These are called chin steel, sometimes called a silver tipped steel in other breeds, Greg Paisano of California currently has the breeders certificate of Development for the chin steel variety.

This is called a seal, or double shaded, as newborns, they have a slight brownish color to them, when they are young, they could pass as a black, but in the 2nd picture--this 5 month old buck is obviously got the seal shading on him. The seal is a rabbit that inherited the double shaded gene, you could possibly get seals from breeding 2 shadeds together. However the little bunny in the picture was from a chestnut steel X black silver marten breeding, obviously both of these rabbits (the steel and BSM carry the shaded gene). The good thing about seals is that if you breed them to a REW or himalayan colored rabbit, you will get 100% showable smoke pearls or sia sables.

And NOW!!!!! My brokens...there were 10 brokens shown in Tucson at the 2000 dwarf nationals....more than lynx, squirrel, tan and fawn put together...wake up you ARBA people!!! Hint, Hint: David Pett holds the certificate of development for this variety.

This was the foundation for my brokens a whopping 4# brood doe. Out of Swihart's with some Rosie's and Vermander's stuff, she was a broken Orange. She is living as a house pet now, somewhere in southern Wisconsin.

This was my 2nd generation, a broken black steel! Very pretty coloring, but tipped the scale at 2.10#, so I sent him to Kentucky--where Katie Walsh is using him for developing some of her own colors.

Also, the 2nd generation gave me my first "false charlies" I was 1 1/2 yrs trying to find out why this one doe was so lightly marked! I still don't understand it, but this doe went to MindyJo of M&E rabbitry to start her out with the brokens. She had the type and the weight was within normal ranges! But the color was totally unacceptable. She went on to produce max factor kits.

I started out breeding broken to solid to keep the genes straight, so I'd also get some showable bunnies as a bonus! The bunny in the 2nd picture (on the left) is a broken cinnamon, talk about slaughtering the gene pool, the standards committee would poop their pants...hehe. She went to northern Wisconsin, where she is happily producing chocolates.

And my 3rd year resulted in this awesome buck, a 2.06# nicely marked, nice typed little broken chestnut, this was Pepper (the broken black steels bunny bred to 1 of Caitlin's blue show does!) Look for Pumpkin II at the convention!!