What colors should I choose

[bunnychild]

I am currently working on a rabbit colony idea for the future and I know I want to raise Mini Lops. I am trying to decide what colors I should consider, but there are so many! I know that I do not want REW or BEW, and I am not really interested in any of the Agouti colors. I also know that I want one to have a broken pattern. I want the offspring to be a variety of (showable) colors. What are four colors that would work together well?

 

[Dood]

Prett much every colour is showable in mini lops ( https://www.arba.net/PDFs/breed_id_rab_cav.pdf ) so the most important thing is to get the BEST conformation possible in your foundation stock

Don't mix torts with otters as they can produce fox/totters which are not showable and you should be good

 

[SableSteel]

The one thing I'd worry about in your case is charlies - if you breed two brokens together, about 25% of the offspring will be charlies, which are too lightly marked to be shown. Because of this, if you got, say, a broken buck, you might want to avoid getting any broken does.
If you like agouti, you are in luck, because mini lops are most commonly found in agouti and recognize almost any agouti color. chestnut agouti, chinchilla, squirrel, opal, you could even add in some gold tipped steel, silver tipped steel, etc, without a high risk of unshowable colors (though if you prefer the agouti rabbits, you might want to avoid breeding two steels together, as that make "super steels" which look more like black). For variety in agoutis, you might want to get some that carry different genes, so with a more colorful pedigree, like a squirrel in the parentage of a chestnut

 

[bunnychild]

The one thing I'd worry about in your case is charlies - if you breed two brokens together, about 25% of the offspring will be charlies, which are too lightly marked to be shown. Because of this, if you got, say, a broken buck, you might want to avoid getting any broken does.
If you like agouti, you are in luck, because mini lops are most commonly found in agouti and recognize almost any agouti color. chestnut agouti, chinchilla, squirrel, opal, you could even add in some gold tipped steel, silver tipped steel, etc, without a high risk of unshowable colors (though if you prefer the agouti rabbits, you might want to avoid breeding two steels together, as that make "super steels" which look more like black). For variety in agoutis, you might want to get some that carry different genes, so with a more colorful pedigree, like a squirrel in the parentage of a chestnut

Yes, I was planning on only getting one broken.
I do not want an agouti.

Prett much every colour is showable in mini lops ( https://www.arba.net/PDFs/breed_id_rab_cav.pdf ) so the most important thing is to get the BEST conformation possible in your foundation stock

Don't mix torts with otters as they can produce fox/totters which are not showable and you should be good

That is what I mean I want breeding stock that will produce a variaty of show colors. Thanks for the tip. <br /><br /> __________ Thu Oct 20, 2016 8:14 pm __________ <br /><br /> I am either going to go cool tones with blues, blacks, lilacs and frosted pearls, OR warm tones with chocolate, tortoise, red, and silver fox.
Of those two options which color sets work well together?

 

[Dood]

If you want a variety of colours in kits then you should choose rabbits with a variety of colours in their pedigree and hopefully your rabbit will have inherited some of the recessive genes

If you are willing to wait a couple generations to get variety in the nest box then a broken black tort and a lilac or a broken chocolate to a blue tort (or a other combinations of broken, tort and self) would eventually produce broken and solid varieties of black, chocolate, blue, lilac and torted versions of these 4 base colours

To produce sables you need the REW (or himilayan) gene so I would stay away from rabbits with either of those colours or you could get some REW cropping up after a couple generations