The Silver Savannah is a fairly newer coat color that is being recognized more and more by breeders and pet owners. There are still a lot of people who don't even know the silver Savannah even exists because the golden Savannah is the more traditional look that people are accustomed to.
Most silver Savannah’s will be found in the lower generation of Savannahs because even when breeding for silver in the early generations, you may still have only golden (bst) kittens in a litter, or you may be lucky to have one breeding quality female within years of breeding that silver queen to your serval.
We were so fascinated by this incredibly beautiful and bright color Savannah, that we have decided to specialize and perfect this coat color so that the Silver Savannah can be more recognized!
In order to create a Silver Savannah cat, the offspring MUST have at least one Silver Savannah parent. Since we use a serval for F1’s, and there is no such thing as a silver serval, we use Silver Savannah Queens with our servals. The Silver Savannah Queens we use were chosen specifically for their ancestry of silvers. We made sure, before purchasing Silver breeding Queens, that the lines are as pure silver as we could get down their gene pool so that we could obtain the ultimate silver colors in our F1’s and future F2’s!
The strikingly beautiful silver coats can come in a variety of white, silver, and gray shades.
A Silver Savannah will have a dark or light silver coat and have dark gray, light gray, and/or black spots.
Silver results from the *Agouti gene in addition to the *inhibitor gene, whereas a ‘brown spotted’ or ‘BST’ (the name for what you know as the traditional gold savannah) only has the *Agouti gene.
Although we say ‘Silver color,’ Silver is actually not a color but a lack in color derived from the *inhibitor gene that produces silver by diluting the coat color.
The *inhibitor gene is a dominate gene and cannot be carried.
This means, that it is impossible for a silver savannah to be born from a cat from any other color, even if they have Silver Savannahs in their ancestry.
Most EG (early generation) Savannahs cannot technically be pure silver, but are still silver for they do carry both the agouti gene and inhibitor gene. We say ‘technically cannot be PURE silver’, because you are using a golden serval to a silver queen so most F1 Silver Savannahs (and even many lower generation silvers) have what is called ‘tarnish’ on their coat. This means that, the coat also has some gold coloring- usually located at the ends of the strands of fur, not at the root. You can usually see this beautiful light gold tarnish on places such as: the nose bridge, hands and/or feet, on the tail, and/or on the back/sides. Most of the gold Tarnish can also fade away completely as a Silver Savannah gets older and their ‘kitten fuzzies’ go away. We have had kittens born bright silver almost white with no tarnish then, as their coats change, they can have a lot of tarnish around 8-16 weeks and then be almost completely silver (with black or silver/gray spots) at a year old! We have had kittens that are born looking very tarnished all over, then their coat clears up as they get older and almost have no tarnish at all. We also have some Silver Savannah Kittens that have beautiful tarnish and we have customers that LOVE the silver and gold colors on the kitten. It is so unique and tarnish is not a bad thing at all, and can be very beautiful.
As a breeder, we know when a Silver Savannah is born by the roots of the fur. If the kitten has almost NEON bright white colored roots, that is a silver savannah!
One way to make sure you have a pure silver with the least amount of tarnish (gold) is to breed a Silver Savannah to another Silver Savannah or a cool toned or Dark gold bst silver savannah to a silver Savannah. This will create a brighter more intense silver coat color. This can be perfected as you go down the line (f3, F4, F5 + ) as you breed silver to silver then silver to silver and so on. We still have a lot of people who ask for and want the silver savannah WITH tarnish.
With a flash of the camera or natural sunlight, the Silver Savannah will glow and glitter. The brights become brighter and the neon roots flash back. The silver Savannah is such a beautiful creation we are so lucky to be a part of the future of this standard color!