# Vienna marked NZ?



## HaloRabbits (Mar 5, 2017)

I am raising New Zealand Rabbits mainly for meat but also I am very interested in genetics and learning about the colors (but there are so many)! I studied biology in college and think working with genetics is so cool. I used to breed guppy fish and bred for size and color but rabbits are so much cuter . 

I am rather new to rabbits and when doing my color research what I read lead me to believe my doe is Vv (VM) because she is Black with blue eyes. Also all 5 of her weanlings have blue eyes as well. As a first time mom she lost some in the first week and so I cannot say whether or not they had blue or brown eyes. I am attaching photos for you to view of the doe and her kits. Am I right, are they vienna marked?

My goals: 
1- to get a charlie so that I can have a continuous line of brokens
2- If they are Vv then I would like to try and get a vv (BEW)


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## DutchBunny03 (Mar 7, 2017)

http://mosaicrabbitry.weebly.com/the-bew-vc-vm--vienna-gene.html
I don't know much about NZ genetics, but those look like they are VM. One of the parents must have been a BEW, because a VM is a BEW mixed with something other than another BEW.


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## HaloRabbits (Mar 10, 2017)

You can also get a Vv if one of the parents are Vv. My babies are not from a BEW but all of them look to be VM (Vv). I understand the genetics of it but I just have a hard time identifying the many colors in rabbits.


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## Baymule (Mar 10, 2017)

Rabbit colors have come a LOOOOOOONG way since I raised Satins many years ago. NZ's only came in Pink-eyed white and brown eyed red. AND the colors were kept pure and not crossed with each other. Now there is such a rainbow of colors!


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## Pastor Dave (Mar 10, 2017)

That doe's blue eyes are pretty.
I get some of the same colors out of my NZW does when bred to a charlie. His eyes are blue, but with the does' REW, the kits haven't gotten his blue eyes, just brown or hazel mostly.


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## Bunnylady (Mar 10, 2017)

Welcome to the forum!

I don't think the doe is VM; I think she's a self Chin. It's fairly unusual to get a VM with blue eyes that doesn't have any white on it (they usually have at least a little bit of white on the face and/or feet; it can even look remarkably like the pattern on a Dutch rabbit). To get several animals with the blue eyes and no obvious white markings caused by the Vienna gene would be_ extremely _unusual.

Chinchilla colored rabbits can have eyes that are brown, blue-gray, or a mottled combination of blue and gray. The classic ticked coat of a chinchilla only really shows up in a rabbit with the Agouti pattern. Chinchilla takes almost all of the yellow pigment out of the coat, and just a little bit of the black. A self patterned rabbit with the Chin gene would be solid black, though a slightly less dense black that a self with the full color (C) gene. Without a "proper" black to compare it to, it could be hard to spot the difference, but the eye color can be a giveaway. Normal full-color selfs have brown eyes, self chins often have blue-gray.

There is a color sometimes called Ermine which is essentially a white rabbit with colored eyes; one of the genes involved in making it is the Chinchilla gene. If an Ermine has brown eyes, it's obvious that's what it is, but if it has blue-gray eyes, it can be confused with a BEW. The trick is the shade - BEW's have cornflower blue eyes, not blue-gray; blue gray eyes on a white rabbit came from the Chin gene. Your doe's eyes look blue-gray to me, combined with the lack of the Vienna markings on either her or the babies, and that makes me think this is Chinchilla coloring. Neither Chin nor Vienna should be in a NZ of any color, so clearly your doe has something other than just NZ in her background.

Chin is recessive to full color, and dominant to REW; is your buck a NZW?

If you know about Charlies, you also ought to know that there is a problem associated with them. The gene that causes the broken pattern doesn't just make them spotted, it is also involved in the development of the digestive system. A broken patterned rabbit has a situation known as "reduced gut motility" - in other words, the food it eats moves through the digestive system at a slower rate. "Normal" brokens with only one copy of the gene have only a slight reduction in pace, and it usually has little effect on the rabbit. A  Charlie, however, has a marked reduction; they are more prone to GI stasis than a solid or a normal broken. There is also a strong association with Charlies and a condition known as megacolon. Some Charlies have no noticeable problems at all, and lead healthy, normal lives, but some have serious health issues simply because they have two broken genes. Because of this, a lot of people avoid breeding broken to broken, thus avoiding producing Charlies.


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## HaloRabbits (Mar 11, 2017)

@Bunnylady No the buck is not NZW he is a broken NZ.
I am 90% sure she is Pure NZ. I can double check with the breeder. I got her from an ARBA breeder who has only NZ, Flemish Giants, and Angora.
The doe also has sparse white hairs. You can't see it well in the photo.


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## HaloRabbits (Mar 11, 2017)

This is them when first born. @Bunnylady


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## Bunnylady (Mar 11, 2017)

This Holland Lop does a good job of showing the type of markings that you often see in a VM animal. Frequently the blaze on the face will be very asymmetrical, though this guy's facial marking seems pretty balanced and centered. He also shows off the blue eye really well. Normally, a blue rabbit would have a blue-gray eye that is almost exactly the same shade of gray as the fur; this eye is clearly Vienna blue. 

As i said, a New Zealand shouldn't be carrying either Chinchilla or Vienna; those are not genes that exist in the New Zealand gene pool. If your rabbit has either one, clearly, someone has done an outcross somewhere along the line.

The reason I asked whether the buck is REW is because Chinchilla (cchd) is dominant to REW (c), but recessive to normal full color (C). In order for a rabbit to have gray eyes from the Chinchilla gene, Chin (cchd) would have to be the most dominant allele the rabbit had inherited at the C locus. it would be easier for that to happen if the only other option from the buck was the gene for REW (c). If the buck has brown eyes, he has a full color allele (C). But he would need to have Chin or something more recessive than Chin for the kits to have the Chin coloring. Looking at the pictures of the litter as newborns, it looks to me like some may be a little darker than others; they may have been full color blacks rather than the self Chin blacks. Random chance may have resulted in the full color blacks being lost, and all you have left are the chins.


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## HaloRabbits (Mar 11, 2017)

@Bunnylady I talked to the breeder. She is 100% NZ. Both her parents were phenotypically black. The father came from a long line of NZ blacks. The mother came from a cross between a blue and a red (it was supposed to be a meat litter but she really liked the mother and so she kept her).

I know the 'd' can cause the light colored eyes (like in blues and lilacs) but is one copy enough to do this? It is likely that my doe is also 'Dd' like her mother. The breeder says the eye color has appeared in some others she has but only in kits that come from the lines carrying blue.


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## Bunnylady (Mar 11, 2017)

I have never heard or read anything to indicate that the dilution gene is anything other than fully recessive. I have seen *blue* rabbits with *brown* eyes; this became a real problem for some local breeders of Holland Lops a number of years ago. I'm not quite sure how that one happens (one theory has it that it's a modifier that allows some chins to have brown eyes), but judges now check pretty closely to make sure that the eye color on a blue is correct. I've never heard of the opposite happening; every gray-eyed black rabbit I have ever seen (and I've had a few of them) has been a self chin. If there is some other gene that could cause it, I haven't heard of it (doesn't mean it's not out there, of course, just that I haven't encountered anyone that has mentioned it).

Interesting that the breeder has only seen this in the lines carrying blue. Blue is a new color in the NZ; it was introduced a few years ago and only passed its third showing to become an accepted variety at the convention last year. They had to get the gene for blue from somewhere; no telling what else may have gotten picked up in the process. Lots of people do outcrosses all the time to acquire a new color or some other trait, or just because they feel like the gene pool is getting a bit shallow. As long as the resulting animals look enough like a certain breed, they may not be too careful about mentioning everything else that is in the background, especially if they are breeding for meat or "pretty" rather than trying to produce show bunnies with impressive pedigrees. (I once bought a Harlequin doe from a very respected Harlie breeder that wound up a full pound over the weight limit for the breed when she stopped growing. When I mentioned her in a later conversation with the breeder, she asked, "does she have ______________ [a certain rabbit] on the pedigree?" "Yes, as her maternal grandfather." "That rabbit came from a breeder who also has New Zealands, and has done outcrosses to the NZ's to try to improve type. I have a complete pedigree on him, and everything on it is a Harlequin, but there's no telling what may be just a generation or two back from that." I admitted that the doe in question did look a lot like a New Zealand with a fancy paint job. I used that doe and her progeny quite a bit, and  number of years later, I wound up breeding a couple of her descendants together, and found out that type wasn't the only thing that had gotten passed down. There were REW's popping up in my pedigreed Harlequin litters - at least a half-dozen generations from that NZ ancestor. I jokingly referred to them as "paint-by-number Harlequins.")


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## HaloRabbits (Mar 13, 2017)

@Bunnylady very interesting. Well as far as their pedigrees go they are full NZ but it is very possible something similar has happened here. Yes, Blue was only recently recognized so it does make you question what they did to bring this color about. 

I find all of this very interesting and look forward to creating a about 3 separate color lines in my rabbitry. They are meat-only rabbits though, and so color is not what is most important here. I am now thinking of doing a mother-son line breeding to see if maybe there is something going on with a gene expressing co-dominance. Hmm? 

I wish there were a place to send a DNA sample to and just get their genotype! They have this for horses and cats but not rabbits .


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