What is This Doe? (Was FG Tigers.. They are Harli)

[TF3]

Really!

I bought the doe already bred~ she had been bred to both a grey broken buck and a white that looked like it had grey/ blue shading (?!).
I saw the bucks, both large enough for FG but the girl had a lot of breeds on site.
The doe is a nice rich fawn with some smut, she has a white belly and undertail.
She has been an incredible first time mom, she isn't going anywhere any time soon
You can see her one smutty leg and she has more under her belly and over one shoulder.


Three of the kits are solid coloured fawn, only one is pure fawn.
The other two look grey under the fawn on their extremities and faces/ ears. SO they are likely shaded?
The other 7 have varying degrees of markings from a little smut to broken or tort like markings.

Truthfully I am just writing them all off in terms of FG colours :lol:
But I am going to hang on to the solid fawn kit and see what it throws out. (pictured at day 7, it is black sharpie in his ear, not grey marking )

And I am tempted to keep the most heavily marked kit to play with ~it is the largest of the 10. (day 7)

I assumed that the dam came from a fawn/ sandy cross, hence her smut.
What do you think of the rest? Shaded, broken, tort? Mess! (cute mess!)

shaded?


day 1 so you can see their markings:

 

[Zass]

That litter is mostly harlequin colored.
I'm sorry, purebred flemish giants will not ever carry that gene, and Flemish Giant show breeders will not want even pedigreed stock that carry it.


Your rabbit is definitely a meat mutt and not a flemish giant at all. She doesn't look anything like one.


She's certainly adorable though.

 

[Dood]

Youve got harlequins (agouti based) just like mom = A_ B_ C_ D_ ej_
and probably torted harlequins (self based) = aa B_ C_ D_ ej_

 

[TF3]

Bwahaha!
C'est la vie
I knew they weren't going to be anything close to FG standards, so they are a wash.
No problem, the genetic info is very helpful for us to learn from!
Thanks!

Lori

 

[ladysown]

always fun to learn new stuff.

black japs.... if they truly get to flemish size can be drop dead gorgeous.

 

[Susie570]

They're harlis!!
Seems like they're so easy for people to pop out when they're not trying!! :lol:

 

[TF3]

I'm still giggling.
I know that the 'breeder' is a teen and does all sorts of crazy stuff. So live and learn.
She does have one purebred Harlequin (breed) ~ she showed me as it was her one tattooed animal.

So let's play "what is she?" ~ Clover has been a stellar mom with her first litter of 10, cold weather etc. and is very docile.

So she has the brindled foot, and on her belly the white is broken up by the brindled grey a little.
She is about 14-15 lbs at 9 months.
Bred with a broken grey buck and one that seemed grey shaded on white (??) she had 10 fawn based babies~ 7 harli, 2 shaded (?) 1 fawn

Here are pics sorry I don't have anything with her 'stacked' (do you do that in rabbits?):
Fawn side

Ear size much smaller than my big eared Flemish buck (and I might cry if you say he isn't Flemish :lol: )

White underbits and eye rim (fawn side) front feet are small in relation to body.

Head straight on

And looking unimpressed when we first brought her home


Lori

 

[funnies50]

Wow! That baby bunny is really cute tho.

 

[Sagebrush]

She looks a lot like my first doe I ever had, Lola. She was a Flemish and NZB cross. They share the same face and ear size. Though with the Harli markings I am unsure....... Maybe her breeder was working on making Harli FG? :shrug:

 

[Zass]

Maybe her breeder was working on making Harli FG? :shrug:

Even if they were not, you could start your own pedigreed harli FG line!!

You will get some people who complain about "purity" but I think there would be many others who would be thrilled by the novelty of huge "tiger bunnies." :lol: (Flemish breeders seems to like using different color names, so no problem there!!!)
As far as I know, no one has harlequin colored flemish..

Just keep the prices up on those babies, as designer flemish colors are kind of a hot item.

Someone in PA has unshowable dark eyed white flemish giants that they sell for $200 each

I just can't get over how pretty she is. That face...so cute!!!!

I wonder, could she be from a rex/FG program?
Harlequin color has become pretty popular in rex.
I know there are several people in the US working on that one. I think her face might look like a rex, but it's throwing me off because the coat is longer and non-rexed. Is her fur a lot thicker/denser than your other Flemish?

Rex is a recessive trait, so both parents must have the gene to produce kits with a rex coat. But, rex crosses often inherit some of the density modifiers from the breed.
Hmmm...
You could check by breeding her to a rex buck and seeing if she produces any short coated kits.

__________ Wed Apr 22, 2015 2:17 pm __________

If you want more harlequin colored Flemish kits, I'd go with a fawn buck, but breeding to that grey(chinchilla colored) buck could eventually give you magpie harlequin.

 

[Celice]

she looks like a mix breed to me but she defiantly has some FG in her. She obviously has Harlequin coloration so just go with what you have look like you will get some BEAUTIFUL kits! wish I can grab one from you!

 

[ladysown]

she looks like much of what I produced for a couple of years after I moved away from purebred harlequin breed rabbits. She looks to be Flemish, Harlequin and New Zealand. The mix produces a very sweet rabbit. The fact that some of the have smut means you have something shaded in her background...which could easily be holland lop as it's a popular pet breed and gets mixed into a whole lot of things. Even tort mini rex for all you.

face it, you just have a nice meat mutt on your hands.

 

[TF3]

I accept my meat mutt
Having visited a couple rabbitries yesterday and laid eyes on a lot of NZ, I can see that in my doe for sure!

I also think the challenge of Giant Tiger Rabbits is appealing! :mrgreen:
Years in the dog fancy makes it hard to color outside the lines, breed-wise, but a big, happy, sweet, tiger striped rabbit?! What's not to love?!
I am going to hang on to the fawn kit (seems to be a buck) and one or two of the brindled ones and see what I get... since they are large, it won't be a quick process!

Thanks for the help... off to figure out more about harlequin genetics!

Lori
*unnamed rabbitry* (my family cannot agree!)
Giant Tiger Rabbits :lol:
Californias & Holland Lops
~South River, ON~

 

[Zass]

Maybe Brindled Bunnies?
It could work as a rabbitry name too

Calling them "Giant Tiger Rabbits" is kind of appealing to me, because it isn't even pretending to be flemish.
It suggests a whole new kind of giant. With that in mind you wouldn't have to breed that line towards the already accepted flemish standards.

Coloring outside the lines is a lot more acceptable when breeding rabbits. Mostly because we can just eat up any mistakes, misfits, or unsellable animals.

I have my own meat-mutt project. Agouti, opal, chocolate chestnut and lynx colored rabbits with silver fox-style standup coats. I've just been calling them my "designer mutts."

 

[TF3]

They sound gorgeous Zass!
Why not make them pretty as well as useful?

I agree, I don't like the idea of messing with (many) someone else's hard work in defining an SOP for a breed.
But with goals and a vision in mind, shaping something that makes a great pet (or dinner) is a fun little side project to think about while waiting 8 long months to grow out the next generation!

 

[Zass]

They sound gorgeous Zass!
Why not make them pretty as well as useful?

Here's my progress thread on those:
agouti-colored-meat-rabbits-with-sf-coat-project-progress-t22111.html

The goal is to make a longer coated fur rabbit in colors that do not look quite the way I want on a wooly breed, like angora.

 

[TF3]

VERY cool.
So much hard work and patience!
Longer fur would serve what purpose~ looks? warmth?
Curious!
L <br /><br /> __________ Thu Apr 23, 2015 4:38 pm __________ <br /><br /> Just reading on genetics... so if a fawn Flemish should be ee ... but she is brindled, she must be ej_ which is dominant over ee.
So by breeding any visible harlequin to a fawn or other ee colour I should hang on to that ej in an otherwise fawn animal?

 

[Zass]

Actually...I'm not sure longer fur is very desirable in fur rabbits, as their guard hairs are known to break off more easily than other fur bearers when worn. That factor makes up part of the reason rex is the most popular rabbit fur type globally. (no protruding guard hairs, I bet a lot of rex breeders didn't know that )
I mostly wanted to create it to see what it would look like.
There is not rabbit in the US with those colors on that fur type.
Angora wool hides the color of the guard hairs...so I went with silver fox. Agouti colors look different on different coat types. So I had to see.

I do a lot of tanning and the furs ARE nice. I think there may be a small market, as people tend to want fur items less for wearing publicly these days, and more for enjoying privately in the home, where wearablity is less of a factor. And actually, no matter how I look it it, real fur, even rabbit with long guard hairs remains beautiful and lasts a whole lot longer than a lot of synthetics sold these days.

No micro fiber or micro plush for me plz. I'll take a fluffy rabbit quilt

We eat only what we can hunt or raise, so...all this rabbit fluff is just a by product of feeding my family.