I was confused by the stand up fur and white undercoat of mom. Only my chinchilla and chestnut agouti colored bunnies have white undercoat. Most have a black undercoat and then silver or gold tipping.

A white undercoat on a chinchilla or a chestnut is a little intriguing. Both chins and chestnuts should have slate blue undercolor. It's usually the reds, fawns and lynx that get the whitish undercolor.

A dark undercoat with tipping could probably describe either steel or silvering. But a steel has only light-colored tips (gold or white) and should not have plain light hairs, while the silvered rabbit has both white tips and also white hairs throughout (but no gold at all). Your doe has gold tips, which is the clincher that says she's a steel, not a silver.

Steels can have what look like rings as they are developing (belying their underlying agouti status), but the bands are disordered, and end in gold tips instead of black. I've mostly seen this on juniors, but slight ring color can also appear around the lower part of the body in adult Steel Gray Flemish Giants and Silver-tipped Steel Netherland Dwarfs, for instance. It sometimes appears in the lop breeds as well, but is considered a fault.

Silver Fox should have dark (slate) undercolor, blending to a jet black surface color broken by white or white-tipped hairs. I don't have any images of silver fox fur, but here is another silvered breed, a Champagne D'Argent, followed by a blue silver-tipped steel:

Most descriptions of steel don't specifically mention undercolor, rather they call for color to run as deep toward the skin as possible. The image above is a fairly poorly-colored blue steel, meaning its blue color is quite light and is not carried deep to the skin. But you can see the difference in distribution of white, anyway.

But really, your agoutis shouldn't have white undercolor either. Chestnuts should have a slate blue undercolor, an orange intermediate band, and black tips. Here's a chestnut, which has pale slate blue, not white undercolor:


Chinchillas should also have a dark slate undercolor, a pearl intermediate band and a narrow black band, then a combination of black and white-tipped guard hairs:


What might be going in your rabbits is something that plagues many breeders, and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with agouti or steel but rather the depth of the base color. Self colors (including silvered colors like black, blue, chocolate or lilac, but not including steel), are especially valued if the surface color runs deep toward the skin, like this:

But many rabbits have surface color that stays at the surface, leaving a pale (though not usually completely white) undercolor. The one pictured below is actually not all that bad - I've worked at eliminating shallow color in my rabbits - but you may still be able to see that she has a paler undercolor compared to the surface color than the rabbits pictured above:

Some rabbits are much more dramatic than this - I would include the silver-tipped blue steel above. Maybe your doe is in this situation, with her base color just not carrying very far down the hairshaft?

I believe @judymac was pursuing an explanation for pale undercolor and shallow surface color in her angoras' wool, but I'm not sure if she ever came up with one that satisfied her... which if she did, I'd love to hear!

 

[mrscllc]

A white undercoat on a chinchilla or a chestnut is a little intriguing. Both chins and chestnuts should have slate blue undercolor. It's usually the reds, fawns and lynx that get the whitish undercolor.

A dark undercoat with tipping could probably describe either steel or silvering. But a steel has only light-colored tips (gold or white) and should not have plain light hairs, while the silvered rabbit has both white tips and also white hairs throughout (but no gold at all). Your doe has gold tips, which is the clincher that says she's a steel, not a silver.

Steels can have what look like rings as they are developing (belying their underlying agouti status), but the bands are disordered, and end in gold tips instead of black. I've mostly seen this on juniors, but slight ring color can also appear around the lower part of the body in adult Steel Gray Flemish Giants and Silver-tipped Steel Netherland Dwarfs, for instance. It sometimes appears in the lop breeds as well, but is considered a fault.

Silver Fox should have dark (slate) undercolor, blending to a jet black surface color broken by white or white-tipped hairs. I don't have any images of silver fox fur, but here is another silvered breed, a Champagne D'Argent, followed by a blue silver-tipped steel:
View attachment 38713View attachment 38714
Most descriptions of steel don't specifically mention undercolor, rather they call for color to run as deep toward the skin as possible. The image above is a fairly poorly-colored blue steel, meaning its blue color is quite light and is not carried deep to the skin. But you can see the difference in distribution of white, anyway.

But really, your agoutis shouldn't have white undercolor either. Chestnuts should have a slate blue undercolor, an orange intermediate band, and black tips. Here's a chestnut, which has pale slate blue, not white undercolor:
View attachment 38715

Chinchillas should also have a dark slate undercolor, a pearl intermediate band and a narrow black band, then a combination of black and white-tipped guard hairs:
View attachment 38716

What might be going in your rabbits is something that plagues many breeders, and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with agouti or steel but rather the depth of the base color. Self colors (including silvered colors like black, blue, chocolate or lilac, but not including steel), are especially valued if the surface color runs deep toward the skin, like this:
View attachment 38718View attachment 38720View attachment 38721
But many rabbits have surface color that stays at the surface, leaving a pale (though not usually completely white) undercolor. The one pictured below is actually not all that bad - I've worked at eliminating shallow color in my rabbits - but you may still be able to see that she has a paler undercolor compared to the surface color than the rabbits pictured above:
View attachment 38719
Some rabbits are much more dramatic than this - I would include the silver-tipped blue steel above. Maybe your doe is in this situation, with her base color just not carrying very far down the hairshaft?
View attachment 38722
I believe @judymac was pursuing an explanation for pale undercolor and shallow surface color in her angoras' wool, but I'm not sure if she ever came up with one that satisfied her... which if she did, I'd love to hear!

Wow! I've never considered depth of hair craft coloring as a separate issue!

But now I want to go and take photos of all my agouti and steels I know I have to see what is under there. I currently only have 4 does, and three are white bases. A californian, a broken NZ and a broken lop. My Foxy is the only dark colored doe I have which is why I want to keep one of her babies and am trying to learn enough about her breed/base to make an informed decision. Her son the one I called a chestnut agouti is only 9 months old currently, so his coat is still changing. I noticed yesterday he looks much more silver overall that the orange undertone he used to have. But his hair tips are black not light. The same is true from one of his offspring with my broken lop ear doe, there are two does from that litter who started with clearly orange based hair at the nape of the neck, but one has since turned completely white in that are losing the orange altogether, looking chincilla or squirrel, I think now at only 9 weeks old though, she's got plenty of time to keep surprising me!

He sired a litter with my Californian this past month that has a pearly colored baby, I thought it was born bruised because just the back end/feet and face were purple looking and the rest the normal pink skin of a white rabbit like mom. I'm excited to see how that grows in.


When it's light out I'm going to go take more photos! In the meantime, here is my buck Ash as a kit at 4 weeks and again at 6 months.

 

[judymac]

I believe @judymac was pursuing an explanation for pale undercolor and shallow surface color in her angoras' wool

Sad to say, I've never found a solution to this conundrum. I prize color that stays dark to the skin, but I have lines (all of which seems to related to the ee non-extension at some point) with extremely poor color depth. It's call "snowball" in extreme cases, with color only on the tips like a dirty snowball.

This is fiber from a wild gray chestnut agouti. The color depth is atrocious, but the coat doesn't mat and the doe produces twice the fiber of any other rabbit in the barn.

This is the doe: For whatever reason, wild grays seem to have very little banding. I've read in several places noting this, but I've never seen an explanation as to why it happens.

She is out of a harlequin buck (with the distinct lack of color depth shown in the sample below) and a ee agouti doe with fabulous fiber. This is her mother:

This is from the harlequin line, note the very poor color depth.


I traced this harlequin rabbit through four generations of its breeder's herd, and every generation had this same lack of color depth. So whatever causes it, it is highly inheritable.

The wild gray chestnut had a black self sibling, lovely dark color on the outside, but pale inside. This is from his daughter:

As you can see, the white has continued on for another generation. I am selecting stock with better color depth, and I hope to eventually eliminate this genetic. The problem is, you make much faster progress when you only select for one trait at a time. But I consider temperament as well as non-matting, fine fiber (not coarse) and fiber yield to all be very important (and non-negotiable), as well as color depth. So, a rabbit with outstanding other traits but poor color depth may stay in the breeding pool. Sad, but true.