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Agouti breeding tips?
Topic Started: May 13 2016, 07:23 PM (114 Views)
volz83
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I have moved over to breeding more agouti colors then shaded. Was wondering if anyone has any color tips I should know? Colors I am doing are: Orange/cream (wide band) and Chestnut/Opal. I have zero otter or cchd in the lines. I know not to mix cchl into them so I'll keep any sable points or torts carrying sable point out of the mix. Also, can breeding an orange to a high rufus tort help reduce smut? Can breeding two oranges or cream to cream or cream to orange keep both colors clean? I know how to clean up sable points so learning Orange and creams. I also have a solid blue carrying "CC" and a black carrying rew with possible dilute gene available to breed to.
Edited by volz83, May 13 2016, 07:23 PM.
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sidd-says-gimme
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sidd says stay gold
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Breeding an orange to a tort with high rufus will help increase rufus in their offspring. A tort can have both high rufus and be smutty (yes, a tort can be smutty!) so watch for that. Of course, not everything will breed true...

Orange x orange will produce offspring with smut levels according to the parents'. The fact that they're both orange shouldn't help anything, but it is easier to see how smutty the bunny is if it's an agouti rather than a tort. Same with cream x cream. Creams can still be smutty like an orange, it's just not as obvious.

Basically, it all depends on the rabbit's smuttiness itself, not the color (orange, tort, cream, chestnut, ect). In most cases and from my experience/what I've heard.
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volz83
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Thanks Sidd! That's what I was thinking to just was not sure. So my next question is, what about white nails/mismatched nails? I ask because working with more dilutes and I have heard it can pop up. My questions are: can you breed it out, can you have a rabbit that carries the gene for it yet does not physically express it, do both parents have to be carrying it? I never understood when I hear judges say in regards to an Opal "watch this rabbits nails, they are a little light"- does that mean they can lighten up with age?
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NeuBunny
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Nails ... yes, they can lighten with age. More surprisingly (to me anyway) when you keep breeding dilute to dilute it seems that the nails get lighter each generation. A lot of people keep dilute carriers and cross those in every couple generations to combat this. That's true with the self blues as well as the agoutis. Makes no sense to me from a genetic/modifier perspective - blacks should be LESS likely to have the modifiers you need to get the nails darker (no selection for modifiers as they all have dark enough nails). But it seems to work.

Watch undercolor on the dilutes -- especially when crossing with the oranges. I suspect that the 'snowball' white undercolor seen in some blue selfs is related to either carrying 'e' or to wideband or both. I've also seen opal Jersey woolies where the undercolor goes white (that carried both e and chd). That one can alter with age too -- a lot of snowball kits seem to outgrow it with their first molt, but as each coat ages it lightens (fading too light just before a molt, but the new coat comes in OK), but then around age 4-5 the undercolor fades again more permanently (white with age).

Not sure how tight the color standard is on the Holland agoutis ... on minirex, crossing reds and castors is dicey. Wideband genes in a castor line mess with both the undercolor and top color (go too light) though it is done sometimes to boost the rufus of the midband. The reds from a castor cross are almost always unshowable -- Ww makes for a blue tone to the undercolor and a lot of smut. Reds with a lot of agouti in the background are a better bet for crossing to a castor when you need to ... not only are they less likely to bring in wideband modifiers, but they also won't have lost the modifiers for good ring definition.

Again, my experience here is with the minirex, but the modifiers you want on good torts and good oranges are different. Crossing in torts often causes 'residual shading' on the oranges (new term I learned recently 'umbrous modifiers' in the tort lines are the cause basically these are the modifiers that are giving torts good rich flank color). If you do the cross, expect kits to have that shading, but note most of them seem to outgrow it after their first molt (permanently as far as I can tell). With most smut on even good oranges being on the ears, and no way on a tort to select for the modifiers that would minimize it, the oranges from a tort cross also tend to be more smutty. Flip side, the torts you get out of crossing to oranges are usually pretty good, maybe just a little light in the flanks or a little less extent to the dark markings. Note this is mostly an issue of outcrosses ... if you have a line consistently working with torts and oranges simultaneously, you can be selecting for both modifier sets and get perfectly good offspring for both (everybody has the modifiers need for both). Just trickier to get started.

Lots of people cross selfs and otters to agoutis (including me) ... better to do so with one that has agouti on its pedigree ... there are modifier genes involved in getting nice crisp band definition (as opposed to the bands blurring together) ... selfs from pure self lines (or otters from pure otter lines) often don't carry those modifiers.
Edited by NeuBunny, May 16 2016, 08:26 AM.
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volz83
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Thank you so much for the helpful info! In regards to using tort x orange, yes my orange doe Papaya had that side flank shading that was a pale like gray/cream color that went away with her junior molt. She does have some degree of smut. With Hollands, a lot of people cross anything with everything and on the table, judges rarely comment on the color unless they think it's unshowable. So you don't see any pure color lines like all solids or all otters- they get used all over the place due to Hollands have a pretty loose point system for color (just 4 points so people don't really focus too much on keeping colors clean). Thankfully, the gal I have most of my new stock out of keeps her line pretty clean in that no otters or cchd at play and their are a few others that keep the groups separated. Type is #1 for me but at the same time, I do want to try to have nice clean color as I can, unfortunately with Hollands, your best type is in torts so that is why it's crossed so much into other colors. So I'm hoping to get a nice tort buck produced out of my orange line to use for breeding, I have one buck but not sure if I'll be using him for breeding, still growing him out.

I have also been told to always breed dilute x solid because dilute x dilute can produce the lighter nails or white toenails etc but I also heard of white toenails from broken x solid crossings? Not sure exactly how white toenails gets passed down, if like both parents have to carry the gene(s) for it but I'll watch out for it now that I'll be producing more dilutes.
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NeuBunny
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with brokens and white nails, I think it is simply a matter of toes that are in white patches have white nails and toes in colored patches have colored nails. Always makes nails on the brokens a bit more of a gamble.
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volz83
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Gotcha :)
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