This is a post showing the differences between amber, lynx, wide band lynx, blue fawn, and (incorrect) opal. And here I thought that I didn't have a wide band lynx. Ha! I have everything over here.
The lighting is rather awful. It's been pouring since I got off work and I only had the one overhead light in the barn. My hopes are to get better, more organized, pictures later as well. But we all know how I operate.
This is a lynx (wide band) and an amber. We'll get to explaining wide band later.
A lynx is a lilac agouti with certain modifiers to make the under color white. I'll get to that later, too. It has a fawn appearance with lilac tipping. It kind of gives it a "frosted" look in prime.
An amber is a chocolate agouti. It is not an ARBA accepted color. It has an orange appearance with chocolate tipping. I like to call it a "rusty" color.
Both amber and lynx are agouti based animals. That means they have solid ear tipping and colored bands to their fur. We'll use both of those later on. Agouti also have eye rings, nose markings, jaw markings, and a lighter colored belly.
In this picture, I'm showing the band color of the wide band lynx. Her middle band is not very bright or defined (and my phone combined with the lighting make it even worse). But you should be able to make out a very heavy lilac tipping and a fawn intermediate band that almost goes to the skin. The under color, which is admittedly dark, is very little. In lynx, the standard calls for an even amount of fawn versus under color.
This is the belly to the wide band lynx. The lynx standard calls for a creamy white color over top a dove gray under color. The wide band gene wipes out this under color band on the belly, leaving a creamy white belly.
Note that nonextension, which is your fawns, also obliterates the under color band on your lynx. The difference between a wide band and a fawn is that the wide band has clearly defined rings on the topside, as explained in the picture previous this.
This is a picture of the agouti bands on the amber. You can very clearly see that she's tipped in chocolate over a weak orange band over a slate blue under color. In retrospect, I wish I would have grabbed one of my better ambers. As with the lynx, you're looking for an equal distribution of intermediate color to under color on an amber. Y'know, once I have my army to submit the code of development for them.
This picture has a overhead side by side comparison of a wide band lynx (left) to a SOP lynx (right). The wide band lynx produced the SOP lynx, and I believe make very nice lynx, so don't be discouraged when you get wide band or even darkly colored lynx in your herds. Just know that you can't actually show either of them.
As you can see, there isn't a whole lot of visual difference between the two of them. It's kind of why I forgot I had a wide band lynx in my barn. A wide band lynx IS a little darker than an SOP lynx because the tipping is heavier, but tipping is such a fickle thing even on an SOP lynx that it's difficult to tell. That's why you check the belly bands.
This is a better picture of the wide band lynx (left) next to the SOP lynx (right).
Here it's really noteworthy that her lilac tipping obliterates any hint of fawn intermediate color, whereas it shines through on the SOP lynx.
Another comparison of the wide band lynx (left) to the SOP lynx (right).
While I did show a better picture of her bands earlier, this is the only shot I got of the SOP lynx's bands. You can see how much more equal the intermediate band is to the under color band. You can also see how bright his under color is. That bright white is desired. The lilac tipping isn't its own wide band of lilac, either. It's there subtly enough to give him a lynx - frosted - appearance.
In this picture, I have the wide band lynx (left), the SOP lynx (middle), and my blue fawn (right). Unfortunately, I don't have a lilac fawn on hand to make things a little more even, but it's close enough.
Why is a blue fawn close enough to a lilac fawn? Both the blue fawn and lilac fawn are nonextension colors on a dilute (opal and lynx) base. That means the main color shown is fawn. On chocolate and black based animals, you get your reds. A chocolate based red is actually desired over a black based red because it's less smutty. Well, it's the same concept with fawns. A blue fawn is smuttier than a lilac fawn. So you get a smutty fawn to work with here.
The SOP lynx is still brighter than both your wide band lynx and your blue fawn. That's ... usually not the case with lilac fawns. Usually a lilac fawn is a smidge brighter than your SOP lynx because the intermediate band color on an SOP lynx is the only color you see. A fawn doesn't generally have that lilac tipping a lynx has!
This is an overhead photo of the same rabbits. A wide band lynx to your left, an SOP lynx in the middle, and the blue fawn to the right.
It took two of us to get this picture.
Again, your wide band lynx (left), your SOP lynx (middle), and your blue fawn (right).
This picture shows that the wide band lynx actually does have ring color whereas the fawn does not. It's a fairly uniform color from skin to hair tip on the fawn, but a distinct fawn to lilac break on the wide band.
The SOP lynx in the middle is what you're looking for: a bright band of fawn over that white band. Very, very clearly defined edge to the colors.
This doe just had a litter. Excuse her sparse belly color. But this is the blue fawn. You can see that she doesn't have the dove grey under color called for in the SOP, just like the wide band lynx.
This is your SOP lynx. You can see that he finally sports that dove grey under color that I've been talking about. His belly still appears white, but actually has two bands of color. This color should be even. His color is desired, whereas my picture taking skills are not. He was horny and difficult to manage.
I brought in all of the dilute rabbits I've talked about so far in this picture and added a curve ball. From left to right: wide band lynx, SOP lynx, blue fawn, and opal.
The fact that my fawn is a blue based fawn is apparent next to my opal. As I said before, the color will be lighter and brighter on a lilac fawn.
The purpose of this was to see how much bluer a blue agouti (opal) was to a lilac agouti (lynx).
This is the opal's ring color. She has a very awful intermediate color that's very thin. It makes her tipping very heavy. Her tipping is blue over a fawn intermediate band over an INCORRECT white band. If it weren't for her heavy tipping, one could probably easily mistake her for a lynx. But I have more tricks to identifying opals vs lynx!
This is your wide band lynx next to your heavily tipped opal from earlier. They both sport about the same amount of tipping on their hair shaft. But the lynx is still lilac based for a lynx appearance.
Here I have an amber (left), lynx (middle), and opal (right).
Lilac is the double recessive combination of dilute and chocolate. That means that lilac is both dilute and chocolate expressed simultaneously. It'll exhibit characteristics of both. The dilute, or blue, will make a rabbit greyer. It turns the red intermediate band to fawn. The chocolate will make the rabbit ... chocolatier.... Sometimes chocolate even plays with eye color and will give a chocolate or lilac based rabbit ruby cast eyes.
This is an above shot of the same rabbits: amber (left), lynx (middle), and opal (right).
I think it shows how well a lynx exhibits both chocolate and dilute characteristics, while being its own variety.
This is another way to tell if a rabbit is lilac versus blue. This is the opal's ear tips. The tips of the ears are a concentrated color of the rabbit's base color. In the opal's case, blue.
In this picture, the concentrated base color of the rabbit is obviously lilac.
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