General problems
A colored rabbit with white or mismatched nails
Breed this rabbit to a broken animal, white nails is not a problem with broken varieties. You could also breed into BEW or REW and the offspring would be particolor, dutchmarked or mismarked, but breeding the offspring back into the REW or BEW would cover up the nail problem, just don't use any of the offspring with your colored rabbits.

Problems with self varieties
White spots or stray white hairs
Breed to a rabbit with as little white hairs as you can find, or you can use them with otters, silver martens and agoutis that may cover up some of the stray hairs, especially is the white hairs/spots seem to be concentrated on the underside of the belly.

Light nails or too light a color
You can breed these into your brokens, REWs or BEWs, or you could breed them ONLY to colored rabbits with dark, opaque nails and/or dark fur color, steels tend to concentrate color and you might try breeding to a steel, or if the color is too light, breed ONLY to a non-dilute rabbit...chestnut, black, etc.

Seals
What can you do with a seal?
Seals are double shaded animals...so all you need to do is split the shaded gene so that each offspring gets only 1 shaded gene, you can do this by breeding to a himi or REW.

Shaded color problems
Color is too dark, shaded rabbits need 1 shaded gene and 1 himi or REW gene to get the correct shading, if the color is too dark breed to a himi or REW.

Color is too light
try breeding to a black...that should darken the color up quickly.

Agouti Problems
Too light or too little yellow tones in your chestnuts, opals and lynx's
Try breeding to only full color animals (black, chocolate). You could also try to breed in more rufous factor by using orange or fawns...which tend to be a bit more "orangy" than other colors. You could also try using a very fiery red otter.

Too little blue/too much yellow
Breed more of the blue colors in blue, lilac, opal, etc.

What can I do with a cinnamon? (chocolate chestnut)
Breed it to a rabbit that you know doesn't carry the chocolate gene. You will probably get chestnuts...or you can try breeding to a lynx or lilac and try for a lynx or lilac....but you will probably get 1/2 cinnamons in the litter...or you could breed it into the silver martens or otters, where chocolate isn't a problem.

Tan Pattern problems
Too little ticking
Breed to an agouti, they tend to have abundant ticking. Although, i've seemed to notice that I get very mealy otters and silver martens when bred to a certain chestnut doe...it's worth a try. I've also tried breeding a sparcely ticked marten to an abundantely ticked steel...with the same "mealy" result.

Too much ticking (mealiness)
Try breeding to a self rabbit, agouti will worsen the problem. But I seem to lose ticking when breeding a self to a tan pattern.

What can I do with this himi marten?
You could use it with a seal or a seal marten and get great colored sable martens and smoke pearl martens! You could also try for himalayans by breeding to a himi but this may give you more himi martens...you could also breed it to a self rabbit, or a full color rabbit...chestnut, otter, black, etc.

Is it always best to breed the same color to the same color?
NO! Breeding blue to blue (otters, martens, self, or himis) will cause you to have poor nail color in the offspring. Breed blue to any non-dilute...chocolate is recessive, but not a dilute, so breeding blue to chocolate should be OK, but, i've heard of problems. Breeding shaded to shaded will give you seals. Steel to steel will give you hidden steels...broken to broken will give you charlies....so, you need to learn the particulars of the varieties you have. And you cannot learn them without a good working knowledge of genetics.

Why shouldn't breed chocolate into my oranges?
Well, you could, breeding chocolate into your oranges will cause the smut to be brown (and less noticable) than a black based rabbit. It's a quick fix, eventually, you'll want to work on the real thing. But, a chocolatized orange is just as showable as a black based orange.

I should never use unrecognized or poor colored animals in my breeding program.
False. Unrecognized colors are just that...unrecognized, they are just as breedable as any showable animal. And some colors--such as the chocolate chestnut (or cinnamon) are nearly a requirement for working with the lynx variety of netherland dwarf.