Chinchilla genetics

[lilangelhotots]

Alright, I'm curious, what do you cross to get the chinchilla color? Let's say I had a chin buck, could I cross to a black or blue doe and get chin babies? Or would it have to be two chinchillas? I'm just wondering how chins came about in the Netherland Dwarfs and other breeds with this variety.

 

[pamnock]

Chinchillas are agouti "A" which gives the banding to the coat and chinchilla "cchd" which removes all red pigment from the coat.

The chinchilla mutation was originally carried by the wild european rabbit that our domestic rabbits originated from. The chin mutation was discovered in domestic rabbits in the early 1900's thorugh inbreeding. Most breeds probably introduced the chinchilla color through the chinchilla breed itself. In developing new breeds now, many small breeds use the Netherland Dwarf or Mini Rex to introduce chin to their gene pool. Larger breeds can use the Satin or Chin breeds as well as the Flemish.

It's best to breed chin to chin if you want to get chins. Mixing with other colors may also give you poor chin color.

If you cross to black or blue, you'd most likely get chestnut offspring because the "A" agouti is dominant, but the chin "cchd" is recessive.



Pam

 

[polly]

You could cross to a black or a blue but it wouldn't help the banding you see in ther fur. The only time we do this over here is to a black fox (no tan like an otter has only black and off white) but that is very seldom and only if you need to improve the colour. But mainly you want to breed chin to chin. You can sometimes get an occasional squirrel coming through which is the dilute of chin and is blue and white as opposed to the chins black and white.

over here the chestnut agouti has created many of the dwarf colours over here and all the agouti patterns with the exception of chin and squirrel.

 

[BlueCamasRabbitry]

I crossed a chinchilla with a blue and got 3 chinchillas (at least that's what we think ) and 1 REW.

Emily