# Two silver fox....



## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Mar 26, 2015)

Ok...strange things have happened! I have a black silver fox doe and a blue silver fox buck. they bred a month ago...and the doe had broken babies!? Ok....ONE or BOTH of the rabbits are obviosly not pure bred. BUT they both look like true silver fox.
1) how can they make broken kits?
2) how do I find out who the mutt is?


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## Bunnylady (Mar 26, 2015)

OK, you have really gotten my curiosity piqued. Could you post pictures?

I'm not quite sure what you have going on here. The broken gene is dominant; generally speaking, if it is present, you will see it. The expression of the broken pattern varies widely; it can be as little as a bit of white on feet and face (called "booted") or as much as the classic English Spot. It shouldn't be possible for two solid colored rabbits to produce broken babies.


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## mysunwolf (Mar 27, 2015)

I agree, doesn't sound at all possible! We need pics.


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 18, 2015)

sorry i havent posted pictures yet. BUSY Season is upon us! I think there HAD to have been a rouge broken buck running around....there is NO WAY brokens are possible if breeding solid rabbits. Unless silver fox isnt considered a solid since they have the silvering?


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 28, 2015)

Babies.....


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 28, 2015)

The buck i sold


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 28, 2015)

The mother of the kits


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 28, 2015)

Ok. The mother doe is from my first litter of silver fox. Both are pedigreed stock, black silver fox. They are brother sister. He silver was less than i like so i sold her to a friend as a grade brood doe along with a blue buck from a different litter, same father but different mother. The kits were born 29 days after i sold the rabbits to him. I have no idea how he got broken kits! He doesnt have other rabbits and i dont have brokens! I do have a couple meat mix mutts but to my knowledge, they were not in the same pens. These rabbits were in ground tractors. Maybe she was bred thru the fence?


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 28, 2015)




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## Bunnylady (Apr 29, 2015)

Aren't rabbits fun?

I strongly suspect that one of your mutts might have gotten to her through the wire - it wouldn't be the first time such things have happened. The white patterning on at least one of them looks more like a Dutch, or maybe the psuedo-Dutch of the Vienna (Blue-eyed White) gene. Is either of those a possibility? 

Something else I see, is a couple of Tortoiseshell colored babies. That's the non-extension gene, and a pedigreed Silver Fox shouldn't have it. It's recessive, so both parents had to have it; anybody do an outcross to a Cinnamon, by any chance?


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 29, 2015)

I have a doe that was sired by a cinnamon/rex cross. He looked like a cinnamon but small like a mini rex. That doe was crosses with a silver fox for meat mutts. SO......Im going to guess some how my mutts got mixed with my pedigree kits somewhere down the line after they were kindled. *I have a 3 year old who likes to play with the kits. I can now see how she probably swapped babies out!* omg....So looks like I will be exchanging those out or giving him 2 freebies from my new litters. 

I have the litters in hanging cages where my kid cant reach them now! 

Not sure where the dutch came from tho! 

Worst part is I took the pure breds to freezer camp! boooo!


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## Bunnylady (Apr 29, 2015)

Ah, yes, our little "helpers" . . . .Gotta love 'em!

It may just be the doe - you said you thought she was rather lacking in the silvering. While I have had the odd doe kindle at less than 31 days' gestation, they usually were carrying really large litters (12 or so). All in all, I think it pretty likely that the doe was pregnant before she left your place.


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 30, 2015)

Thankfully the guy is very laid back in completely understanding about the mishap. He got extra rabbits out of the deal too. Im in the process of phasing out my mix breeds due to this issue! Ill be down to just standard rex, silver fox and american chinchillas.


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## Bunnylady (Apr 30, 2015)

Yep, it would be pretty hard to mix those up, and even if the rabbits themselves managed to get - um - creative, you'd know it pretty quickly, wouldn't you?


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (Apr 30, 2015)

rex is recessive so if a rex crossed with a regular fur type, all the babies would have regular fur. if you bred the regular fur babies with rex recessive gene to another carrier of the rex fur gene or a full rex carrier, the babies would have rex fur and some non rex fur. lol 

unfortunatly for me, the silver fox mutts looked IDENTICAL to pure silver fox...hence the awful mix up. I need a way to id kits at a day old WITHOUT tattoos. Any ideas? nail polish?


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## Bunnylady (Apr 30, 2015)

Now, see, I was figuring that if a Silver Fox buck bred with either a Rex or a Chin by accident, you'd be able to spot it quickly, either by color or coat. And if anybody played "musical nest boxes" with purebred babies of any of those breeds, that would be pretty obvious, too. 

I'm sure that with practice, you'll get familiar enough with the Silver Fox to spot a first-generation outcross, even if the color is not a giveaway. The coat of the Silver Fox is supposed to be longer than the normal rabbit coat, and it has what is known as a standing coat, meaning that it is _not _supposed to settle back into position when you rub it the wrong way. That is pretty much unique to the breed - the Am Chin has a rollback coat (the fur settles gently back into place when stroked backward). I feel fairly sure that crossing a Silver Fox to a Rex would result in rabbits with normal coats, which would be noticeably shorter than a "correct" Silver Fox coat to someone with an experienced eye.


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## JakeM (May 11, 2015)

I see what is happening here (even though I'm a bit late to respond). Both of your Silver Foxes carry the Vienna gene, which cause that "Dutch" pattern.

Time for a genetics lesson!

Broken and Vienna-marked rabbits are different. Broken is made by have the genes "Enen" while Vienna-marked is from "vv". A solid rabbit has "enen", so breeding it to another solid rabbit does NOT allow for any brokens to be born.

Now, since the Vienna gene is recessive, it takes two of the "v" alleles to actually allow it to show up on a rabbit. The Vienna gene causes the rabbit to show either a blaze on the head/neck or to show the dutch pattern (the pattern of the Dutch breed). Which means that the pedigree is either fake/not showing the true breeds of the ancestors, or a different breed was mixed in awhile ago (4+ generations ago) as Silver Fox should have no reason to show any sort of pattern besides the ticking.


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## TIPPY THE HIPPY (May 12, 2015)

But the adults show no pattern other than ticking! This is how this predicament happened. All I can think is the above scenario where my child swapped kits from my meat mutt litter that was crossed with silver fox and ended up with the wrong moms. I have since moved the new litters to cages that she cannot break into. :/ Looks like the meat mutt brother and sister bred obviously, and A LOT of the hidden genetics became expressed. The mutt mother has a broken/vienna gene in her background....her last litter had nose snip babies and calicos. (not bred to the Silver fox that time) I need to get better at keeping my cages locked and my purebred and meat mutt stock separate.


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## Bunnylady (May 12, 2015)

JakeM said:


> I see what is happening here (even though I'm a bit late to respond). Both of your Silver Foxes carry the Vienna gene, which cause that "Dutch" pattern.
> 
> Time for a genetics lesson!
> 
> ...



Uhhh . . . . not quite. A rabbit with two Vienna genes (vv) is a Blue-eyed White (BEW), a completely white rabbit with blue eyes. Vienna shows incomplete dominance, which means that a rabbit that has* one* copy of Vienna, and one of the normal, non-Vienna (Vv) typically shows a state somewhere between the Blue-eyed white and the fully colored rabbit. Usually, this is a colored animal with white on the face and feet. This may be as little as just a snip of white on the nose and maybe a white toe or two, or it may include a lot more white on the legs, and a blaze, and possibly a white band across the shoulders much like the pattern seen on the Dutch rabbits. Some people used to refer to this as "pseudo Dutch," though it is now typically called "Vienna marked" (VM). VM rabbits may or may not have blue eyes, or even one blue and one brown.

A rather more unusual, but certainly not unheard of situation is a fully colored rabbit that has the Vienna gene, but doesn't show any sign of it. Such an animal is called a Vienna carrier (VC). Vienna carriers can give birth to Vienna marked offspring, or, if bred to another rabbit with a Vienna gene, even BEW's.  

To produce Vienna Marked babies, only one rabbit in a cross needs to have the Vienna gene. It's possible that your mutt doe is a VC; producing Vienna marked babies without showing signs of the Vienna gene herself. 

Another possibility is the Dutch gene. Dutch doesn't always express as the full Dutch pattern; it can also show up as just white "noses and toeses." Dutch is the bane of Harlequin breeders; it seems that an awful lot of the best patterned Japanese Harlequin babies are born with a little white on them, courtesy of the Dutch gene. Rabbits can carry Dutch without expressing it, and have it show up in their offspring; though the pattern usually doesn't get expressed to the degree seen in your kits without coming from both parents.


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