Flemish Color Help

[Mom2IrishBoys]

Hi Everyone. I need opinions. I found an ad for Flemish, I was told both parents were light grey. Babies had a Sandy coat color but molten out to light grey. I have a pic of mom with babies.. you can see the the Sandy is changing to grey. Some people on a Facebook group told me that they look pure, but either mom was grey and dad sandy, or there's a mixed color breeding that took place in their background. They said the 2 'ghost chin' babies says to them that dad was sandy. But they look pure, just wrong color. Any thoughts/opinions?

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[Mom2IrishBoys]

 

[Mom2IrishBoys]

 

[Mom2IrishBoys]

 

[Bunnylady]

The color that is called Light Grey in the Flemish is called Chinchilla in every other rabbit breed. Rabbits with the chinchilla gene do not produce yellow pigment - that's what the Chin gene does; it removes basically all of the yellow pigment from the coat and a little bit of the black as well. Rabbits don't start out producing pigment and then just stop, that doesn't happen. Two rabbits with Chin genes can't produce babies that produce yellow pigment, but I don't think that's what is happening here anyway. The babies in the first picture that are "turning into" Light Greys were born that color, their coats are just so badly stained with something (probably urine) that they appear to have yellow pigment, and the stained fur is now molting out. It looks like the two in the front on the right have gray eyes; that is something that commonly happens on Chins, but not on full-color rabbits (like Sandies).

It takes two copies of the wide-band gene to see its effects, so both parents would have to be carrying it, not just the father. Both the mother and the father must have a Sandy somewhere in their family tree, if the are producing Ghost Chins. That doesn't mean that either of the parents have to be Sandies themselves, just that some ancestor of each of them was one.





Is this supposed to be a pic of the same litter? While the rabbit in the middle that is head-on to the camera might be showing yellowish staining on the coat, the one to the far left looks to have the more typical red backed pattern that you often see on Chestnut colored rabbits in other breeds (which is a color that two Chinchilla colored rabbits cannot produce).