Two silver fox....

[TIPPY THE HIPPY]

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!

 

[Bunnylady]

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.

 

[TIPPY THE HIPPY]

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.

 

[Bunnylady]

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?

 

[TIPPY THE HIPPY]

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?

 

[Bunnylady]

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.

 

[JakeM]

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.

 

[TIPPY THE HIPPY]

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.

 

[Bunnylady]

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).

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.