One of the things I get asked about most regularly is Butterfly Genetics. To breed well marked butterflies you need to breed from well marked butterflies. If you are looking to start breeding butterflies I recommend you go to a breeder and look at all the butterflies in their shed, if they are well marked then stock from them should produce well marked butterflies. If they are badly marked then the likelyhood is that they will produce you badly marked butterflies

Pattern wise you can get:

Butterflies (Enen)

Selfs* (enen)

Charlies (EnEn)

*Please note when I say self I mean any rabbit that is solid, i.e NOT a butterfly or a Charlie.

'En' is the dominant gene over 'en' the recessive gene. Each parent brings 2 sets of genes and the babies will recieve one set fom each parent.

Examples of matings are listed below:

Self x Self mating - litter is all self

Please note where I have used percentages these are the outcomes in an ideal world, in reality you could mate a butterfly to a self and get all selfs out, it just depends.

I had better now describe what a charlie looks like:

Charlies tend to be english marked, they have butterfly smuts or moustaches, a stripe down the back, spots on their sides and coloured ears. Of course this will all vary from rabbit to rabbit, you could get one out that has just a moustache. I think the definition is if it is less than 25% marked then it is a charlie. As you can see from my above charts you can only get Charlies from a Butterfly x Butterfly mating, or a Charlie x Butterfly mating. If you get one that matches the above description in a different sort of mating then it is NOT a genetic charlie, it is a very poorly marked butterfly.

The only way you could get a charlie from another type of mating is if one of the parents is a white that is bred from butterflies. If a white rabbit has a butterfly parent it could be a genetic white butterfly. Because butterfly markings are white there would be no way of telling by physically looking if your white rabbit was genetically a white, or a white butterfly. The way to test mate it would be to mate your white to another self (NOT another white) and see if you get butterflies out. If you do then your white is a genetic white butterfly, which means it could produce you butterflies and charlies, as well as the selfs you were expecting!