What would you call these odd colors?

[reh]

En spotted ones are more dotted, dutch ones are more striped (but with no better pattern then solid ones).
German breeders say, the best ones often have problems with white nails, which may be due to melanocyte migration hindering factors causing the white nails as well as the nonbrindled, clear stripes.
-> fewer melanocytes arriving in the skin -> bigger parts per melanocyte to color with there descendants of the same color.

 

[Mckatie]

referring to smut, in difference to f.e. this one

Would you please expain what f.e. stands for? Thank you. It looks like smut is blotches of black spots while the f.e. is scattered throughout the body. I appreciate your sharing.

 

[Mckatie]

Would you please expain what f.e. stands for? Thank you. It looks like smut is blotches of black spots while the f.e. is scattered throughout the body. I appreciate your sharing.

Was it for example?

 

[judymac]

Thank you!

 

[judymac]

It looks like smut is blotches of black spots

Okay. There's a gene called 'extension', coded 'E', that determines how the dark color gets spread along the hairshaft. Normal extension, coded 'E' with a capital letter, allows the dark color to appear however the other genes determine they should be. In the case of agouti rabbits, there will be a dark band on the surface of the fiber (black, chocolate, blue or lilac), then a yellowish band, then another dark band (this series can get repeated along the hairshaft). There is often a dark color on the very tip of the fiber as well. The recessive version, called 'non-extension', doesn't allow the dark pigment to stretch in bands along the fiber in agouti rabbits, causing yellow toned rabbits (fawn/cream/orange/red). Without the added wideband gene, the dark tips can still remain.

In self-colored non-agouti rabbits (like black, blue, chocolate, or lilac), when a rabbit has the recessive non-extension gene, coded with a lower case 'e', the dark color is retained on the points, but the rest of the body hair is yellowish. You might still get dark tips on the hairs. We call these colors 'tortoiseshell', with the face color added to the name tortoiseshell (often shortened to 'tort', like blue tort or lilac tort.) Any dark tipping found on these non-extension rabbits is called 'smut', as the holy grail of non-extension rabbits is a clear, yellowish (cream/fawn/orange/red) color with no smut.

In this case, harlequin is another option on the E extension gene, coded e(j). In this case, the dark and yellowish colors are spread in patches on the skin, like a calico or tortoiseshell cat. The dark parts could be in spots or bands or alternating bars (like a court jester outfit) or just scattered through the coat like a roan horse or brindle dog. Again, the holy grail is clear, crisp definition to the markings (with the exception of all-brindle). You don't want smut to ruin the definition. Yellowish sections should be all yellow, no dark tips or dark hairs or brindling.

So, non-agouti rabbits that have one 'e' non-extension (which would have been a tortoiseshell with dark face and ears if they had two copies of e), combined with harlequin e(j), can end up with dark hairs on the face and ears where they wouldn't be with two copies of e(j) e(j), SMUT. It's called a torted harlequin.

 

[Mckatie]

Right. I appreciate the clarification of the word use of smut. So a blue tort has the blue face and the diluted blue colour throughout the tortoiseshell? and so on? The clarity of the "best" colours/markings in this case would have clear colours without smudge/smut?
Thank you.

 

[Mckatie]

So this is CC (buck) the lighter photo is out of a silver and black who were out of a broken steel /red and black/silver.
I bred him to a black (which carried the silver or is it steel?) kits were: 2 rew 1 chocolate,4 black (w silver gene) . I agree with Alaskan Satin that these are nice to see on pedigree.

And then to (top pic) a broken black cinnamon tipped doe,Smokey Jo (out of Rew and a black carrying the silver gene) ....kits were: 4 silver tipped body and points, 1 chocolate, 2 rew. .

So my questions are... 1)what would you call him? 2) are silver and steel used interchangeably? 3) Is she Sable or seal or? In New Zealand Arba the colours are limited to black,rew,red, and broken...but I know there are dilutions, and other colours that pop up. I also have rex but their colours actually make a lot of sense because more of the colours are recognized. Thank you very much for your sharing. I have to post from my phone for photos and I'm not very good at it

 

[judymac]

So a blue tort has the blue face and the diluted blue colour throughout the tortoiseshell? and so on?

Not quite. A rabbit with two copies of the recessive non-extension gene, the blue tort, only leaves the blue on the face, ears, legs and tail, and puts the lovely creamy straw color (fawn) on the main body. There is some smoky shading down the flanks towards the blue legs.

The problem with having this recessive non-extension gene mixed in with the more dominant harlequin gene is that the places where the blue points would normally be on a tort can end up being a bit smutty on the fawn harlequin patches on the face and ears. So you might see some blue peeking through the fawn patches on a harlequin face or ears. Harlequin is normally dominant over non-extension, but the non-extension 'e' is still messing with the color, we call that 'incomplete dominance'.

 

[judymac]

So my questions are... 1)what would you call him? 2) are silver and steel used interchangeably? 3) Is she Sable or seal or?

Before I answer the questions, let's go back to that extension 'E' gene we were talking about with the harlequin. Think of having a paintbrush of dark color (could be black, chocolate, blue or lilac). The extension gene determines how much of the hairshaft gets painted dark, and where. Agouti (like chestnut/castor, lynx, opal and chocolate agouti as well as red, fawn, orange, cream) has bands of color on the hairshaft, typically dark, then yellowish, then dark again (although some colors have a white undercolor, and non-extension pushes the middle yellow band clear out to the tips, pushing off the dark color.)

There are five options on this gene. The most dominant is one that is apparently (scientists still aren't sure) found in just a few breeds, so I'll just quickly explain and move on. Dominant black looks like a self-colored black rabbit, because this option takes painting on the dark color to the extreme. It just plain paints the entire hairshaft dark. Next down is STEEL. This is where the dark undercolor gets pushed way, way up the hairshaft, leaving the (normally) middle yellow band hanging clear out on the tips of the fiber. It's why they are gold-tipped steels, it's all that remains of the middle band, the rest of the banding just got pushed entirely off the hairshaft.

But some steels are silver-tipped, why? It's because of the action of another gene, the 'C' color gene. It also has five options, in descending order of dominance: Normal full-color (like black or chestnut), chinchilla (which keeps any dark color but turns off the yellow pigment factories, leaving all the yellow bands as pearl white), sable (which also turns off the yellow pigment but also reduces the nice dark blacks to sepia brown), Himalayan pointed whites (also called Californian) where there's no yellow pigment, and the dark pigment is only on the points (ears, face, legs, tail) while the rest of the body is pure white with pink/red eyes, and finally the albino red (or ruby) eyed white (REW) where all the pigment factories have been shut down, and couldn't paint on the colors that the other genes called for. Chinchilla and sable bunnies have their middle agouti bands turned from yellow to pearl white, so when steel pushes that band to the tips--it comes out as pearl white--which they call silver-tipped steel. When you see a silver-tip, you know that you have chinchilla or sable genetics as well.

However, when I looked closely at your rabbit, it looks like some of that tipping might not be just ticking. I couldn't tell--when you part the hair, is the ticking just on the very tips of the hair, or are there white hairs going down to the skin (which would be silvering, an entirely different gene not related to these others)?

As to the doe. Typically, sable, which has the black coloration watered down to sepia brown, has a darker color over the saddle of the back, and then fades (or shades) down lighter as you get lower on the body. This rabbit does not appear to do that, it appears quite light cream on the saddle as well. You said there was red in the background--red is the 'ee' non-extension gene that causes tortoiseshell in self-colored rabbits or orange/fawn in agouti rabbits, plus some modifiers that make the color more reddish. In red torts, only the red tones print on the body hair, while the dark colors remain only on the points. This rabbit has dark points, so it isn't an agouti, it's a non-agouti self-colored rabbit.

Remember what we said about chinchilla taking out the yellow/red tones, leaving those places creamy white? It looks to me like this doe is a pearl--it's what happens when non-agouti torts meet chinchilla or sable. This is a close-up of the area on the face above the doe's eye:

It looks more sepia to me than black or chocolate, so I'd call this a sable pearl.

Just to finish the extension series: Normal extension, where whatever dark colors the other genes call for are in their proper places, is next down after steel, dominant over both harlequin and non-extension (the orange/red/fawn/cream shades) that we've already talked about earlier.

 

[Mckatie]

Not quite. A rabbit with two copies of the recessive non-extension gene, the blue tort, only leaves the blue on the face, ears, legs and tail, and puts the lovely creamy straw color (fawn) on the main body. There is some smoky shading down the flanks towards the blue legs.

The problem with having this recessive non-extension gene mixed in with the more dominant harlequin gene is that the places where the blue points would normally be on a tort can end up being a bit smutty on the fawn harlequin patches on the face and ears. So you might see some blue peeking through the fawn patches on a harlequin face or ears. Harlequin is normally dominant over non-extension, but the non-extension 'e' is still messing with the color, we call that 'incomplete dominance'.

Thank you again for sharing this information with me. Not as easy a blue roan/red roan, etc

 

[Alaska Satin]

So this is CC (buck) the lighter photo is out of a silver and black who were out of a broken steel /red and black/silver.
I bred him to a black (which carried the silver or is it steel?) kits were: 2 rew 1 chocolate,4 black (w silver gene) . I agree with Alaskan Satin that these are nice to see on pedigree.

And then to (top pic) a broken black cinnamon tipped doe,Smokey Jo (out of Rew and a black carrying the silver gene) ....kits were: 4 silver tipped body and points, 1 chocolate, 2 rew. .

So my questions are... 1)what would you call him? 2) are silver and steel used interchangeably? 3) Is she Sable or seal or? In New Zealand Arba the colours are limited to black,rew,red, and broken...but I know there are dilutions, and other colours that pop up. I also have rex but their colours actually make a lot of sense because more of the colours are recognized. Thank you very much for your sharing. I have to post from my phone for photos and I'm not very good at it View attachment 39314

Right. I appreciate the clarification of the word use of smut. So a blue tort has the blue face and the diluted blue colour throughout the tortoiseshell? and so on? The clarity of the "best" colours/markings in this case would have clear colours without smudge/smut?
Thank you.

Maybe some of the confusion is coming from the common names of colors. Tortoiseshell in rabbits is not the same as tortoiseshell in cats. In fact, the tortoiseshell pattern in cats is like what you see in a harlequin rabbit.
This is tortoiseshell cat:

and this is a harlequin rabbit:

Here is a calico (tortoiseshell and white) cat:

and here is a tricolor (broken harlequin) rabbit:


In rabbits, the harlequin allele e(j) affects the agouti allele A, to change it from putting both orange and black on each hair, to putting orange on some hairs and black on other hairs. Note that unlike cats, the allele that causes this patchwork of colors is not sex-linked, so both male and female rabbits can have this genotype and it does not affect their reproductive capacity.

In rabbits, while a harlequin is an agouti, a tort is a self. As described by @judymac, tortoiseshell is a non-extension self color.- In a self, the homozygous self aa results in the black pigment kind of covering up the orange bands of an agouti; they're still there, just covered up. Using a black as an example, when you add the non-extension ee, the black pigment covering the orange is not allowed to show, so the hairs are left mostly orange, with the exception of smut (a sprinkling of black tips on some or all orange hairs), and darker tips on the shorter hairs (that would be the head and ears, feet and tail, and a little on the belly). So you can think of a black tort as a black self rabbit with an application of black paint stripper on its body.

Here is a tortoiseshell (aka tort) Mini Rex, with her self black offspring:

Here is a tort that looks very dark because she has a lot of smut (black tipping where it shouldn't be):

 

[eco2pia]

torts look like my dog...he's a bit smutty.

 

[Mckatie]

Before I answer the questions, let's go back to that extension 'E' gene we were talking about with the harlequin. Think of having a paintbrush of dark color (could be black, chocolate, blue or lilac). The extension gene determines how much of the hairshaft gets painted dark, and where. Agouti (like chestnut/castor, lynx, opal and chocolate agouti as well as red, fawn, orange, cream) has bands of color on the hairshaft, typically dark, then yellowish, then dark again (although some colors have a white undercolor, and non-extension pushes the middle yellow band clear out to the tips, pushing off the dark color.)

There are five options on this gene. The most dominant is one that is apparently (scientists still aren't sure) found in just a few breeds, so I'll just quickly explain and move on. Dominant black looks like a self-colored black rabbit, because this option takes painting on the dark color to the extreme. It just plain paints the entire hairshaft dark. Next down is STEEL. This is where the dark undercolor gets pushed way, way up the hairshaft, leaving the (normally) middle yellow band hanging clear out on the tips of the fiber. It's why they are gold-tipped steels, it's all that remains of the middle band, the rest of the banding just got pushed entirely off the hairshaft.

But some steels are silver-tipped, why? It's because of the action of another gene, the 'C' color gene. It also has five options, in descending order of dominance: Normal full-color (like black or chestnut), chinchilla (which keeps any dark color but turns off the yellow pigment factories, leaving all the yellow bands as pearl white), sable (which also turns off the yellow pigment but also reduces the nice dark blacks to sepia brown), Himalayan pointed whites (also called Californian) where there's no yellow pigment, and the dark pigment is only on the points (ears, face, legs, tail) while the rest of the body is pure white with pink/red eyes, and finally the albino red (or ruby) eyed white (REW) where all the pigment factories have been shut down, and couldn't paint on the colors that the other genes called for. Chinchilla and sable bunnies have their middle agouti bands turned from yellow to pearl white, so when steel pushes that band to the tips--it comes out as pearl white--which they call silver-tipped steel. When you see a silver-tip, you know that you have chinchilla or sable genetics as well.

However, when I looked closely at your rabbit, it looks like some of that tipping might not be just ticking. I couldn't tell--when you part the hair, is the ticking just on the very tips of the hair, or are there white hairs going down to the skin (which would be silvering, an entirely different gene not related to these others)?

As to the doe. Typically, sable, which has the black coloration watered down to sepia brown, has a darker color over the saddle of the back, and then fades (or shades) down lighter as you get lower on the body. This rabbit does not appear to do that, it appears quite light cream on the saddle as well. You said there was red in the background--red is the 'ee' non-extension gene that causes tortoiseshell in self-colored rabbits or orange/fawn in agouti rabbits, plus some modifiers that make the color more reddish. In red torts, only the red tones print on the body hair, while the dark colors remain only on the points. This rabbit has dark points, so it isn't an agouti, it's a non-agouti self-colored rabbit.

Remember what we said about chinchilla taking out the yellow/red tones, leaving those places creamy white? It looks to me like this doe is a pearl--it's what happens when non-agouti torts meet chinchilla or sable. This is a close-up of the area on the face above the doe's eye:
View attachment 39342
It looks more sepia to me than black or chocolate, so I'd call this a sable pearl.

Just to finish the extension series: Normal extension, where whatever dark colors the other genes call for are in their proper places, is next down after steel, dominant over both harlequin and non-extension (the orange/red/fawn/cream shades) that we've already talked about earlier.

Thank again for taking the time with these questions. I know CC (the buck)was listed as Silver - his mum was silver, his sister a silver tip
CC evolved to brown (sepia) shades and cream body. I will go see how his hair is all the way down. Gis hair is solid white/cream. The ticking is on the ends. The first doe, Chocolate Truffle started off and was listed as black. Her body also silvered out leaving her head and feet solid and darker. While she and Velvet are darker than Smokey Jo , I see a lot of similarities in them from their line breeding.
I will add the pictures in the next .

 

[Alaska Satin]

So this is CC (buck) the lighter photo is out of a silver and black who were out of a broken steel /red and black/silver.
I bred him to a black (which carried the silver or is it steel?) kits were: 2 rew 1 chocolate,4 black (w silver gene) . I agree with Alaskan Satin that these are nice to see on pedigree.

And then to (top pic) a broken black cinnamon tipped doe,Smokey Jo (out of Rew and a black carrying the silver gene) ....kits were: 4 silver tipped body and points, 1 chocolate, 2 rew. .

So my questions are... 1)what would you call him? 2) are silver and steel used interchangeably? 3) Is she Sable or seal or? In New Zealand Arba the colours are limited to black,rew,red, and broken...but I know there are dilutions, and other colours that pop up. I also have rex but their colours actually make a lot of sense because more of the colours are recognized. Thank you very much for your sharing. I have to post from my phone for photos and I'm not very good at it View attachment 39314

I can't tell which rabbit you are referring to in your descriptions - I only see two photos, neither looks like a buck, and I don't see a broken rabbit at all. But I'd call the rabbit in the big top pic

a silvered sable point (which genetically, is a non-extension ee sable c(chl)_ with the gene for silvering si. That would be <aaB_c(chl)_D_ee _si>.

She has no agouti markings on her face and ears, so not a chinchilla c(chd), no orange hues, so that leaves sable c(chl). She is not seal c(chl) c(chl). That looks almost black, and doesn't look shaded like sable, which is one copy of the c(chl). A sable needs the needs the non-extension e in its homozygous state (two copies of the allele) to produce the distinctly paler body and darker extremities (you'll notice the same pattern as the torts, which are also ee derived). Because steel E(s) is on the same gene as non-extension e, she can't be both steel and non-extension. So the white hairs throughout her body would have to be from silvering.

As for the young rabbit in the second photo,

I'd go with sable point <aaB_c(chl) D_ee> for that one as well (not silvered). @judymac calls it sable pearl, which I believe is the same color, just called "pearl" rather than "point" in angoras. To make things slightly more confusing, "smoke pearl" is a dilute sable in other breeds. But your rabbit does not look like a dilute to me.

The other option would be sallander, which is a non-extension self chinchilla <aaB_c(chd)D_ee>. In fact that would have been my first suggestion given that swirling pattern on its sides, but if this bunny came out of sables, it can't be chinchilla, since chin is dominant to sable and thus can't hide. But if there is chinchilla in its background (meaning at least one of its parents were not sable), sallander is what I'd call it.

Here is a photo of a sallander Holland Lop kit; it's a lighter color (they can really range in shade) but note the pattern on its sides. Image from Coat Color Photo Matrix

 

[Mckatie]

Thank again all of you for taking the time with these questions. The 2 light swatches are from CC -the buck is the "siamese," looking rabbit. He is out of silver/black patents. Silver/ black & red and black grandparents. The dark hair from Smokey. As a new zealand they considered him a solid/broken in the sense of white paws. Not broken like my broken black NZ who is half white and half black .They are both just under 1 year. And the kit... white hair with silver tips and silver points for now.

 

[Mckatie]

Maybe some of the confusion is coming from the common names of colors. Tortoiseshell in rabbits is not the same as tortoiseshell in cats. In fact, the tortoiseshell pattern in cats is like what you see in a harlequin rabbit.
This is tortoiseshell cat:
View attachment 39334
and this is a harlequin rabbit:
View attachment 39336
Here is a calico (tortoiseshell and white) cat:
View attachment 39337
and here is a tricolor (broken harlequin) rabbit:
View attachment 39338

In rabbits, the harlequin allele e(j) affects the agouti allele A, to change it from putting both orange and black on each hair, to putting orange on some hairs and black on other hairs. Note that unlike cats, the allele that causes this patchwork of colors is not sex-linked, so both male and female rabbits can have this genotype and it does not affect their reproductive capacity.

In rabbits, while a harlequin is an agouti, a tort is a self. As described by @judymac, tortoiseshell is a non-extension self color.- In a self, the homozygous self aa results in the black pigment kind of covering up the orange bands of an agouti; they're still there, just covered up. Using a black as an example, when you add the non-extension ee, the black pigment covering the orange is not allowed to show, so the hairs are left mostly orange, with the exception of smut (a sprinkling of black tips on some or all orange hairs), and darker tips on the shorter hairs (that would be the head and ears, feet and tail, and a little on the belly). So you can think of a black tort as a black self rabbit with an application of black paint stripper on its body.

Here is a tortoiseshell (aka tort) Mini Rex, with her self black offspring:
View attachment 39339View attachment 39340
Here is a tort that looks very dark because she has a lot of smut (black tipping where it shouldn't be):
View attachment 39343

Thank you.
I have a tricolour rex that has very definite colours like your picture. I never thought of it as a broken harlequin . The other rex is a broken castor. But then castor changes things up like these torts. The pictures helped emphasize the differences. as well as the homozygous self aa example. Definitely be reading my books when they arrive.

 

[Mckatie]

" steel E(s) is on the same gene as non-extension e, she can't be both steel and non-extension. So the white hairs throughout her body would have to be from silvering."

So steel and silvering are different. With the steel (ES) With the silver gene SIsi. I think confusion often comes from phenotype.

So much to think about.

 

[Alaska Satin]

Thank again for taking the time with these questions. I know CC (the buck)was listed as Silver - his mum was silver, his sister a silver tip
CC evolved to brown (sepia) shades and cream body. I will go see how his hair is all the way down. Gis hair is solid white/cream. The ticking is on the ends. The first doe, Chocolate Truffle started off and was listed as black. Her body also silvered out leaving her head and feet solid and darker. While she and Velvet are darker than Smokey Jo , I see a lot of similarities in them from their line breeding.
I will add the pictures in the next .

Silver and silver tip are common names for what could be several different colors/patterns. However, "silver" generally refers to silvering, a la Silver Fox, Champagne D'Argent, etc. That's from the silver allele si, which is noted as a recessive but is definitely not; it's either dominant or partially dominant, depending on your perspective. Silvering can involve white hairs, white-tipped hairs, or both.
Here is a Champagne D'Argent homozygous for (two copies of) the allele si:

Here is his son, a Champagne x Satin cross, so heterozygous for (one copy of) si:


"Silver-tipped" usually refers to a steel+chinchilla rabbit. The tipping comes from the steel allele E(s), and is normally gold-colored tipping. It becomes a silver-tipped steel with the addition of a dominant chinchilla allele c(chd) (or possibly a sable allele c(chl) in which case the rabbit is a sable steel) at another place on the genetic code. It's also only expressed in combination with an agouti A, so a self rabbit (like sable or tort) won't show silver tipping, even if they have an E(s) allele.
Here's an image of blue silver-tipped fur:

And here is silvering (Champagne D'Argent):

 

[Alaska Satin]

Thank again for taking the time with these questions. I know CC (the buck)was listed as Silver - his mum was silver, his sister a silver tip

If you have photos you could post, it would be nice to see as many of these rabbits as possible, because silver and silver tip aren't necessarily descriptive enough to know what we're dealing with. Pedigrees are helpful as long as the one making them out identifies colors correctly, which as you're finding, can be challenging due to variations in common names for colors/patterns.

CC evolved to brown (sepia) shades and cream body. I will go see how his hair is all the way down.

Yes, sables start out different than they end up, going through some pretty amazing color evolutions as they develop. There's a photo series here:
https://rabbittalk.com/threads/chinchilla-rex-at-last.36724/#post-355913

Gis hair is solid white/cream. The ticking is on the ends.

The dark ticking on the ends suggests non-extension ee, while the cream base color indicates chin c(chd) or sable c(chl).

The first doe, Chocolate Truffle started off and was listed as black. Her body also silvered out leaving her head and feet solid and darker. While she and Velvet are darker than Smokey Jo , I see a lot of similarities in them from their line breeding.
I will add the pictures in the next .

If Chocolate Truffle is a sable or sable point, she is a self aa, so would not show steel silver tipping (although she could still carry an E(s), self aa would prevent it from showing).

Also, if she started out looking like a black that lasted long enough to show as black on the pedigree, that's more evidence of silvering si rather than silver-tipped steel E(s). Steel does start out dark, but the ticking shows up quite early -within 1-3 weeks - and distributed evenly over the rabbit, whereas silvering takes close to two months to start showing, and tends to come in in patches. Silvering, especially in the heterozygous state, also tends to leave head and feet darker (see photos above of purebred and crossbred si rabbits).

Silvering progression in a purebred Champagne D'Argent...
7 weeks:

8 weeks:

10 weeks:

12 weeks:

 

[Mckatie]

So would you say that "the silvering (Champagne D'Argent)" has 3 shades or colours on the hair shaft? Lighter, darker and lastly the silver tip? Where the "blue tip" is blue to the very ends where he is silver?
Like CC is cream until the sepia ends?

Smokey Jo "a silvered sable point (which genetically, is a non-extension ee sable c(chl)_ with the gene for silvering si. That would be <aaBbc(chl)_D_ee _si>.

I added the small b as both she and CC had a litter and CC/Chocolate Truffle had a litter - each with 1 chocolate kit.

Although, the first kit, Chocolatte might be appearing to add silver on his lower sides now at 12 weeks. I will take better pictures. Also, does one list the photos as thumbnails to help with the lineup?
Many thanks!