Friday, October 14, 2005
Your Rabbits Are Black Or Chocolate
Every rabbit you have is either black or chocolate. That is, it belongs to either a black family of colors or a chocolate family of colors. There are only two choices and it's one or the other.
When I first started out in rabbits, colors seemed to be pretty random and unrelated. I learned "tort" early on. One of our first rabbits just happened to be a tort. You are probably saying that's a given. But since we bought our first rabbits from Mary Justice, the queen of color, getting a tort was more the exception than the rule there.
[I had never seen a tort rabbit before getting into Hollands. We named our first one Nutmeg. When we went to our first show, one of my younger children exclaimed, "Look, Mom, a whole tray of Nutmegs!"]
But I also got from Mary a broken seal silver marten, a sable point otter (also called sable point marten), a blue-eyed white (BEW) and a Siamese sable in the very first group of rabbits. The BEW and Siamese sable were Netherland dwarfs, so I guess we actually got those from Garrett. They didn't stay long, but long enough to get a litter. In any case, my interest in color was sparked from the absolute beginning.
I bought the genetics portion to Breeders' Assistant, which is the software I use. My kids and I loved to perform trial breedings on the software to see what we might get. After "playing" with the software for hours, having a great time, patterns started to emerge. After entering a few dozen rabbits into the database, including their genotype information, I started to understand a few things about rabbit genetics. Then it was time to hit the books.
I learned even more when I wrote the rabbit genetics section to my website. And final touch to help me bring it all together was figuring out how to show all of the different combinations of the A, B, C, D, and E genes (not including Es and Ej) on one chart. That's when all of the relationships among the colors finally clicked in my head.
One of the stumbling blocks to learning the colors is the common names that are used. Madagascar, Isabella, Siamese sable, smoke pearl, and so forth, are not as descriptive as black tortoiseshell (note that even the light colored torts are actually black tortoiseshell), blue tortoiseshell, black sable, and blue sable. Notice how the relationships are so clear with the latter names than the former - and those are the same four colors in the same order.
So back to the black and chocolate. Black colors cover the vast majority of the Hollands being shown today: tort (ever wondered why I use the full term "black tortoiseshell"?), sable point, orange, chinchilla, blue, and so forth. Yes, blue rabbits are black, too. At least on the black-chocolate gene question. For every color in the black family, you can add the word "blue" or "black" to more fully describe the color.
For every black color, there is a corresponding chocolate color. And lilacs, the dilutes of the chocolates, are chocolates, too, in terms of their bb genes. Check out the chart of 144 rabbit coat colors. You will see that the first line in each couple contains a row of black family colors and the second line in each pair shows the corresponding chocolate family colors.
The chocolate family of Hollands is not as well developed as torts or even the rest of the black family of colors. It's nice to know that, if I should ever get my torts where I want them, there are many other black family colors to work on. And if I am ever satisfied with them, I can start all over again in chocolates.
Laurie Stroupe
The Nature Trail Rabbitry
"Holland Lops Of Distinction"
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/blog/BLOG.html ¶ 9:57 AM
When I first started out in rabbits, colors seemed to be pretty random and unrelated. I learned "tort" early on. One of our first rabbits just happened to be a tort. You are probably saying that's a given. But since we bought our first rabbits from Mary Justice, the queen of color, getting a tort was more the exception than the rule there.
[I had never seen a tort rabbit before getting into Hollands. We named our first one Nutmeg. When we went to our first show, one of my younger children exclaimed, "Look, Mom, a whole tray of Nutmegs!"]
But I also got from Mary a broken seal silver marten, a sable point otter (also called sable point marten), a blue-eyed white (BEW) and a Siamese sable in the very first group of rabbits. The BEW and Siamese sable were Netherland dwarfs, so I guess we actually got those from Garrett. They didn't stay long, but long enough to get a litter. In any case, my interest in color was sparked from the absolute beginning.
I bought the genetics portion to Breeders' Assistant, which is the software I use. My kids and I loved to perform trial breedings on the software to see what we might get. After "playing" with the software for hours, having a great time, patterns started to emerge. After entering a few dozen rabbits into the database, including their genotype information, I started to understand a few things about rabbit genetics. Then it was time to hit the books.
I learned even more when I wrote the rabbit genetics section to my website. And final touch to help me bring it all together was figuring out how to show all of the different combinations of the A, B, C, D, and E genes (not including Es and Ej) on one chart. That's when all of the relationships among the colors finally clicked in my head.
One of the stumbling blocks to learning the colors is the common names that are used. Madagascar, Isabella, Siamese sable, smoke pearl, and so forth, are not as descriptive as black tortoiseshell (note that even the light colored torts are actually black tortoiseshell), blue tortoiseshell, black sable, and blue sable. Notice how the relationships are so clear with the latter names than the former - and those are the same four colors in the same order.
So back to the black and chocolate. Black colors cover the vast majority of the Hollands being shown today: tort (ever wondered why I use the full term "black tortoiseshell"?), sable point, orange, chinchilla, blue, and so forth. Yes, blue rabbits are black, too. At least on the black-chocolate gene question. For every color in the black family, you can add the word "blue" or "black" to more fully describe the color.
For every black color, there is a corresponding chocolate color. And lilacs, the dilutes of the chocolates, are chocolates, too, in terms of their bb genes. Check out the chart of 144 rabbit coat colors. You will see that the first line in each couple contains a row of black family colors and the second line in each pair shows the corresponding chocolate family colors.
The chocolate family of Hollands is not as well developed as torts or even the rest of the black family of colors. It's nice to know that, if I should ever get my torts where I want them, there are many other black family colors to work on. And if I am ever satisfied with them, I can start all over again in chocolates.
Laurie Stroupe
The Nature Trail Rabbitry
"Holland Lops Of Distinction"
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/
http://www.thenaturetrail.com/blog/BLOG.html ¶ 9:57 AM
