| Tricolor Dutch : How to do it yourself. by Meg Kuczynski, Sociable Rabbitry Back in 1995, we were already powerful in Dutch. We took BOB at four consecutive local shows, and took showmanship with the breed. I at that time bred all the colors, including imported yellows and chocolate-steels. Online, I had seen photos of tricolor Dutch. Since I bred tricolor mini rex exclusively for almost a decade and showed for seven years, I was intrigued. Importing tricolor Dutch was impossible : the cost was enormous, not of the shipping, but of worthy animals. When I got started in tricolor mini rex, I paid good money for my original stock, but they were excellent. I even saw a tricolor Dutch for $900, and it looked like a Himalayan rabbit with lucky Dudu genes. Since I was already pretty good with genetics, I decided to make my "own" tricolor. It will take a year to create a show worth tricolor, and another year to make a full pedigree. We started with as follows (and you will need a basic knowledge of genetics to understand this.) a black Dutch doe, [aaBbCCDDEE] who was a nice brood doe with wide markings. a tortoise Dutch buck [aaBBCCDDee] who was typey. a Japanese-black harlequin buck [_aBBCCDDejej] which was easy to find as we bred harlequins at this time. You can start with any Japanese, but I do not recommend magpies. The c(chd) modifiers will ruin any possible Dutch. Three animals, ready to create Dutch. So we bred the black Dutch doe and the harlequin buck. We got a litter of 7, 4 does, 3 bucks. All were badly mismarked Dutch, but that was to be expected. All the babies in the litter were [aaB_CCDDEej]. You will either get all black mismarks in your crossing, or all brown grays, depending if your harlequin was holding agouti genes or self genes. Our buck was holding self genes. Now, these guys weren't Dutch. A harlequin rabbit is DuDu in terms of the Dutch marking gene, and the actual Dutch rabbit was dudu. So all these babies were Dudu - which equaled mostly black rabbits with white belts, snips of blaze, and a white foot or so. Right now we weren't looking at toenails, type, etc. You need to get this genotype in your line breeding. We raised the does up, (sell the bucks for pets , we did) until breeding age. We then bred these does [aaB_CCDDEej] to our tort buck. This yielded us with: 25% black mismarks 25% black well marked (show quality) 25% tricolor mismarks 25% tricolor well marked. Yes! We had the tricolor! They were not balanced, and brindled, but there they were. Now, HOW did we do this? I feel this table shows it best: That tort buck was holding [aaBbCCDDee dudu] and the babies were holding [aaB_CCDDEej Dudu]. Just looking at the Dutch marking genes, we can see that half of the litter will be carrying "dudu" and the other half will be carrying "Dudu". So 50% will be Dutch, and 50% will be mixes. Now, as for color, the E will mix with the e from the tort to form a self colored animal. But that ej is DOMINANT to the "e" from the tortoise. So the harlequin poked through. Granted, they weren't fantastic, but they were the genes. Here, we kept all the tricolors, including the mismarks. The tricolor Dutch that were carrying "dudu", we kept and bred to each other. The mismarks, we bred to full "dudu" torts. You can grow from there. Caution: There will be problems along the way. The tort influence will bring some tort shading on the harlequin, which is a DQ by the proposed standards. You will have to selectively breed this out. Throwing in a black Dutch every so often will not produce tricolors effectively, but WILL clean up the tortoise. Breed a tricolor to the black, and breed the offspring back to the tricolor. As for the evenness of markings, as a tricolor and harlequin breeder, just pray. It really is luck of the draw. I feel that self tricolors tend to have more of the orange than of the black, and agouti tricolors tend to have more black than orange. Note: Granted, these tricolors can come in blue/fawn, choc/gold, lilac/fawn, and the newly found sable/black. You can play with the dilutes, but I find it hard to get a decent blue fawn tricolor Dutch. Stick with one variety, and once you have at least 4 animals with the genes {??B_CCD_ej_} then you can start fooling around. If you want to jump start the program, find someone who is selling 'tricolor Dutch gene holders'. We sell those constantly to those who want to start the tricolor Dutch. We are NOT official sponsors of the variety, but we will if necessary to promote it's success. I hope this helps all you aspiring breeders out there. Bless thy nest boxes! ---------------------------------- (C) 2000, by M. Kuczynski and Sociable Rabbitry www.sociablerabbitry.com Permission to distribute as long as this footer remains with the text. ---------------------------------- |
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