Wirehair in rabbits?

[rotdogz]

I swear I've seen the term wirehair used in discussing rabbit genetics a few times, but no actual picture examples & I can't find any breeds that say they have it (google just provides images of a dachshund breed/coat variant lol), I was wondering if it was something that actually exists in them? In cats its a dominant gene that makes their coat semi-curly/"carpet texture", so maybe it was used to refer to wavy/rex?

 

[Sagebrush]

Wirehair is not a term I have heard in regards to rabbits. Maybe someone else has heard of it?

 

[RabbitsOfTheCreek]

I know what you're talking about and I've seen pictures of it before on here, but I don't remember the term
"Curly" I think?

 

[ladysown]

astrex?

 

[rotdogz]

I know what you're talking about and I've seen pictures of it before on here, but I don't remember the term
"Curly" I think?

It might be a different thing than in cats! I was just going off of my prior knowledge in making a guess about it.

Do you have any links to those pictures/posts? Im super curious!

 

[ladysown]

astrex is the curly coat gene in rex, it occasionally pops up in other breeds. If you do a google search you'll come up with a pile of pictures. I know its been discussed on the forum before. it doesn't always breed true or last into adult hood, but last I heard there were people working on stabilizing it.

 

[judymac]

No, curly (Astrex) is a different gene, which is said to only be expressed in combination with Rex. Wirehaired is supposed to be incompletely dominant. It causes a coat made of mostly guard hair, with reduced hair coverage. There's another thread about this at https://rabbittalk.com/threads/rabbit-coat-structure-genetics.33742/

 

[ladysown]

that was a fascinating post to reread. I had forgotten about it. I've never seen a wire-haired rabbit before, didn't even know they existed. I don't think I'd want to have one at least in my set up!