# New Mini Rex Line...newly updated with kit pics



## ()relics

So , yeah, I know I was going to downsize for winter, As usual....BUT.....A friend of mine, a mini rex breeder, is retiring and selling out....He called me this morning to ask if I wanted to look what he had before he "put them on the open market"....I thought " Why Not?"....Wrong answer....I bought 2 jr. does and 2 jr. bucks....He said I couldn't live without them....and I took his word and now have HIS line that he had been working with....The jr. does are pictured below, 1 is a red the other is a broken red.  The jr. bucks are unrelated to the does 1 being a castor and the other a red, as of yet not pictured....He said he was working towards "the perfect broken red" and then a "tricolor"....
So I know nothing about mini rexs except that I now own 4 of them...Along with "way too many Ndwarfs" and maybe someday some of those "french furry ones" ....






....Advice welcomed....Opinions on the jr. does from the professional Mrex breeders out there would be helpful also, sorry the pictures are subpar.  Way lot of glare on the broken.....Jr. bucks to follow.


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## ()relics

Sorry...I should have posted this in the breeds section....BUT...I was reading the Jenna post and just forgot to switch sections....Sorry again...MODS...Move as you see fit....


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## RabbitMage

If you could get pics of them posed up in some good lighting, that would be helpful!


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## JoieDeViveRabbitry

It's tough to see the markings on the broken red, but the red looks nice to me. Do you know their weights?

 BTW: Looks like we are planning to go to the 2011 ARBA convention in Indiana, we could arrange for you to get some of my French furry ones when I'm there. You have nearly two years to think about it!


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## ()relics

I'll take some....that leaves me plenty of time to figure out where exactly I'll keep them...


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## ()relics

So I've kept these 2 does all winter and when they/I were ready I bred them to a solid red buck. The broken doe settled after the first breeding and produced this litter, 7 kits. Kindled 4/16/10







although she is what I would consider a mismark her litter had only a few that I would call mismarks, pet quality.  She had 4 broken reds and 3 Tri's.  They may be a little light colored, leaning towards orange but all were healthy.  The tri's are not pictured well.

the solid solid red doe didn't take on her first breeding but settled after the second.  She kindled 5/16/10 with 5 kits.  3 solid red and 2 harlequin....





Again I am not a mini rex pro and would like to hear any comments on any of the rabbits/kits...I am having a hard time finding any clear information on the harlequin colored kits...they may be mismarks as far as I know, but would really like an opinion on the kits, as it will affect my rebreeding them with the same buck, using a different buck , or dumping the whole lot of them.  I see only 1 of the harlequins made the picture...the other is identical...

If better picture would help; I can do this too...thanks


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## SDGsoap&dairy

The little one that's sacked out is too darling... Sorry I know nothing about rabbits except that they are too freakin' adorable.


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## Bunnylady

Verrrry interesting!

Does this red buck have _any_ black hairs on him, anywhere? How about the red doe? The harlequin gene is dominant to red, which means that it can't hide. If you are getting harlies and tri's from two red parents, one of those parents must actually be a harlie. I had a tri buck once, that I thought at first was a broken red. It wasn't until he was nearly 6 mos. old that I spotted two little black spots, about as big as this letter "o" near one eye. Your broken doe has so little color on her, there's lots of room for harlie patterning to hide. Either your red buck is actually a harlie, or both of your does are.

I've noticed that solid harlie MR's often have larger patches of black, while the tri's tend to get smaller spots. I suspect the broken gene may have a near neighbor that influences the harlie pattern's expression, but I don't know for sure. Harlequin is not a showable color in the MR, although its broken version (tricolor) is showable. Unless you are working with a "Charlie" (double broken), unshowable harlequins are just about inevitable in a tricolor breeding program. 

Since your doe has so little color on her, and all of her kits in this litter were brokens, I think it is a fair bet that she's a Charlie. Charlies are homozygous for the broken gene, meaning that they inherited a copy of it from both of their parents. Since broken is dominant, this means that a Charlie can only have broken offspring, even when bred to a solid. Because Charlies often have rather slow-running digestive systems, they are more prone to GI problems. A lot of my fellow breeders don't do broken-to-broken breedings, to avoid producing Charlies.

As to the problem of mismarks, I wouldn't get too hung up about it. As long as a MR has some color around the eyes, some on both ears,  some on/near the nose, and between 10% and 50% total colored area on its coat, it's an acceptable broken, and won't be DQ'd. It might be marked down, but that's only a fault, a decider between two otherwise equal animals. While color and pattern are the easiest things to see, they are probably the least important feature when it comes to judging them. As long as the animal is a showable color, size and type are much more important when it comes to deciding which animals are pet vs. breeder/show quality.

Mini Rex is one of the breeds that employs the dwarfing gene to get the animal described in the breed standard. If you have Dwarfs, you have wrestled with this one before! Its extremely unusual for a "false dwarf" MR to be of showable type (let alone weight), learning to recognise their long faces and long ears makes deciding which ones to keep much easier.

Congrats on two adorable litters!


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## ()relics

the broken doe is cetainly a mismark, she has little color on her nose, leaning towards none...The solid red is as solid and perfectly colored as I have seen, not being an expert.  She has no visible black, even tips.  While the buck was asolid but after he molted this spring he appears to have a little streak of black, probably making him a mismark, hidden harlequin, also.  The broken tri's have small black spots, nearly as many black as red.  So 1 doe threw small spotted tri's and the other threw 2 harlequins, meaning the solid buck is really a harlequin (?).....Then I should cull him ?  and the brokens from the litter from the charlie doe, will they be considered F1 charlies and therefore should be culled?  The harlequins are not recognized should they be culled or can they be developed, say towrds magpie?  or is a mismark just a mismark to be culled?  I thought I might keep the best broken doe kit, the best tri kit, the best solid kit, and both the harlequin kits...but now I'm leaning towards dumping the whole lot of them, does and buck included.
  I am a complete uninformed idiot when it comes to rabbits/rabbit genetics....but ask me about goats....


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## ()relics

Here are some extra kit pictures, if they help....
broken top view:





tri top view:





harlequin 1:









harlequin 2:











If you are a mini rex person, I would like your advice...Don't hold back, junk is junk....I appreciate your opinions.


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## Bunnylady

OK, I'll try this again. I have a migraine/sinus headache going on, so I may not be very coherent - please bear with me!

Within all the instructions of a rabbit's genetic code, there are a bunch of genes that influence coat color, one way or another. For every trait, a rabbit has two genes that control it, one that came from the mother, one that came from the father. If the rabbit inherits the same form of a gene from both the mother and the father, we say it is homozygous. If the two forms are not the same, the rabbit is heterozygous for that trait. 

A dominant  gene is one that, if a rabbit inherits it, you will see its effects. It can't hide. A recessive gene "takes a back seat" to a dominant; to see it, you usually need the animal to have inherited the recessive form from both of its parents - in other words, to be homozygous recessive. _Most of the time_, you can't tell if an animal is homozygous or heterozygous when the dominant form is present, because it looks exactly the same. There are exceptions, and rabbit coat color has several remarkably different examples of this. One is the broken gene.

In a discussion of rabbit coat color, the broken gene is symbolized En. This is because it was first identified in the English Spot breed. Animals with the broken gene generally have white on their feet, their bellies and chests are  (at least mostly) white, and there is usually some white on the face and tail. There are a whole slew of modifier genes that fine tune the exact appearance of any particular rabbit with the broken gene. People with breeds like English Spots and Checkered Giants are very picky about just which form the modifiers must be, and want the markings to look just so. Most other breeds that employ the broken gene are not as selective, allowing a much greater range of expression in their brokens. The two kits (broken red and tricolor) that you posted pics of appear to be quite typical, acceptable MR brokens. 

There appear to be only two possibilities at the En locus (the place where the broken gene happens), En (broken) and en (not broken [solid]). En is dominant, so an animal with one copy of each (heterozygous) will be a broken. A solid is clearly enen, homozygous recessive. Curiously, there is a marked difference between the appearance of a heterozygous broken, and one that is homozygous. The EnEn rabbit has very little color on it at all. There usually is some color on the ears, some around the eyes, and little or none on the nose. There is very little color on the body, as well. These animals are often called "Charlies" (I've heard it is because the small mark that they may have on the nose reminded someone of a Charlie Chaplin moustache). Because the Charlie has only the dominant En form, all of its offspring will inherit the broken gene from it, and be brokens.

The harlequin gene (eh) is found in the E series. There are a couple of other genes in this series that are dominant to it, but only one (e) that is recessive.  e is the "non-extension" gene, the one that gives you red and tort. The harlie gene is kind of weird, in some places it acts like the non-extension gene, and removes black from the hair shaft, and in other places it acts like the self gene, flooding black all over the hair shaft. Like the broken gene, the harlie gene sets the pattern, there are other genes that modify the way the pattern gets expressed. I breed Harlequins (the breed) and I have seen even pedigreed, homozygous Harlies with barely more pattern than the black streak you describe your buck as having. He sounds like a harlequin to me.

Tricolors, of course, are nothing at all but broken harlequins. There are several breeds that recognise tricolor for the purpose of showing, but not its solid counterpart, harlequin (I'm sure it makes sense to someone). Other than it being unshowable, there is no reason to exclude a harlie from a tricolor breeding program. If you are trying to avoid producing  the nearly all-white, EnEn Charlies, you would breed solid to broken. Since the "good" broken is Enen, some of the offspring are bound to be solids. If you are trying to breed showable tri's, the best way to increase your odds of getting them than by breeding a tri to a solid harlie. 

Clear as mud?


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## dipence71

()relics said:
			
		

> So I've kept these 2 does all winter and when they/I were ready I bred them to a solid red buck. The broken doe settled after the first breeding and produced this litter, 7 kits. Kindled 4/16/10
> 
> http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu100/vanderwall09/rabbits/176.jpg
> 
> 
> although she is what I would consider a mismark her litter had only a few that I would call mismarks, pet quality.  She had 4 broken reds and 3 Tri's.  They may be a little light colored, leaning towards orange but all were healthy.  The tri's are not pictured well.
> 
> the solid solid red doe didn't take on her first breeding but settled after the second.  She kindled 5/16/10 with 5 kits.  3 solid red and 2 harlequin....
> http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu100/vanderwall09/rabbits/179.jpg
> 
> Again I am not a mini rex pro and would like to hear any comments on any of the rabbits/kits...I am having a hard time finding any clear information on the harlequin colored kits...they may be mismarks as far as I know, but would really like an opinion on the kits, as it will affect my rebreeding them with the same buck, using a different buck , or dumping the whole lot of them.  I see only 1 of the harlequins made the picture...the other is identical...
> 
> If better picture would help; I can do this too...thanks


AHHHH How far from Springfield IL are you? before you cull any let me know. my red mini rex just died(pet store and has snuffles) I am a newbie and believed it was allergies as they said.
Anyhow my DD12 is just heart broken. I would love to get a chance at them before you cull any if you are close enough for a good drive lol.....


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## ()relics

I sold the whole broken litter to a pet store.....They want more....so I rebred the same dam/sire and if they turn out as expected the whole litter is spoken for....They told me that broken rabbits, of any breed, are there best sellers....$10 each...and that will buy alot of feed....they probably sell them for $40...But that is their business....TY Bunnylady for the genetics lesson...I have been reading up on the subjuect and now have some sort of idea of my projected litters rather than just a shot in the dark....


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## horsechick

Hi,
Without seeing them posed correctly they look like pet quality in those pics. You could google mini rex, show quality and look at show photos and see how they are posed and learn more information on what the standard calls for so you will be able to tell if yours meet that standard or not. I don't think I read if they had pedigrees or not, Irregardless people will still buy them for pets, they would be fine for that. Just not sure if going to shows how they would do. You could always try to take them and see. 

http://www.devonglen.com/mreval.htm

http://mr-colors.tripod.com/

http://cottonwoodfarms.tripod.com/pencil.html

These are a couple really good links for learning more on mini rex.
Hope they help,
Take care,
Angela


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