Baby Buns!

a day early!

Olivia is early! Usually one has to wait and wait until the baby buns show up. However, Olivia not only has her babies, but she had them a day early!

At this age (one day or less), it's a little difficult to accurately determine the final color of baby bunnies. Well, let's see, there's a gray one, two pinkish beige ones and three pink ones. So, that is gonna be what when they're grown up?

The gray one will most likely be black. If the ear tips were pinkish instead of gray, it would become an agouti colored bun as an adult. But, it can't be agouti since neither of the parents are agouti. Plus those ears are gray, not pink, so this will be a black bunny when it grows up. "Black" in angoras is actually a kind of gray since there's only so much color for each hair. As the hair gets longer, the color spreads along with the hair and dilutes from black to gray.

The two pinkish beige ones will most likely become either tortoiseshell or chocolate when they're adults. I'm thinking perhaps tortoiseshell since they are more beige than brown. The chocolate bunnies usually start out a bit darker, I think. To complicate this sort of thing, there's degrees of color so a light chocolate will be similar to a darkish tort.

The remaining three pink ones will, more than likely and we hope, become albino white ones when they become adult. Although, usually, albinos seem a bit more pink when born, they could possibly be tort?

Statistically speaking, the odds are against the three pink ones being REW. In order to get an albino bunny, each parent has to give an albino gene. It takes two recessive albino genes before we see a Ruby Eyed White (REW) rabbit. Since neither parent is albino, IF they have the albino gene, they'd only have one. So IF they have it, there's a 50% chance they will give that gene to the babies. In order for the babies to be white, EACH parent would have to give the gene, so that lowers the odds even further. To have half the litter be REW when neither parent is REW is not statistically likely. Since Caesar is tortoiseshell, it's much more likely that the three pink ones will be torts instead of REW. However, if they are tort, then what are the pinkish beige ones? Well, in a few more days, they will show more color so then we will know.

In the meantime, the other baby bunnies are growing bigger and getting curious about people pointing cameras at them.

"Spot" is easy to tell. She (I think it's a 'she') is the one with the Vienna mark (white dot) on her nose and face. There's also 'Speck' who had a much smaller white stripe on his/her nose.

The Ruby Eyed White one will be staying here since we're desparately short on white fiber for our Hula Bunny yarn. Not quite sure where Speck and the other all black one will be going or if they will stay here or not. They are only five weeks old this week, so they're still at least three weeks too young to go anywhere. Probably more like four weeks too young since it's better for them to go to new homes when they are sturdier. Although this litter is pretty sturdy already. Possibly because there's only four of them and Jessie is a good mum bun.