Growing infants

Vanna's little trio is progressing well. They haven't opened their eyes yet but they move around quite well. One of them surprised us yesterday by springing out of the cage while we had the door open for feeding. But in the same instant our mama cat crawled into the tight spot behind the cage and gently carried him back to us. She has been living in the rabbit room for a week now and she has taken on the role of guardian.

Genes in action

Bandit as an infant

He later grew to look like this.

Vanna's litter contains two standard hotots, with the white body and the black eyeband, just like the parents. However the third kit (Bandit) is completely mismarked for a hotot. One may wonder, "Where do all those spots come from if the parents are all white?"It is because hotots are a unique expression of the English spot pattern and Dutch pattern. When the gene combination is just right, the baby has a bleached body and color is left in the eyebands only.
For this third little kit, you can see he has a Dutch head and English spots on the body. Nonetheless, he is just as welcome to the family.

Standard dwarf hotot

Dutch

English Spot

Hello world!

Vanna's baby opened one eye today and saw us for the first time. "So, you guys are the obnoxious voices I keep hearing."

Family photo!

These are our five kits. It looks like we may have two chinchillas in the bunch. They all look so much like their parents.