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Saturday, November 13, 2010

Rabbit Coat Colour Genes

Assalamualaikum wbt

Pet rabbits today have developed a various coat colour. One of the most exciting moment when we breed rabbits is to find out what colour the offspring would be. However, by understanding how the genetics and the gene sets work within rabbits, breeder could achieve the colour pattern that they desired rather than blindly mating rabbits to develop a various kind of freak colouration.

Basically, there are five main colour genes that determine the colour of a rabbit's fur. The basic genes are:

A-Agouti
B-Black/Brown
C-Colour saturation
D-Dilution of colour
E-Extension of colour

There is also other gene sets which will produce a different colour if these genes show up.

V – Vienna gene which produces blue-eyed whites
En- gives the broken pattern in Holland Lops
Du -gives the Dutch color pattern.

Wild rabbits carry color genetic of AABBCCDDEE which appear as chestnut agouti. The capital letter genes practically are the dominant genes and the lower letter genes are recessive to the capital one (try to memorize the law of Mendel in form 5).

If the dominant genes appear in a rabbit, the gene colour for recessive will be hidden. I'm not going into detail for every colour genetic as it is very complicated lesson and kind of confusing to explain the detail (very confuse for me). So I suggest these websites for the color genetic lesson, if any of you interested to learn more

http://home.pacbell.net/bettychu/genetics.html
http://www.threelittleladiesrabbitry.com/colorgenes.php
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/Rabbit-Coat-Color-Chart.htm

I like this colour, blue eye white rabbit

more likely as siamese cat, a sable point colour

This one also caught my attention, black pointed white colour

Opal, or blue in colour


Golden fawn in agouti family

You may need to take a look for another resources, as it may be a little bit confusing in identifying the true colouration of rabbit. The more you know about colour in rabbit, the eager you would be to own one!


Ruby eyed white (REW) holland lop rabbit

Broken colour pattern, very cute isn't?

2 comments:

Qib said...

comel nyer bunny ni...
bisnes ker//
tengs ^^ for the visit.. do vsit again yoww. ^^

Usagi said...

hehehe, ini bukan bisnes, lebih kepada minat kat menatang cute ni.
singgah la slalu jenguk rabbit kat sini

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