Glinda as a Wee One

Kim of Nordic Angoras sent me this cute picture of Glinda when she was a wee bunny. Glinda is a tortoiseshell color:
aaB-C-D-ee
PLUS she has a healthy dose of rufus coloring. Rufus is one of those MODIFYING genes that runs through rabbit lines and seems to be unconnected to any particular color. BUT it will only express itself when there is a lack of black pigment in the coat. So, it rides along blindly in some rabbit families until it reaches the "torte" and "fawn" colors, where it makes the golden tones deeper, more orange or redder.
Now Glinda is mother to BELINDA and also to NEO. These guys, if you will remember, were born about 3 months apart. Belinda expresses rufus in her coat, but Neo does not.

Neo: the Wee Fellow

He's growing like a weed. While most 3 week old bunnies are just leaving the nest, he has been racing around the cage with (AND... over, under and around) his mom for a full week now. He LOVES to eat hay! He ate through all the hay in his nest area one day last week, so now I give him his own handful twice a day PLUS he gets a bowl of whole oats to nibble on PLUS he is invading his mother's food dish on a regular basis. All this while nursing when he can (he does pester his mother a lot...she avoids him on occasion.) Here he is at age 24 days:

RINGS IN COATS

In the angora coat world, color is displayed in an uneven manner. When you look at a rabbit in full coat, you see the outermost tips and that is what the rabbit appears to be. But, lo and behold, when you part the fiber...other colors and shades of color emerge.

In self rabbits, it is desirable to have the color be as even as possible down the fiber shaft, but I have seen very few that can boast of this. One rabbit, way back in my past, had deep color down to the roots, and he was an English angora buck named Fabio. In my fantasy life, I dream of breeding an entire herd of angoras that matches his color depth. Time will tell (Hey, we all need goals,right?!?)

Here is BELINDA (reddish) and DARTH (grayish). Both are about 3 months old and you will notice the many RINGS in their coats. One set of lighter/darker colors are their baby coats which tend to stripe, but then the adult version is growing in right behind it.

COLOR GENETICS IN RABBITS

I love color expression in angoras. I always want to know what genes are doing what, and I sporadically apply myself to learning more. I have recently seen blacks in my barn that are not dark, and have been wondering what code they might be, and what to NAME them. They do have black faces and brown eyes, but white hairs in their coats and coats that now, aged 2-3 years, are almost white. But more about black rabbits later...

The Wee Fellow is a tortoiseshell (torte) pattern. This a one of the SELF color patterns that rabbits exhibit. There are many variations in tortes! These variations are lighter/darker/redder/whiter/blonder tinged with brown/tinged with smoky charcoal/tinged with soft brown/tinged with silver and then there is a whole group of almost white rabbits that have the torte pattern as a basis for their color! And then there are many MODIFYING genes that float in around color expression that tweak parts of it. So, a rabbit's color is more than the sum of the genetic code in letters. There is a torte color and then an EXCELLENT torte color.

Basic color genetics works like this.....All rabbits have a full range of 2 colors available to them to use in making up their coat/skin/eye/toenail colors: black and yellow (white is the absence of ALL color). The ABCDE code will arrange the color as it wants:

(Capitals are dominant traits in that group)
A Agouti and a self at marten
B Black and b chocolate
C Color and c no color (white) also chl and chd and ch (some color genes)
D Dark and d dilute
E color Extended fully along color shaft and e no Extension of black and also Es (steel) Ej (harlequin)

Each rabbit gets one set of each letter, but can get combos in lower/uppercase.

AABBCCDDEE.

AaBbCcDdEe

aaBBCCDDEE

aabbccddee

(We can make color combinations up all day....)

many times we do not have a clear understanding of a rabbit's genetic code, but by looking at the rabbit, we can assume a lot. When there are hidden possibilities, the unknown is written as a (-), so a black rabbit that is REALLY
aaBBCCDdEe (but we don't know that)can be written aaB-C-D-E-

The dominant genes express themselves no matter what.
Chl, chd and ch work together. (There are other rules here..will add to this list as time goes on.....please add your comments!)

Tortoiseshell patterns all share one thing....they have 2 "ee" genes. What those "ee" genes do is keep the color BLACK from "extending" itself past the extremities of the rabbit (face/feet/tail/haunches/ears). So you get a rabbit with a dark "mask" who's body is a gold (or creme)color of some sort.

Tortoiseshell code is:
aaB-C-D-ee (Glinda)

Chocolate Tortoiseshell code:
aabbC-D-ee (Belinda)

Lilac Tortoiseshell code:
aabbC-ddee (Wee Fellow.....now named NEO!)

Blue Tortoiseshell code
aaB-Cddee

This gets complicated, but just keep at it.

POWER OUTAGES OR... NO HOT COFFEE

A day without power goes in S-L-O-W motion. Luckily as one of the Northeast USA's power grids locked down, I had JUST watered the bunnies, so they had plenty of water when the lights went out. (Out here in the boonies we need electricity to power the well pump to bring the water up 190 feet to the surface). Once the lights came back on, my beloved Internet was still suffering from spotty service (sob) and I was unable to work on BareHare.

So, I clipped a rabbit while waiting.

Ringo has been here 5 years. He was a rescue rabbit and was subsequently neutered along with his 3 brothers....John, Paul and George. He and his brothers spent 2 years with Sara and BLOSSOMED. When Sara needed the room for her up and coming (human) babies, they all moved back here. One by one, John first, then George, then Paul, they have gone to their Next Life, but Ringo remains. (Omen?) At any rate, taking the fur off a rabbit without harm to the fur OR the rabbit is an art. I have been working at it for 12 years, and in June this old dog learned some new tricks. Leslie Samson Samson Angoras teaches a style of rabbit shearing that is relaxing and flawless, and I treated myself to attendance at a workshop with her.

(I'll upload a picture of the de-furred Ringo shortly.)

THE BELOVED BELINDA

When Belinda was born, she was the second reddest creature in the nest. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of that litter as this blog was started after her birth, but I do have a picture of her at one month.

...and again at 10 weeks...

BELINDA..CHOCOLATE TORTOISESHELL WITH RUFUS
The new bunny has a sister who was born 11 weeks before him, and she is also a tortoiseshell pattern. She has an added "modifying gene" in her genetics, and it displays itself as a "redder" shade. The rufus, or rufous, modifying gene can be inherited in single or multiple degrees. The more that are present, the redder the animal appears. But, rufus can only be displayed when a torte or fawn pattern already exists on an animal. Neat, huh!

DAY 16

It's hot here in New York. And humid. I think the dew point was 72* this afternoon, and the temp was 88*(F). The bunnies and we endure. But, once the Wee Fellow got in front of the camera he came to life. Very nosy! There's a nice shot of his back end, showing how the tortoiseshell pattern travels around each hind quarter.

Tortoiseshell color patterns mark a rabbit in the following manner....his back, face and chest are a almond/creme/fawn/gold/orange/rust color, while his feet, tail, hindquarters, ears and a "mask" area around his face are the color of his most dominant "B" genes. These rabbits are "two-toned".

DAY 15

This happy PERKY little fellow surprised me today by jumping 8" up and out of his drop nest box to roam the 6 foot long cage he shares with his mom. He immediately found "her" corner and proceeded to pittle there. Good boy.

Rabbits are pretty tidy creatures, and with the right setup will litterbox-train themselves before you can say "Peter Rabbit". Many of the bunnies born here have gone on to blossom as House Rabbits and we hear stories of their tidy habits.

So here he is...at 2 weeks. He came in to visit the knitters at Charity Knitting Monday night in the shop:countrywool He spent a half hour with them and then snoozed for another half hour. But we managed to take his picture on the table.

Most 2 week old bunnies are just peeking out...staying safe in the nest with their siblings while watching the world. This guy is way ahead of the pack!

DAY 13

He is becoming more and more courageous as I enter the barn. As he listens to me when I talk to him, he comes out of his nest and presses his nose against the wire edge to investigate this large aspect of his world. His color is starting to confuse me. His eyes are a clear gray (from what I can see). I will spend some time working on the basic color genetics and definitions of TORTOISESHELL patterns in the weeks to follow. Since there is a whole other litter of siblings to clarify some of my speculations, we can arrive at an educated guess as to his color genetics.
The sun finally came out today (it has been raining or cloudy since he was born) and I got a shot of him in natural light. That is why his coat is so much warmer a gold in the second picture. I hesitated to doctor the beginning photos for color as I wanted as true a comparison of how the color PATTERN emerged as I could.