Breeding the rare tri-color Mini Lops

Tri-colored Mini Lops are beautiful and interesting (and far less challenging than BEWs, lol). To breed for any color you must know the genetics behind your aims.  Tri-color rabbits are just the broken version of the harlequin coloration.  Harlequin is caused by an E gene called Ej which causes yellow and dark pigments to group into mosaic patterns.  There are four E genes, listed in order of most dominant to least dominant, they are Es, E, Ej, and e.  Each gene does something different to the coat.  Very breifly explained, Es is the steeling gene, E is responsible for the full extention of dark pigments, Ej we have already discussed, and e is the non-extention gene which removes the dark pigments from the majority of the coat.  The most important genes to this discussion are Ej and e.  Colors that are non-extention are red, orange, fawn, cream, all tort, and sable point.  When breeding for tri-colors and harlequins you want to avoid torts and sable points since they will possibly cause "torted" tri-colors and harlequins which are undesirable.  So you are left with the agouti colors red, orange, fawn, and cream.  Also discussed here will be the two types of harlequin, japanese and magpie.  Japanese harlequins have a orange or fawn base color with either black, blue, chocolate, or lilac as their secondary color.  Magpie harlequins have a white base color with a black, blue, chocolate, or lilac secondary color.  you cannot have a magpie tri-color because of the already white base coat.  This white base coat is caused by the sable gene which I won't get into, e-mail me if you want to know more. To start breeding tri-colors you will need to find a Mini Lop who carries the harlequin gene and a suitable mate or mates.  One might ask, what is a suitable mate?  This depends upon your starting Mini Lop.  If you are starting with a japanese harlequin you should breed it to a tri-color or an agouti non-extention broken.  If you are starting with a tri-color it should be bred to a solid, either a japanese harlequin or an agouti non-extention colored lop.  If the only harlequin you can find (or the only one you want) is a magpie harlequin it should be bred with a tri-color or a broken agouti non-extention, preferably one that has no sable colors in it's background. Once you have established the harlequin gene into your line it's just a matter of breeding tri-colors to solids and vice verse.  It is possible to breed tri-color to tri-color but it is works the same as breeding any other pair of brokens, you will likely get charlies.  The benefit that can have is that a charlie bred to a solid will always produce only broken kits.  Therefore if you have a charlie tri-color and you breed it to a buch of solid harlequins you will get a lot of tri-colors (and possibly broken non-extention colors if you have the e gene in both parents).

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