Northern California Angora Guild: 6/22/14

Bobbie, Breeder of Bubbling Champagne

Allen messages Betty, "Bobbie Meyer is judging Angora goats at the Alameda Fair, do you want to come visit?"

"Yes, of course, I have not seen Bobbie for over 10 years."

Here she is, Bobbie Meyer.

In 1983, Bobbie offered an English Angora fawn junior doe to Betty who had been in English Angora for only one year but did not have very good foundation stock.   Betty named that fawn doe 'Bubbling Champagne', ear tattoo BC.   From Bubbling Champagne, BC became a part of the ear tattoos of Betty's rabbits. Most people thought BC came from Betty's initials, no, it's from Bubbling Champagne.   See Bubbling Champagne and Bobbie in the 1980s:

http://ncag.blogspot.com/2007/08/remember-when-bubbling-champagne.html

Three old ladies having a picture together; Bobbie and Muriel both started in rabbits in the 1970s. Starting in 1981, Betty is the newbie comparing to Bobbie and Muriel.

Allen told Randy to join the old ladies for the photo op, Allen says, "You are from the older generation and I'm in the new generation." Well, Randy is a baby comparing to the three old ladies.

Angora Goat Show at Alameda County Fair

Allen's Angora goat wins the Champion White Buck. From left to right are owner Allen, goat handler Muriel and judge Bobbie.

Randy's Angora goat wins the Champion Colored Buck. Left to right are: owner Randy, goat handler Muriel and judge Bobbie.

Before the show starts, the goat wranglers, aka the 4 H youth, are herding the goats to their pens.

All 50 Angora goats are in their holding pens waiting to be judged.

Some more goats waiting for their turn to be judged.

Judging starts, Bobbie is checking on the one of the goats.

Kate, Cindy, Muriel and two youth are holding the goats to be judged.

There are quite a few spectators.

There are two in a group and Bobbie is making comments.

This class consists of three goats in each group.

Randy carries a goat that is ready to go back to its pen.

Allen is also carrying a goat to go back to their holding pens. These goats weigh about 40-50 pounds, Randy and Allen don't need to go to the gym to do their weight training.

Temperature Sensitive Gene - Himi

Pointed white English Angora buck Chu's Higgins in March 1988 when the weather was cool.

Pointed white English Angora buck Chu's Higgins in August 1988 when the temperature was hot.

Betty says,

In 2007, I wrote a post about my experience with raising pointed white English Angora, see

http://ncag.blogspot.com/2007/08/pointed-white-english-angora-so-cute-so.html

The pictures of Chu's Higgins were used, and I am repeating these two photos here. As you can see that Higgins had nice black points in March 1988 when he was young and when the temperature was cool. Five months later when the summer came, his black points turned lighter than blue or lilac.

It is well-known that the Himi gene c(h) is temperature sensitive.   In Biology, Concepts and Applications 7th edition by Starr/Evers/Starr, it discusses a heat-sensitive enzyme called Tyrosinase that affects the Siamese cats and Himalayan rabbits. I quote:

"The rabbits are homozygous for the c(h) allele which encode a form of Tyrosinase that does not work if the temperature exceeds 33C or 91F. Metabolic heat keeps the main body warm enough to stop the enzyme from working so the fur is light there. Ears and other slender appendages lose metabolic heat faster and are cooler so melanin darkens them".

The Tyrosinase enzyme affects the fur color, not the skin or the nails.   The section also animates an experiment of shaving off a himi marked rabbit then put on an ice pack, the fur grows back dark.   It is the fur that is affected by the temperature, not the nails.

To read a more detailed description, go to:

http://books.google.com/books?id=EXNFwB-O-WUC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=heat+sensitive+color+in+rabbit&source=bl&ots=FpBj4ZaUHv&sig=VW9_vXUYS08WX0niD1JYvlh-mtY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wgirU-HuCNityASy6YD4CQ&ved=0CFcQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=heat%20sensitive%20color%20in%20rabbit&f=false

If the page does not load to the exact topic, go to10.6 Genes and the Environment on page 163.

The pointed white Angoras carry either two himi genes c(h) or one himi gene c(h) combined with one REW gene c. No other colored rabbits, not tort, not black, not chestnut, not fawn, not sable, not any other color is heat-sensitive. One may be confused about the torts vs. himi thinking that the torts also have darker points and lighter wool on the body. The reason for tort to have lighter body wool/fur is due to the non-extension gene ee that does not extend the darker color to the rest of the body.

Heat-sensitive gene c(h) is on the C allele while the non-extension ee is on the E allele, they are not related.

One more thing: the himi gene c(h) fades the point color during the hot temperature because it is harder for the extremities to cool down during the summer, the nail colors are not affected by the heat. If the nails match, they match in the winter and they still match in the summer.

Josh and Randy in Thailand

From late May to early June, Josh and Randy judged in several countries in Asia including Thailand. They sure had a great time judging and doing the tourist things.

Josh is the president elect of ARBA and Randy is the current vice president and vice president elect of ARBA. The rabbit exhibitors in Asia are very fortunate to have the two great judges and the P and VP of our beloved organization.

Chestnut Agouti English Angora

In yesterday's post, there is a photo showing the bands of a 5-month-old French Angora. Donna shares with us with this photo showing the bands of a 10-week-old chestnut English Angora.

This is one of Donna's matured chestnut English Angora.

Agouti Pattern - Regular vs. Wide Band

Fawn is an agouti pattern, classified as "wide band". This photo was taken of a 4-month-old English Angora with wool parted on its back but not using a blower. As we can see that there are wide bands of different shades of golden colors.

Chestnut is also an agouti pattern; according to the description of chestnut in SOP:

Surface color is a rich chestnut, ticked with black tipped guard hairs. It shall have one or more intermediate bands of tan, alternating with slate, with a blue-gray undercolor.

This photo was taken of a 5-month-old French Angora when the blower is on. It clearly shows all the requirements of the color bands.

As we can see the bands are narrower than the bands in the fawn shown above.

Chinchilla is also in the regular agouti pattern group, the major difference is the all the tan coloring are eliminated by the dark chin gene c(chd). Unfortunately the chinchilla Angora has not been seen for quite a long time thus we could not show a photo.

One may notice that the first photo was a junior English Angora and the second photo is a junior French Angora. The frustration of raising the agouti pattern Angora is that the bands would be hard to see or even altogether disappear from the long wool, regardless of how good the rabbit is. The above photo was taken of an 8-month-old fawn French Angora that has won major awards with this coat.

When parting the wool of the above gorgeous French Angora, the bands are very hard to see.

In general the judges are not as stringent about the bands on the wide band Angora such as fawn, cream and red. The width of the bands and the non-extension ee gene make the distinction of bands hard to be visible. In the case of the regular agouti pattern such as chestnut, opal, chocolate agouti, copper, lynx... judges tend to fault the color if the bands are not present. It is hard to make a senior Angora with length and density to clearly show the regular banding thus such colors are harder to show.