Rabbit Web Discussion Board

I had someone ask this question and didn\'t know what to tell them so I thought I\'d ask you all.
What would be the best color combination a fawn to fawn?fawn to red? Or what? I know the fawn is a dilute of red, is this right? But wouldn\'t breeding to red diminish the color quality? Oh the breed is Mini Rex. I know the fawn color isn\'t showable, but using it in a breeding program, in your opinion, what would be the best match?

We have a broken fawn (Mini Rex) and she has produced a beautiful broken opal being bred to a solid castor. We\'ve also bred her to a broken black and had a harlequin, blue-fawn tri, blue, broken castor & broken black. So the fawn can produce showable colors. I wouldn\'t breed to a fawn because then you\'d get all fawn and I\'m not sure what the point of that would be. I guess it would also depend on what color the person was wanting to produce.

A true Fawn (a dilute of Red) can be bred to a Red with no problem. You can expect kits to be Red (possibly Castor depending on what is in the background of the parents) or more Fawns if the Red carries the dilute gene.

Contrary to what some folks believe, breeding a dilute (Fawn) to an intense color (Red) will not wash out the Red color. You have either all color diluted or no color diluted - nothing in between. Reds that are washed out are so because of modifiers present in that particular line. It is not related to the gene for dilute color.

So I say go for it (if the type and fur of the buck and doe are decent).

Charlcie Gill
Zodiac Rabbitry
Astoria, OR
http://www.zodiacsatins.com