Anyone have Angora rabbits?

[The Moonshiner]

I bought this pair of French Angoras at an auction last night.

 

[BantamLover21]

Nice looking rabbits! They almost look like Satin Angoras to me, but that may just be the light.

 

[Bunnylady]

The way you can tell they are French and not Satin Angoras is, they aren't matted so bad you can hardly tell they are rabbits.

JK, but people who have bred several of the Angora breeds tell me the Satins are the worst for matting. The only long haired breed I have worked with are Jersey Woolies, which, having the French coat, aren't bad at all.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Unfortunately they do have a few matted spots.
Female isn't as bad but the poor males has a couple places and they have got so bad it has pulled a couple bald spots.
They're the wife and kids deal so at least they all can see what will happen if they don't keep up on them.
Now we just need to get the mats out without taking hide with it.
They been eyeing them at shows for a couple years so when some decent ones came up how could I say no?

 

[The Moonshiner]

We now have 5 new additions.
These two were brought to sell in the same cage so even though we separated them of course it was to late.
Now I'm going to need some genetics help.
Chocolate and blue are both dilutes of black and both recessive correct?
So doe carries two genes for chocolate and buck carries two genes for blue.
Babies are only few days old so I have just got peaks here and there. Two definitely chocolate so male carries one chocolate gene but not two (or he would be lilac)
Two look really light blue. Need to get closer look and more hair growth would surely help. Was thinking blue but maybe lilac Idk.
Either way that means doe carries one gene for blue but not two.
That all sound correct?
Now where I get lost. 5th baby is an orange looking color. Almost looks like orange with blue points.
I'll get a pic tomorrow and maybe someone can clue me in.

 

[Bunnylady]

Your buck is black, not blue. Color gets very washed out on the body hairs of a long-haired breed, but you can see the true color on the short hairs on the head of a French. The rabbit in your pictures is way too dark to be a blue.

The gene that turns black to blue and chocolate to lilac is called the dilution gene (d). The gene that turns black to chocolate is the chocolate gene (b); chocolate is not ever spoken of as a dilute of anything in rabbits, but other than that, what you said is correct.

If you have dilute babies (either blue or lilac) both of your animals carry one copy of dilution, and one non-dilute (Dd).

The orange-ish baby is most likely a tort, but whether a black tort, a chocolate tort, a blue tort, or a lilac tort, will be something you'll have to figure out, since it sounds like all are possible with the colors in the rest of the litter. And yes, this means that both parents are carrying non-extension (e).

 

[The Moonshiner]

Thank you @Bunnylady
I'll still get some pics. These aren't too good but snapped them on way out the door since they were a bit uncovered and the odd one was on top of the bunch.

 

[Tale of Tails Rabbitry]

So doe carries two genes for chocolate and buck carries two genes for blue.Babies are only few days old so I have just got peaks here and there. Two definitely chocolate so male carries one chocolate gene but not two (or he would be lilac) Two look really light blue. Need to get closer look and more hair growth would surely help. Was thinking blue but maybe lilac Idk.
Either way that means doe carries one gene for blue but not two.
That all sound correct?

@Bunnylady already addressed that chocolate is not a dilute color, but here is a bit more detail. If you have chocolate and blue offspring, your black buck carries chocolate and blue "Bb Dd" and the chocolate carries blue "bb Dd." With this combination you can get these four colors: black, chocolate, blue, and lilac.

As to the one looks like a tort: If your two parents are siblings, it is very likely that they have close to the same recessive genes, such as the non-extension "e." So, both rabbits would be "Ee," and the tort "ee."

It is rather early to tell with absolute certainty, but if the blues are lighter in color than a typical blue, then there may be other modifiers, perhaps on the C-locus? I had a lighter blue once and was not into genetics at all during that time (meat rabbits), but I since found that one of my SF blue does is carrying chinchilla and it was from a breeding with her half-brother, who probably carried it a well, so now I know why I had the pale blue. Again, if both are carrying the recessive "cchd," you could also have self chins in the mix.

Better pictures when they are a bit older would be helpful.

 

[The Moonshiner]

@Bunnylady already addressed that chocolate is not a dilute color, but here is a bit more detail. If you have chocolate and blue offspring, your black buck carries chocolate and blue "Bb Dd" and the chocolate carries blue "bb Dd." With this combination you can get these four colors: black, chocolate, blue, and lilac.

As to the one looks like a tort: If your two parents are siblings, it is very likely that they have close to the same recessive genes, such as the non-extension "e." So, both rabbits would be "Ee," and the tort "ee."

It is rather early to tell with absolute certainty, but if the blues are lighter in color than a typical blue, then there may be other modifiers, perhaps on the C-locus? I had a lighter blue once and was not into genetics at all during that time (meat rabbits), but I since found that one of my SF blue does is carrying chinchilla and it was from a breeding with her half-brother, who probably carriel a well, so now I know why I had the pale blue. Again, if both are carrying the recessive "cchd," you could also have self chins in the mix.

Better pictures when they are a bit older would be helpful.

Thank you
I don't know their background. Could be very likely siblings.
I bought them as a chocolate French angora doe and a blue French angora buck.
Came from 4H kid from supposed show breeder. But IDK.
I've raised a lot of dutch rabbits and the male (head) doesn't look black as far as the black in dutch but then again he does look way darker then any blues I had in dutch.
I will believe he is black.
I know it will take another maybe couple weeks to get better idea of babies. Quite clear two are chocolate.
Two blue look blue but yes lighter then what I think of as blue. That's where I wondered about lilac and at the time it seemed possible since I was still under the impression the buck was blue.
As of now I'm going by the idea there are a few possibilities and its a waiting game.
I've raised black, blue and chocolates before so that odd ball threw me for a loop. Wasn't expecting one like it.
I was expecting maybe a all black litter since I didn't know what recessives might be being carried by either.

 

[Bunnylady]

Relatedness really only comes into play when you have rare traits. When you have a gene that is common in a population, even unrelated animals may be carrying it. For example, I would estimate that 80% of the Holland Lops that I have owned or seen were either torts or broken torts. With the non-extension gene so common in that breed, I would never be surprised to find a non-extension color (tort, orange, sable point, etc) in any litter, no matter what other colors the parents and their ancestors were.

Kind of surprised that you never saw tort (tortoise) in your Dutch; the ones I worked with eons ago had it. Maybe it just isn't common everywhere?

Your picture isn't very clear, but the lighter colored babies in your picture look like lilacs to me. Lilac is a pinkish, dove-gray, as opposed to the gun-metal gray of a blue. Since you have chocolates, it's quite likely - no need to go looking for "zebras" just yet.

A lot of people get confused about the ratios that often get referred to when talking about genetics. They look at something like your Bb buck, and say, "half of his offspring will get the black allele from him, and half will get chocolate," when that's not really the way to look at it at all. Each of his offspring has a 50% chance of getting black from him, and a 50% chance of getting chocolate - a little different.

Think of it this way - if you flip a coin only 5 times, you could get all heads, or all tails, or any combination of the two, and all of those possibilities would be perfectly normal. If you did hundreds or thousands of flips, anything wildly different than about half and half would be reason to think there was something funny about your coin, but in numbers as small as one rabbit litter or even the entire production of a pair in their lifetime, you could get some pretty skewed ratios, and it would be still be normal. It's all about the numbers. In your next litter, you could get all torts of some kind, or you might never see another one . . . which is why I say, "if there's one particular color that you are just dying to see, it's gonna be the last one you see, or the one that dies at birth, or . . ." Just one more way my rabbits work on "how can we drive her crazy today?"