>From:    Catherine Shaffer <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: What color, etc.
 
Sable is a color.  The color of black coffee or dark chocolate.  Chocolate
is another color but that of milk chocolate.  Champagne is coffee with a lot
of cream or a chocolate milkshake maybe.  Cinnamon is close to champagne but
with definite red tone.  Like cinnamon sugar.  Undercoat is really only used
to distinguish between sable and black sable.  A cream to golden undercoat
is sable.  A white to gray undercoat is black sable.  A black sable isn't
really black - but could be real real close.  A black is the color of a
silver mitt if you don't look at the white hair.  Real true black.  But you
don't see them without mitts.
 
Now all ferrets also have a pattern or likely more than one as they come
from seperate genes.  Black mitts are black with white feet.  Pandas have
white heads and blazes (shetlands or badgers) have white stripes on the top
of their heads.  Both pandas and blazes are supposed to have white feet as
well.
 
Solid or self ferrets have the same color legs and body.  Standards have
a bit of a difference where the body's are lighter than the legs and tail.
Siamese (color point) have a much lighter body.
 
Another pattern is calle roaning.  This is the white guard hairs (the long
hairs) mixed in with the dark.  The light, medium and dark silvers are Black
mitts with various degrees of roaning.  AFA calls these dark eyed white
patterns, black roan mitts and black mitts respectively.
 
Mortimer is described as a sable color with dark extremities and a lighter
back.  You ignore the slihgt variations like the light brown on the back of
the head.  Sebastian is a sable not black sable because of the golden
undercoat.  I have a ferret that is tricolor - black, white and sable.  I've
only seen one other but heard of more.  I'm going to try to reproduce this
as both I've seen are solid ferrets.  Gonna have a hard time in a ferret
show with them as they are a standard (yet).  I can't tell if this steely
grey is really another color or whether the grey and cream are just the
undercoat.  Would probably have to see the ferret to know.  The two
tri-colors I know have distinct patches of the third color.  One a whole leg
and the other a definite patch on the chest and back.
 
The black color isn't a true color genetically as it can hide the sable
color which came from dad.  It is really a pattern that affects the whole
color somehow.  I can't tell from the description if there is roaning going
on.  A few white hairs in the legs would say so.  I have a black sable
siamese that has dark almost black legs but a light grey undercoat that is
the dominant color on his back.  Could be a black sable depending upon how
creamy versus grey the undercoat is.
 
Mixing champagne and silver (black roan mitts) especially if one or the
other is a Waardensburg mitt/panda/blaze is where the odd colors come from
including dark eyed whites.
 
bill and diane killian
zen and the art of ferrets
[Posted in FML issue 1491]