# Strange color Kits



## Lizzielou118 (Sep 13, 2012)

I have a flemish doe who is on her 5 litter. She has always had brown or broken white kits. This newest litter is all different shades of grey!!!!! (the buck is the same buck we always use broken white) Beautiful babies, they are almost 3 wks old know and I just dont understand where the color came from, has this ever happend to anyone?


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## Bunnylady (Sep 13, 2012)

I had a REW Holland Lop doe that I bred to a Smoke Pearl buck. The first 2 or 3 times I bred them, all of the kits were either Smoke Pearls or REW's. Then, in the next litter, I had a Broken Smoke Pearl. It surprised me so much, I at first wondered if perhaps I had used a different buck. Then I remembered - the REW's sire was a broken, so she had obviously gotten the broken gene from him. I just couldn't see it, because she was a REW. (BTW, there is no such thing as a "broken white" - perhaps a picture would help us help you figure out what color your buck is)

There are several different genes that are involved in rabbit coat color, the effects of all of them together is what makes a rabbit the color that you see. When you see the color calculators, they may say  25% this and 50% that, but those are the odds, not the actual numbers. It doesn't mean that, out of a litter of, say, 8 kits, that 2 will be one color, 4 another, and so on. Those ratios mean that if you were to do that cross enough times to get 1000 babies from it, about 250 would be the one color, 500 another - it's all about the size of your sample group. In a group as small as one litter, you could get all of the babies the same color, and that would still be quite normal. There could even be one color that you knew was possible from those two parents, that you never saw during the entire reproductive life of the pair, and that would still be normal.

In the case of your rabbits, the answer to "where did that color come from?" is really pretty simple. It came from both of your rabbits, it's just that this time the genes came together in some combinations that you hadn't seen before.  In breeds that can come in many colors (like the Flemish) rabbits often carry recessive genes that code for other colors that that particular rabbit may not be (an Agouti-patterned animal may carry but not express the gene for self, for example). If bred to an animal that also carries the same recessive genes, you can get babies that are completely different colors from the parents.


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## Lizzielou118 (Sep 17, 2012)

Thanks for the info! It just amazes me because that have always been kits of basically the same colors. I will post a few pics of the Doe, Buck & Kits as soon as I figure out how. BT, what do you call the color (white with spots or stripes of blk&brown)?


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## Lizzielou118 (Sep 17, 2012)

Ugh I cant upload photos


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## Bunnylady (Sep 17, 2012)

A rabbit with the broken pattern has white on its body, and color in specific areas. The exact amount and placement of the color varies, but Brokens generally have color on the ears, around the eyes, on the nose, and some color on the body. The following 3 pictures are of broken patterned rabbits. The first is a Broken Black Mini Rex. She has what is sometimes called a spotted pattern, in that the colored areas (black, in her case) are just spots on her body. The second picture is of a Broken Tort Holland Lop. You can see that she has color in the same areas as the Broken Black, just a bit more of it. The Holland's pattern is referred to as the blanket pattern, because she has enough color on her body that it resembles a blanket draped across her back. The last picture is of a Broken Red Mini Rex. This little guy has what is referred to as the "booted" pattern. He has so much color in the colored areas, it all runs together, and he only has white on his feet, chest, belly, and a little bit on his face.



















This last picture is of a Black Magpie Harlequin. The Harlequin pattern is very different from the Broken pattern. Harlies have dark colored areas and white areas (or in the case of Japanese Harlequins, dark areas and orange areas) but they are usually more evenly distributed on the rabbit's coat. They often appear as large patches and stripes or bands of color. Several breeds of rabbit come in the harlequin pattern, but in the breed called the Harlequin, the best rabbits have large areas that give the rabbit almost the appearance of a checkerboard.


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