I was reading the Himalayan news and there was an article written by Charlotte Ford about the white nail problem. In the article, she called nails "glorified hairs".
Many of our rabbits are dilute colors, and the nails almost always turn pale with age (kind of like hair turning grey?)
If nails are simply "glorified hairs", then maybe you could cull rabbits that keep their colored nails longer. My thought was that if your mothers hair turned grey at a young age, your hair most likely will turn grey at a young age. So, maybe by keeping track of exactly when a dilute rabbits nails turn pale, we can breed dilute rabbits that keep their dark nails longer.
Also, I was thinking about a blue silver marten that we have, she lost a small chunk of hair on her side, and the hair grew back in white, where there hadn't been white hairs before. The white hairs have since been replaced by her normal blue hairs. But what if a dilutes nails are damaged in someway? And that new nail that grows in white--maybe it will be replaced with a dark nail again? Similar to the way the white hairs grew in and then were replaced with the normal color?
This would mean not keeping any bunnies from a dilutes litter (or any dilute bunnies from a colored rabbits litter) until after you've determined at just what point the nails turn white, just in case you have a young rabbit who gets white nails at an early age (at about 1 year or younger).
