The Tan Mini Lop Project -  a new and exciting colour being created in mini lops

  making this amazing colour

on this amazing rabbit  

since 2006 Alexia's Lops have been working on creating a new colour in mini lops called Tan.

A tan is really an otter rabbit with a huge slosh of Rufus Modifier.

The Rufus modifier gene is the gene which makes red things redder, think of a red setter dog or a red squirrel or a red agouti rabbit, all have very high rufus, the higher the rufus then the redder and richer the red.

Tans also need something called a wideband gene.  The wideband gene widens the main colour of each hair along the hair shaft and takes out any under colour.  This   stretching   of colour and lack of under colour helps give the overall impression of the red being much, much brighter, tans can be shown without wideband but our ambition is to keep it in as it is preferred in the BRC tan standard.

Rufus and wideband make a tan a tan.

The true tan breed in the UK have fantastic colour but are obviously a completely different shape to our mini lops, tans being upright and racy with upright ears and mini lops being small, rounded, cobby with lopped ears, the challenge here was to keep in the colour yet alter the shape. 

We started with a pure bred chocolate tan with fantastic colour and mated it to a black otter mini lop doe called Pegasus who was bred by Mary Philpotts.  This created a litter which all had medium rufus and carried wideband and also chocolate.  All youngsters looked very much like the tan buck, though fatter and all had mad helicopter ears as expected.

We mated another animal, a cross breed wideband red agouti with medium rufus, to Hercules a black otter mini lop buck and created a better shaped litter but all kits had less rufus, again all kits carried wideband.

We decided to runs two lines, one for shape and wideband and one for colour and wideband with the idea to cross them together at a later date.

We are now four years into this project and have just done a useful outcross mating, the most high rufus, visual wideband, black tan buck we had with a pure bred chocolate otter mini lop, the kits produced are better shape and nearly fully lopped, all carry wideband and chocolate and two have been retained, a chocolate otter and a black otter.

In the colour line we have mated our two well coloured chocolate tans with helicopter ears together together to continue to set in the rufus.

We sent two animals from our line to Phil Batey in Cumbria who is also working on tan mini lops with Ian Gerrard, from Scotland, see their site here, they had the type, we had the colour so it only seemed sensible to share   :)  

We have as a thank you been given a Ruskins Red a high rufus red agouti buck, pictured below, he will be extremely useful to better the type in the tans and the tanning in the normal otter line, cheers chaps, this buck mated to our mad eared high rufus chocolate tan doe should produce some cracking coloured kits with far, far better type.

Here is Ruskins Red the new firey red agouti chap who will be worked into our line, he carries self and wideband, only a youngster yet but already showing promise.

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Spring 2009 update, F5s on the way, Ruskins Red has been mated to our high rufus black otter/tan doe from Claires litter, this lady is nearly lopped and is medium rufus and his type and colour are so superb we should at last have a litter which is a real step on the way to our tan mini lop goal.

Here are three of the resulting litter, two does, both firey red agoutis (front) and one buck a normal agouti just look at the difference in colour already

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July 2009 update, more F5s on the way, Flash our high rufus chocolate tan x breed buck has been mated to our high rufus blacktan/otter doe and the resulting litter gave us some cracking coloured babies and one was visual wideband! Yey! 

We have retained one chocolate tan doe with visual wideband.  The idea is to use this doe to a pure bred mini lop to keep in the wideband gene and better the type.

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March 2010 update F6s, two new F6 litters, one from Scarlet, a Red Agouti mini lop doe and Flash the tan x breed which has given us two superb coloured rabbits, one high rufus cinnamon which has nearly lopped and a high rufus red agouti both does, both staying and already have very tanned belly colour and under tail colouring which is very hard to get - so we are very hopeful these two gals will be useful later this year.

We also mated Ruskins Red back to his daughter a high rufus red agouti doe and got two high rufus oranges in the litter, neither rabbit retained as type was poor.

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May 2010 update, a new arrival, huge thanks to the fabulous Christine Hunter. 

We have been loaned Arthur pictured above, an import line very high rufus mini lop buck which will be mated into the RUFUS LINE to improve both colour and type in one go!  Although he will also add in the non extension gene, we can breed this out at a later date, the plus side of using this chap far far outweighs the minus side and should suddenly shift the project into a faster gear!

Huge thanks to Christine for trusting us with her buck and helping with the project    :)

We now have two distinct lines, a RUFUS LINE which is bred for red colouring and type

and

 a   WIDEBAND    line which is used to keep in the otter gene, keep in the wideband gene and better the type

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Feb 2011 update -  Wideband Line

Melman a pure bred mini lop buck in lilac otter, pictured above has been mated to our F5 high rufus chocolate tan cross doe with visual wideband. 

The idea behind this mating is to try and keep wideband in as all the babies will carry it and also keep the non extension out of this side of the line and all the while bettering the type while also retaining the dilute and chocolate genes.

Using Melman will not add a great amount to the Rufus but will keep the gene pool fresh and the two lines, wideband and rufus, can be mated together at a later date.

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Feb 2011 update -  Rufus Line

 Moriarty our high rufus red agouti, who  is Arthurs son, pictured above,  has been mated to our F6 lopped high rufus cinnamon, pictured below.  Her colour is outstanding, so hot you could cook toast on her from about four feet away !   This mating should increase the rufus and better the ear carriage and the body type..... hopefully this F7 litter should be the wow colour litter - the litter to give us a high rufus rabbit that really starts to look like a mini lop.

We don't think this lady carries non extension so the expected litter should be red agouti and possibly very high rufus opal, both animals carry tan pattern so we may also get high rufus otters or even tans out !

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Mar 2011 update -  Rufus Line

The litter arrived in March and we are thrilled with the colours, we had a lilac tan, a red, a high rufus lynx and a well tanned otter.  Sadly we lost the lilac tan (pictured below) at three weeks old but will retain the lynx to use back into the line.  Once the cinnamon doe has had a while to recover from caring for this litter we will repeat this mating and hope for another well coloured tan out.  Pic below shows the retained lynx doe, fully lopped and peach bellied

 This mating was repeated in June and although we didn't get another tan we got a very high rufus red agouti which we retained and is pictured below - looking very much like a pure bred mini lop so very exciting stuff indeed!

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Mar 2011 update -  Wideband Line

The litter arrived consisting of two chocolate otters (one buck and one doe) and one chocolate self, all will carry wideband, all much better type than mum (good ol Melman) and amazingly have moderate rufus too, very very pleased with this litter!  The high rufus chocolate otters have been retained to use into the line this winter.

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