Tricolour to tricolour should be tri (from experience) but....

[ladysown]

So i've been breeding tricolour holland lops like forever.

Love the colour and just the fun of them.

Normally if I breed tri to tri I get a litter of tri.
but this spring I've had dark harlequins popping up in my tri to tri breedings and I'm finding it very curious. Out of a buck who consistently throws me tris.

Not mottled harlequins, but ones with ALOT of black.

Curious as to why that would be.

 

[Alaska Satin]

So i've been breeding tricolour holland lops like forever.

Love the colour and just the fun of them.

Normally if I breed tri to tri I get a litter of tri.
but this spring I've had dark harlequins popping up in my tri to tri breedings and I'm finding it very curious. Out of a buck who consistently throws me tris.

Not mottled harlequins, but ones with ALOT of black.

Curious as to why that would be.

Genetically speaking, correct tricolors are broken harlequins <A_B_C_D_ejej Enen>, so you should expect solid harlequin sports when you breed two tris. (You should also expect to get charlies.)

Tricolor Enen x tricolor Enen = 25% charlies EnEn, 50% tricolors Enen, and 25% solids enen. In fact, I can't see the bottom kit very well, but it may be that you have a statistically typical litter pictured:


The charlies will look like lightly marked tricolors; there's a lot of variation in the amount of color a broken Enen or a charlie EnEn will show. You can have a very lightly marked Enen (broken) rabbit, or a relatively heavily marked EnEn (charlie) rabbit, so you can't always discriminate between a charlie and a broken just by looking.

So... if you've actually been breeding charlie tricolors EnEn, you will not get any solids at all:
Charlie EnEn x broken Enen = 50% brokens Enen and 50% charlies EnEn
Charlie EnEn x Charlie EnEn = 100% charlies EnEn

Thus, if you've been breeding charlies frequently, it's not surprising that you don't get solids often. But if you've never had solid sports before this, you've run the table.

They are so pretty!

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

Ya it's curious that your experience would be only brokens from broken x broken breeding. Unless you're dealing with some rabbits that are heavier marked charlies?

Why the harlis are mostly black, that I don't know. Very interesting.

 

[MsTemeraire]

Why the harlis are mostly black, that I don't know. Very interesting.

They just vary. Personally in Harlie/Tri Dutch breeding I prefer the dark ones over the lightly marked ones for breeding, as they seem to be less common. You can put a dark one to a light one to hopefully even out the colour distribution.