Rabbit Peeps Color Question!

[LizzzyJo]

I breed show pedigreed Holland lops and am considering a purchase between two does. One is harlequin and one is brown eyed white.

They would be bred to my broken sable point buck. Then bred to the progeny of that buck and my self black doe.

Does anyone know if white would be dominant or recessive to broken sable point? Would harlequin be dominant or recessive?

-quick pic of my cute and curious little buck - Theodore (aka theodorable)

Thanks!!

 

[NatJ]

one is brown eyed white.

You are sure about that eye color? It is much more common for white rabbits to have red or blue eyes.

Does anyone know if white would be dominant or recessive to broken sable point?

Red eyed white (aka Ruby eyed white, or REW) is recessive to everything. But it can carry other genes that will be visible in the offspring when you breed it to any other color. It can be difficult or impossible to know what you will get if a red eyed white is bred to any color except REW.

Blue eyed white (BEW) will tend to throw vienna-marked babies (a bit like mis-marked dutch.) The non-white part of the babies' coloring is hard to predict, because you can't tell what other color genes the white rabbit has.

If the rabbit really does have brown eyes, then it must be something different genetically speaking, and I don't know how to predict it.

The broken gene is dominant, so the buck should produce some broken bunnies and some non-broken bunnies when bred to just about any doe. (Of course a "broken white" rabbit would just look white, so there's no easy way to tell if the white doe also has the broken gene.)

Would harlequin be dominant or recessive?

Crossing harlequin to the broken buck should give half of babies broken, half not. (Broken gene is dominant over non-broken.)

That is how far my own knowledge of rabbit genetics can take me. For the rest, I went and looked up a page of rabbit color genetics, and worked out what I could of the genes involved:
https://minifluffsrabbitry.weebly.com/rabbit-color-genetics-101.html
https://minifluffsrabbitry.weebly.com/rabbit-color-genetics-chart.html

If I understood those pages right, I *think* the harlequin (patchy coloring) is recessive to the normal kind found in your buck.
But if the harlequin doe has brighter colors (blacks, browns, etc) the bunnies will probably have those brighter colors, rather than the light shades found in the buck's coloring.

I did not manage to sort out all of which genes are affecting the buck's base coloring, and it appears that harlequins can have some variation in some other genes while still being considered harlequin, so I don't think I can figure it out more precisely than that.

They would be bred to my broken sable point buck.

I think the "sable point" coloring of your buck is being called "shaded" on the genetics page I found (I know colors are called by different names in different breeds.)

Then bred to the progeny of that buck and my self black doe.

I would expect that buck and the self black doe to mostly produce black bunnies and broken black bunnies (possibility of many other colors, depending on what the doe carries and how it interacts with the buck's genes). Breeding those to the offspring from either new doe would also produce some black bunnies and some broken black bunnies, but probably also some bunnies that look like almost any of the other parents/grandparents involved, and some new combinations as well.