TARAX STUD RABBITRY
Tarax Stud Project 1 The Lutino
One thing about Rabbit breeding that has fascinated us both (well Kim mainly lol) is the colour genetics side of rabbit breeding.
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The colour genetics involved in rabbit breeding had Kim in particular wondering why a caster rex and a black steel could produce 6 different colours in a litter of rabbits (they were 2 pets from before we got into showing) Kim loves puzzles, which started us on a journey of discovery lol.
Now you would think with a 6 year gap from rabbits we would of had enough of new breeds and colours lol.....oh no (grin) we have at the moment 3 projects on the go and this is the first one.
The Lutino
The Lutino has been around for a few years surprisingly, the history of them dates back to 1985 where a Danish breeder came across the colour in a litter of Harlequin Netherland Dwarfs. Since then they have crept across parts of Scandinavia into Holland, here in the UK and as far as the US with Bob Whitman exporting some over around 2005.
To try and explain the colour in layman's terms is that the gene that causes the pink/red eye in coloured rabbits somehow strips the black from the coat colour...so an agouti rabbit goes a pinkish colour with a bluish hue....a black self goes a dove grey and so on.
For the Lutino colour as can be seen in the first picture it is a yellowish orange colour with a pink to blood red eye, a second colour called the shadow also appeared as can be seen in the second and 4th photo. They are very striking and much of the genetic studies and explanations can be found on any search engine. (Check Links page)
Anyway having seen a picture of one of these many years back, i knew it was something i would of liked to pursue, yet it was not until 2013 when i saw some at a local show that i thought owning one might actually happen :) we wondered if by now, there were lops with this genetic abnormality and if so...who might have them. Unfortunetly there were none in the UK, though we heard there was possibly a lop breeder in Denmark who had them.
We then wondered about using the Lutino ND as part of a programme of our own to start up...and with the help of a fellow breeder friend of ours (Darren Every) a pair of Lutino's found there way to our stud....followed a few months later with another couple and a carrier (agouti in pic 2).
At the moment we have not got on to stage 2 to start getting some F1's mainly because out of the blue we were contacted by the lop breeder in Denmark so may...have something coming to us in the New Year though we will wait and see :) if by that time nothing happens (once the buck in pic 3 decides to realise what his main purpose in life is...) we will start the F1's so watch this space :)
Update 20/1/14 We have Lutino lops in the shed!! :) a lovely lady named Marianne has helped us get our first Lutino lops we will put photos up once they have settled in ok.
Update 22/2/14 Ok here are our new additions from Denmark 2 lutino bucks, a shadow doe and a black self carrying the pp gene :) we are so happy with them and its obvious the hard work that has gone into them from the breeders Marrianne and Cherie. Type is not bad actually its just the head and ear that needs to be worked on to suit the UK Mini Lop but its going to be great working towards that goal :) watch this space....
12/05/2014 These are our latest additions to the Lutino programme :) Two of our smaller chocolate tort does were mated up to the two Lutino bucks producing 5 sooty fawns between the two litters.
23/7/14 we are now at a slightly later stage in our programme as you can see with the surrounding pic's, the sooty's above are from our own choc tort does to Lutino bucks...the pics are a few weeks ago but you can see the shape and head already make a difference :)
The youngster to the left is a lutino...our first but from Danish parents at this stage though their shape and type is really very good which is down to our friends Marianne and her daughter Cherie. We have noticed as they get older (6 weeks onwards) the ears grow slightly longer and the head has a more dwarf lop look as can be seen with the agouti above :) but size wise they are staying easily within weight.
22/09/14 Such a sad bit of news with our Lutino's lately, we lost 2 mums..our black self lutino carrier and her litter :( out of the sooty fawns above only one buck has survived from bloat. Which luckily as you can see by the photo on the right has turned out to be a very nice boy :) this is Neptune at just touching 5 months...we can only hope that there will be some nice typey F1 does for him to go to now :)
We were starting to panic a little as it left us with just one shadow doe and no carriers....but she had a litter of 3 doe's (2 x sooty fawns and 1 x black self) so we seem to be ok now...what is going to help even more is the fact we have another Lutino buck and doe coming over from Marianne and arrive in the UK on the 23rd of this month :)
16/10/2014 Well after a couple of months being looked after by various good friends we can finally say hello to our two new additions to the Rabbitry a lovely Lutino doe who we have called Asakku and a stunning Lutino buck who we have named Azazel. Both have settled in quite well with no problems :) the buck we will be taking out to shows from November to show as an unstandardised lop as Kim has put in an application to make the Lutino Miniature Lop a standardised colour. If accepted and we receive the certificate we hope to get a few UK Mini lop breeders on board :) but we will see the reaction first and go from there (we have two breeders interested as of today)
Some thing we have had to take into account when putting a proposal forward for the Lutino miniature lop is making the wording suit the rabbit especially as we have had to use the only standard that is available for us to use, and that is the Nordic standard. Now we had not thought this may turn out to be a problem...that was until we had a translation done....as there are two of them...one is Swedish and the other is Dutch. The wording is exactly the same except the Swedish translation says 'Top coat is reddish yellow' and the Dutch says 'light yellow to orange'. We took into account the coat length of Mini lops compared to Netherland Dwarfs, we also took into account that orange rabbits have white belly's not cream....so for now we have used the Swedish translation of the Nordic standard as for us it describes our lops perfectly. We do need to point out that this project is 'a work in progress' so can be fine tuned to suit the UK if and when they are excepted :)
2/11/14 OK decided to take our Lutino Lops out so that people can get to see them :) we took Azazel and Baal out with Azazel winning out of 3 in the unstandardised class :) lots of interest in the colour especially with the red eyes.
14/1/15 'Tarax stud is pleased to announce the arrival of a new Lutino colour into its Rabbitry The Dove (thank you Marianne and Cherie)...genetically its a black self but with the lutino gene stripping the colour it comes out almost lilac in colour :)
The best way you can see the difference between the dove and our other 2 colours is to show them side by side...the 2nd photo is with the lutino so you can see the vibrant orange colour, whilst the 3rd photo is with the shadow (pic does not give it justice here but has a slightly blueish tinge to the orange coat)
4/4/15 Latest news in the shed 2 x F1 torts mated up only one gave birth...we have 3 in the nest one is a tort but the other 2 maybe Shadows....will give it a few days and then wait for their eyes to open :) fingers crossed.
At the same time one of our black does mated to our Lutino Dove has 4 in the nest...3 blacks and a tort :)
28/4/15 Meet our F1 doe (below) a stunning little Orange whose parents were a very nice type Mini Lop Orange buck to our Lutino doe....as you can see the colour is quite intense which shows mating orange only to lutino produces a better colour
15/6/15 Okay we still do not have F2's yet although 4 of our F1's have been mated up and are hopefully all due the end of this month :) We do have some more F1 litters though so hopefully some flyers in there that will help with the 3 colour programes.
15/6/15 The two photos above are from two litters the orange is from an orange mini lop buck to Lutino doe, whilst the agouti's which are actually steels are from our Lutino Dove doe to a super steel buck :)
15/6/15 The two photos above show a better close up of the little F1 orange doe whilst the photo to the right shows 2 of a litter of 3 blacks from our Lutino Dove doe who was mated to our blue self Mini Lop buck
15/6/15 Now these 2 photos are of the Lutino doe with a repeat mating to our Orange Mini Lop buck, this time she produced a black tort and 2 x oranges :)
15/6/15 In the 5 photos above we have our Lutino Shadow doe who was mated to our agouti mini lop buck, she had 5 kits :) 1 x black, 1 x black tort, 1 x orange and 2 x agoutis so really pleased with this particular mating especially if the agouti's turn out to be doe's :)
15/6/15 Lastly we would like to show you Blue Rock Rabbitries photos of their F1 kits born from a lutino doe Florentina to one of their own Orange Mini lop bucks producing 2 lovely black torts and two lovely oranges...not bad for a first time :)
18/07/15 Exciting news in the shed...we had mated up 4 of our F1 does but unfortunetly only 2 litters survived :( 1 went in with another doe and has turned out to be a lilac tort lol...the other litter which was an F1 mated to a full lutino dove has produced 1 lutino and 2 doves :) the doves have caused us the biggest headache as never having bred the colour before we were not sure of what we had....but even at 2 weeks in natural light considering they are black selfs...you can see why we had a problem identifying the colour...as here they have a chocolate hue to the coat...
Our other exciting news is that finally we recieved confirmation that we can go ahead with developing the Lutino colour in the UK as our certificate turned up at last :) No news on the certificate for the Shadow yet but at least its a start :)
15/08/15 Quick update on our latest lutino litter :) as you can see the colours have a subtle change depending on the light and as we now know coat length.... the two Doves have a bluish lilac look to them but its the litter sister on the far right that has had us confused for a while as when she was first born we thought she was a true lutino but the matings said other wise...in fact we ended up thinking we had used the wrong rabbit lol :) but now with the shadings and her colour we are certain she is a Dove tort which has been a pleasant suprise for us. Anyway other news is a little sad as our only Lutino buck Azazel died for no apparent reason which has left us with only one lutino doe so we will be doing an F1 mating to her to try and ensure we have lutinos in the litter for next month, we will keep everyone updated obviously :)
OK very quickly (and not a good photo as they never stop moving) our 2 Lutino Dove doe's at nearly 6 months old
31/3/16 Small update with where we are with the matings and what has popped out :)
Lutino doe to f1 black tort produced a 1 x black tort and a 1 x lutino
Lutino dove to f1 black produced 2 x black torts and (we think) 2 x lutino dove torts
F1 black tort doe to f1 agouti 3 x agoutis and 1 x lutino shadow
F1 orange doe to f1 agouti produced 3 x agouti's
Lutino shadow to f1 agouti produced 3 x agouti and 1 x lutino shadow
F1 black tort to f1 black self produced 2 x black torts and 1 x blue self
Lutino dove doe to f1 black self produced 2 x black selfs and 2 x lutino doves
unfortunetly the 2 x f1 black self doe's, the other lutino dove doe, the lutino black tort and the f1 choc tort all missed but at least we have lutino's (phew) evn if only 7 out of 24 lol :) we will be remating this week so shall see if we can add to the lutino colours now in the rabbitry. Below is our Shadow kit born from Agret our Lutino shadow doe at 4 weeks :) as soon as i can we will add photo's of the other kits :)
11/04/16 Below are 2 of our Lutino Doves born to a F2 Black self Buck to a F2 Lutino Dove Doe they are almost 3 weeks here and share a nest wit 2 black selfs :)
19/06/16 Quick catch up with the lutino's now :) the sister of the Dove doe above has had a litter (her 1st) she was mated back to our original Dove buck from Marianne and had 5 kits...4 Doves and a dove tort :)
The Dove tort that was a sister to the 2 Dove does we just mentioned had a test mate done with one of our lilac torts and produced 2 gorgeous choc torts and a black tort :)
Agret our Shadow doe who was mated tour F1 agouti buck looks to of produced a dove and 4 shadows (whoop) :) lastly we did a test mate (lilac tort) to Cimjes our Original Dove and she has produced all selfs...3 blacks and what looks to be 2 lilac's?
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Our other bit of news is only that we have some breeders form Europe aquiring some of our stock to help with their own projects :) looking foward to meeting them over next couple of months. Photos when time arrives :)
1/10/16 Just a couple of catch up photos and some info to add :)
Well the stock levels are rising quite a bit but we are still looking for that elusive UK type mini lop in any of the 3 Lutino colours we have in the shed :( In the Lutino's we have 1 young buck who type wise is promising but still needs a better head and ear carriage...in the shadows we have 4 youngsters at the moment 2 of which look promising the doe below is Alice and is 8 months old her colour is typical shadow and has the bluish tinge to the coat :) we are really looking foward to see what she produces.
The next photos are of our Doves and the Dove Tort....these are now 4 months old and as you can see have the typical grey colour that we have been producing....this has caused a couple of breeders to question their own stock as ours seem to be darker than theirs? they describe the colour of their own doves as 'custard cream' ....Kim and 2 other breeders (Divina & Sue) believe this is the rufus gene causing the problems? and considering our own stock has rufus in the lines it makes sense as our 2 original Doves were custard cream and yet subsequent stock is a lot darker...(dont you just love colour genetics lol) the 3rd photo below is one of the lighter Doves which we will work with to see if our thoughts about the rufus gene is true...so watch this space :)
22/10/16 just a little bit of news as it was the London Championships earlier this month and we entered one of our boys as a few people were asking about the breed...he was the only lop entered but he did get 3rd best unstanstardised rabbit out of 12 which was a bonus :)...we still have a way to go yet especially with head shape and ear but its getting there :)
31/01/17 Okay latest update where we are...and we have a few problems that have cropped up (well depending on how you look at it I suppose) :( the 1st is we have had peanuts... which means the dwarfing gene has crossed over into our Scandinavian lines... this verifies the mini lop shape is coming about but it doesn't make it easy they have now popped up in 2 litters so far :( The second problem which we are not happy with (showing that skull shape is changing) is we have seen teeth are butting in some of our under 6 week olds and we had one older Dove tort (1 year old) which we sent to another breeder show signs of malocclusion :( so far this is a dove/shadow cross over that this has been noticed in....none of the other lines have or are giving any indication there are problems but this does show that when playing with genetics you have to be very aware that although there are up's there are also downs meaning you have to look or start again in places. On a positive we do seem to be moving slowly forwards with litters and have had some litters over the last few weeks when we are able we will take some more photos.
2/2/2017 Just a quick photo of one of our latest Doves just under 4 weeks old (though it could be Silver lol) It was a Black to Blue self mating (both Lutino carriers) we do have some shadows and possible lutinos in 2 other litters so as soon as they look presentable i will take photos
20/5/2017 Tarax Stud is pleased to announce that we now have 2 other Colour Development Certificates in place for another 2 Lutino colours in the Miniature Lop, namely the Shadow and the Dove...the process now needs 5 breeders interested in promoting each colour before any of them can be presented at one of our major 5 star shows....
13/11/17 Sorry its been a while with updates with the Lutino's but like most projects they just move along with nothing notable sometimes :) We have not done many shows this year what with other commitments but the last 2 shows we went to we did show Lutino's :) The 2 photo's below show our Lutino's ant the 2 day London Championship show held at Peterborough. The Judge in the main show was Bill brake who put up Taraxicums Kieran for Best Unstandardised and was honoured to be placed up in Victory Row.
The next photos below was a local show held at Harlow recently who also supported the East Anglian Lop Circle, they have an unstandardised class which was judged by Mr Eddie Hutchings who this time put up 'Taraxicums Bently' winning a lovely rosette :)
19/02/2018 Well just a little catching up...not that much is going on as it's a little slow in the shed at the moment....so we have decided that due to not as much interest as we thought there would be by other breeders, that the lutino side of breeding in the shed would slow down and allow us to focus on the other 2 lutino colours and try and bring them on a bit further. (Dont worry we still have 7 bucks and 2 doe's at full lutino with another 6 carriers who carry the lutino gene). The Dove seems to have more of a following so this is the colour we are going to push next with :) we have 2 dove bucks but one is getting a little old and finding it hard to mate lol and the other is a little to long in the body for our liking however we have 3 small but very nice dove carrying bucks to use :) on the doe side we have 4 full doves (though one of them has moulted out to what we think is a champagne now....) we also have 2 dove carriers and 2 black self doe's to use. Matings have started so we are hoping for good news this time next month....fingers crossed of course.
12/04/18 Another catch up and after the matings of our Doves most missed but our Silver had 2 live kits which we fostered over one is a blue tort the other is a shadow :) the one Dove that had a litter produced a black, a black tort and a Dove (hooray) :) the other dove carriers are due the end of this month and the 2 Doves that missed are now due next month so again fingers crossed :)
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Before i finish this particular thread i mentioned last time we may have a Champagne? well we took a photo of it this week in the shed and it is under LED lighting...but she is definitely not a Dove lol the pic on the right is her in her hutch so looks Dove...but out on the table you can see the colour change? Davina a lovely fellow breeder showed us her Champagne import Nethie and its a lot lighter?? whether this is coat length again or the rufus gene tormenting us we dont know....either way its another headache lol
08/07/20 Due to Kims long term illness (see blog) all our breeding programmes have been on hold for the last 6 months...the Lutino's are really the only breed we have mated up in April of this year (2 litters all black lol) we will keep everyone updated depending on what happens with our journey :)
There has been a lot of interest in the genetic side of the Lutino and the coat colour variations involved....Kim has been trying to get her head around this as the Lutino gene (like the REW lol) hides colours :) One of the Facebook Lutino sites has put up a file for the codes to help the genetic fans out which we have put on to this page....
Lutino colours
By Mirjam Gille Fält
Lutino Shadow (agouti)
ABCDE pp
ABCDG lulu
Lutino (fawn/orange)
ABCDee pp
AbbCDG lulu
Lutino Dove Otter (black otter)
atBCDE pp
Lutino Silver Otter (blue otter)
atBCdE pp
Lutino Champagne Otter (chocolate otter)
atbbCDE pp
Lutino Dove (black)
aBCDE lulu
aBCdE pp
Lutino Silver (blue)
aBCdE lulu
aBCdE pp
Lutino Champagne (chocolate)
ABccDgg lulu
abbCDE pp
Lutino Lavender (lilac)
abCdE lulu
abCdE pp
Lutino Dove Tort (black tort)
aBCDee pp
Lutino Silver Tort (blue tort)
abCDee pp
Lutino Champagne Tort (chocolate tort)
abCDee pp
Lutino Lavender Tort (lilac tort)
aBCDee pp
Note: the international "p" allel stands for the "p mutation" that causes the pink eyed dilution, whereas the "lulu" description stands for the german code.