Rabbit color genetics is really hard to understand, especially when you are nine. My mom says it's not that bad. She's nuts.
Anyway, both of Cookie's parents are steel, one lilac steel and one a broken chocolate steel. The genotype for both of them is EsE. Es (steel gene) is dominant to E. But! If you have two Es genes, then sometimes the steel phenotype disappears, and the rabbit appears to be EE. We believe this is what happened with Cookie, who is very clearly a broken chocolate. A most adorable broken chocolate.
What this means is that all of Cookie's offspring will be steel. In this case, when bred with Snowball, chocolate or lilac steel. Every single one.
So all the chocolate and lilac kits are chocolate and lilac steel, and all the broken chocolate and broken lilac are broken chocolate steel and broken lilac steel. Except that the brokens aren't looking very steel-like.
We are so confused.
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| Self chocolate (left) and chocolate steel (right) |
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