Expert: Patricia Hernandez - 11/8/2009

Question
I am starting to breed mini lops and am wanting to breed a chinchilla or squirrel doe with a chocolate buck. Do you think this will produce the proper coloured kits or will the chocolate result in a badly coloured chinchilla kit. What colours can I breed with chinchilla's and squirrels? or what similar colours could i breed with my choc buck?
Thanks

Answer
Hi Emma. If you breed your black agouti (chinchilla) or blue agouti (squirrel) does to a chocolate buck you will get chestnuts and opals. You may get chocolate agouti ( I think they call these Amber in Mini-Rex.) I don't think they are a recognized color of Mini Lops yet and I don't have my Standard of Perfection in front of me at the moment. and lilac agouti ( lynx )if you does carry chocolate as a recessive. You may get squirrel if the buck carries the dilute allele as well as the chin or REW allele. Of course if your does carry the self allele you can get black, and blue and if the does carry chocolate you can get chocolate and lilac. If either of your does are hiding the tan allele you may get Silver Martens or otters. If both the buck and doe carries the ruby eyed white gene you could get some of them. If both buck and doe carry the non extension allele you could get torts or more likely fawn (cream) and orange. Much of it depends on what you don't see. If you have pedigrees on all of these animals and you could let me know about the parents and grandparents I could be a little more precise I think. You will have a lot of colors to choose from non the less. :o) If you want to keep your lines to chinchilla and squirrel use a black buck who had blue in his back ground. If he has silver martens that would be ok to but you will eventually have to weed out the tans if you don't want them. Do not use any animal that has shaded in the back qround, you will get shaded chins and I can tell you first hand they are hard to breed out. You have to breed everything to REW's then to get rid of it and only keep the babies that don't show the shading. I want to breed chins and squirrels too, and just located the proper gene in ONE of my animals!!!!) I didn't know I had it at all. If you want to send me more info I can weed things out a bit more. :o}  Pat