Toronto English Angoras

This post is Lesson 4 in our   Rabbit Genetics Illustrated   series.  Wild, tanned, and selfish could easily describe a good number of people. At this time, you can picture who ever you would like who fits that description if that's what it will take for you to remember what lurks here. However we are talking about rabbits. The A Locus is home to not two but three possible coat patterns. They are Agouti (some times referred to as the wild rabbit coat), Tan, and Self.  Let's start with the Self rabbits since that is what we have been using in all of our examples so far. A Self rabbit is covered from the tip of it's ears to the tip of it's toes in one single solid colour. It can be any of our four primary colours: Black, Blue, Chocolate, or Lilac. There should be no spots, no shading, no pattern of any sort imposed over this colour. All you see is that colour.  The Tan gene is responsible for giving us the iconic look of the Otter pattern.  The Tan gene spice...

This post is Lesson 3 in our   Rabbit Genetics Illustrated   series.  The D Locus has only one question on it's mind. How do you like your Vodka? Do you drink it straight, or do you mix it with water? That's because this D stands for Dilution.  The D Locus is home of the Dilution gene. It dictates if you are going to get your rabbit colour straight up at full strength, or if you are going to get a diluted version.  As we learned in the previous lesson, all rabbits can be described as being either Black based or Chocolate based. The Dilution gene transforms those two options into four. The Dilution gene changes Black based rabbits into Blue based rabbits, and Chocolate based rabbits into Lilac based rabbits. This interaction between these two genes gives us what you can think of as the four primary colours that all rabbit colours are based on and often named after. They are Black, Blue, Chocolate, and Lilac.  Both Blue and Lilac appear as different shades of...

This post is Lesson 2 in our Rabbit Genetics Illustrated series.  Rabbit colours work similarly to the way your printer can print many different colours by mixing the ink from only four ink cartridges (Black, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta).  Different genes control how colour pigments are expressed, diluted, dispersed within each individual hair or the entire coat, or if they are expressed at all, and that is what gives us the many different colours and patterns. However at the end of the day, all rabbits out there, regardless of what they actually look like, are based in either Black or Brown.  Black or Brown is noted on the "B" portion of our recipe. Each block of letters is called a Locus, and hence we refer to this position as the B Locus. Black is noted with a capital "B" while Brown is noted with a lower case "b". In rabbits, we commonly refer to Brown as Chocolate. Now that you understand that the little "b" stands for Brown, moving forward w...

This post is Lesson 1 in our  Rabbit Genetics Illustrated  series.  The recipe for a rabbit's colour is marked by a string of letters, each representing a specific ingredient. The letters will always range alphabetically and in pairs from A to E. That is the standard recipe.  AA BB CC DD EE Every rabbit inherits half of each pair from their mom and half of each pair from their dad. In the example above, the rabbit received A B C D E from mom and they received A B C D E from their dad. On occasion, you may see additional letters added after the last position of EE. Those generally represent additional patterns or qualities which are involved. They are noted if they are important to note for that rabbit, but in general are omitted if they do not apply. More on those later. The first 5 spots from AA to EE are never omitted, though they may be marked as blank if they are unknown.  In some cases, you may not be able to identify one or more of the ingredients in a rab...