Crossbreeding New Zealand Whites and Silver Fox Rabbits

When we first began crossbreeding our NZWs with Silver Foxes, we would get variety of coats, mostly of brokens. Brokens look mostly white and have spots of color. I just thought it was typical when a person has a white rabbit crossing with a colored rabbit to get about half as spotted and I really did not give it much more thought since our rabbits were mostly for meat, until the one kindle that had two rabbits completely different than anything we had previously. 

We had only three colors of rabbits at the time: whites, blacks, and blues, but two from this one kindle had some variation in the skin color. One was black but not quite as black as her all black sibling and one was blue but a bit lighter than the blues typically are. Later when their fur grew out, the nearly black one had variations on hair shaft itself. The other looked like a lighter blue, almost frosted in comparison to his Blue Silver Fox mother. (He probably was a Gold Silver-Tipped Blue Steel. (Edited when I discovered the Blue Silver Fox doe was carrying Chinchilla.)

Since I had not seen banding on the hair shaft before after crossing for about a year, I asked for help to identify it on a rabbit message board. I got my answer within a few hours. It was a Gold Tipped Black Steel and it was explained to me that Red Eyed White rabbits have two recessive "cc" genes that cover all the other genetics, so I was advised at the time that my GT Black Steel had Agouti (think wild rabbits) that had to come from the NZW sire and the steel gene, Es, which could have come from either parent since the steel gene is hidden on NZW because of the "cc" gene and on a SF because of it lacking the Agouti "A" gene that allows it to show. However unlike a true Agouti, Black GT Black Steels do not have a lighter underside.

For most people all this genetic stuff is probably just gobbledygook, but for me it was like a logic puzzle and I love logic puzzles. We kept the Steel as a breeding doe because I thought she was pretty and she had a great personality. She turned out to be a very good mother too. However, what made her particularly good to keep is that I thought I knew more about her genotype than of my other rabbits, but I later found out that I may have been mistaken, all of which I explain better at What My Black Gold-Tipped Steel Taught Me About Genetics.

Also, in the process, I learned about the Broken gene, the one that was making our crosses spotted, because I did not like it. My husband thought it was cute, but for matching pelts it is not that cute. I did not and still do not want any Brokens, which gave me a goal for my breeding program with NZWs, because the Broken gene is dominate and cannot hide, except on a REW rabbit, and I wanted to eliminate it.