Is this rabbit knocked up/ Whos my daddy?(solved #77 pg8)

[Akane]

You'd get himalayans if it was the californians. You'd get whites if it was a white buck. That just leaves your chestnut agouti, of which you have a kit that color and the base to chestnut agouti is black, or the fawn which is potentially possible since I believe fawn is pretty much a chestnut agouti with the nonextension gene. Kind of hard to find that color name on genetics tables across the internet though.

 

[chickenwhisperer]

So, its one of these 2 males . . .

 

[Bunnylady]

Quote:
In the US, "agouti" is a pattern, not a color. An agouti patterned rabbit has light color on the insides of its ears, around its eyes, around its nostrils, under the jaw, on its belly, and on the underside of its tail. An agouti also has bands of color on each individual body hair; dark on the tip, light in the middle, usually grey next to the skin. The classic agouti, of course, is the Chestnut ("wild type" coloration). [BTW, Castor is a variation on Chestnut that is only seen in Rex breeds; since none of these rabbits are Rex, we don't need to worry about it here.] There are many colors that are agouti based: Chinchilla, Squirrel, Chestnut, Opal, Orange, Red, Fawn, Steel, Cinnamon, and others that may be breed specific, like Sandy in the Flemish. Your Steel, Fawn, and what you are calling grey rabbits are all agouti colors, and could possibly sire a Chestnut with a doe that doesn't happen to have the exact same complement of genes that they have at other loci. The black babies didn't get the agouti gene from either parent, they got self genes from both parents, and are self blacks.

For what it's worth, Americans come in self Blue as well as REW. New Zealands also come in Red and Black, and now in Broken, too!

 

[Bunnylady]

Quote:
Two non-extension genes (because non-extension is recessive) plus dilution genes.

 

[chickenwhisperer]

I had always thought that "wild" was what happens when the genes dont line up right, they kinda just revert back to square1/natural?

Whoever originally thought up all this nonsense had entirely wayyyy too much time on their hands . . .

I guess Im just gonna stop trying to understand it, because every answer seems to bring 10 more questions.

 

[Bunnylady]

Quote:
It isn't that someone thought it up, it happens whether you think about it or not! It was more a matter of someone wondering "what is happening here?" and having the persistence to slog on until they figured out that they were seeing a pattern, and then what the pattern was. (I met a man who actually worked with the guy who originally worked out the genetics of rabbit coat color. We had a very interesting conversation!)

Understanding the genetics isn't that hard, if you take it slow, and realize that each gene only controls one thing. You have to learn to think, "am I seeing this, yes or no? Am I seeing that, yes or no? - knowing that each "yes" means one gene, and each "no" means another. Add the results of all those yeses and nos together, and you have the color of the rabbit!

 

[Akane]

The site I was looking at only listed fawn as chestnut agouti base with ee but I thought that seemed off since most seem to call that combination red. A lot of the good sites I have for mini rex genetics do not include any ee colors and only make passing mention that red can exist (it wasn't an accepted color when a lot of those sites or articles were made) so I have to go hunt those down when it comes up.

Understanding genetics is difficult when you jump into a complicated color combination with no background knowledge. Learning genetics from the ground up is easy. You divide off black, red, agouti, and self then expand from there. It's the same with every single animal so once you figure it out you just have to learn the names specific to a species or breed, what that version looks like on that animal, and what is common versus rare. I took classes on horse genetics then applied it to breeding various colors of gerbils which I actually made a little money on in college. Then applied it to hamsters. Then guinea pigs (that can be a headache). Chickens (also can be a headache with mutts). After a quick once over of the budgie colors and how they worked I picked out 2 pairs that can make the colors I want but they haven't reached breeding age yet. Now I have rabbits. It's all the same thing. Although despite being fairly easy to figure out budgies have the greatest difference from other animals I've dealt with. Probably because they are bird rather than mammal and instead of a black/red base they have a yellow/white base.

 

[chickenwhisperer]

K, so I just found THIS.

It breaks down each rabbit into phenotype.
I understand that the "_" mark means "can be anything/doesnt matter"


Can somebody explain the order to me?
for instance:
line 1 is the chestnut- A_B_C_D_E_

if I am right:
A_ = pattern
B_ = black color
C_ = dont understand
D_ = dont understand
E_ = makes the hair have the bands

Using these gentic codes and a punnett square, if I were to breed my blue steel flemish giant to my fawn flemish giant, I could expect mostly chestnut and fawn colored babies with perhaps some opals and maybe a cream, but all would carry genes for the blue steel.


I really appreciate everybodies help in trying to help me understand this.

 

[Bunnylady]

Ummm, not quite.

A - Agouti pattern. Banded hairs and light "trim." [other options at this locus: self (a) - solid colored body hairs, no white trim; and tan (at) - solid color body hairs, light trim]

B - Black color [other option at this locus: chocolate (b)]

C - Full Color. Rabbit produces both yellow and black pigment, as much as the other genes will allow, anyway! [other options at this locus: chinchilla (cchd); Siamese/shaded (cchl); himi (ch); and REW (c)]

D - Non dilute. Rabbit has full black and yellow pigmentation (as much as other genes allow) [other option at this locus: dilute (d), which reduces pigment in hairs, and causes pigment granules to clump together, allowing more light through and making color appear lighter. Black becomes Blue, Chocolate becomes Lilac, etc.]

E - normal extension. This gene permits black pigment to be extended in the normal way down the hair shaft. [other options at this locus: harlequin (eh); non-extension (e); and steel (Es)].
The non-extension gene (e) pushes almost all of the black pigment off the hairs, allowing more of the yellow/red pigment to be visible. The steel gene works almost exactly the opposite of the non-extension, allowing more than normal amounts of black extension on the hairs, almost completely covering up the yellow bands. Normally, the capital letter designates the most dominant gene in the series. With this series, the normal extension gene had already been given the designation of E, when they found out that the Steel gene is actually dominant to the normal extension gene. That is why there are two capital letters in this series! Steel is one of those weird genes, where animals that have two copies (EsEs) show more of the effect of the gene than animals with only one, plus a gene that is more recessive (EsE). EsEs animals are completely black, looking like a black self, even if they have agouti genes.


I will assume that your Fawn Flemish is what most people mean by fawn (some breeds give a name that means one thing, to a color that isn't the same thing genetically. The Cinnamon breed of rabbit, for example, isn't Cinnamon colored [chocolate agouti] but actually Tort, go figure!!).

A Fawn is A_B_C_ddee

A Blue Steel is A_B_ C_ddEs_

All of the babies from such a cross would be dilute colors, since both parents are dilutes. Some of the agoutis would most likely be Steels. Flemish do come in self colors, you can't tell just by looking whether an agouti-marked animal carries a self gene or not. So the results would be Blue Steel, Fawn, Opal, possibly Blue, Blue Tort, even REW if the parents are both carrying that recessive gene.

Just when you think you are getting somewhere, huh?

 

[chickenwhisperer]

Quote:
Lol, Im going back to bed . . .