Ali’s Bunny Crossing

Once you undertand the basic concepts of rabbit breeding you should dig deeper . . .

How to match mate

When breeding bunnies it’s important to understand that if you want to get good show quality bunnies you need to put some thought into what rabbits are mated.

Things to consider:

Color - some colors don’t mix. Period. You shouldn’t breed BEW’s into another color, say a Smoke Pearl Marten.

Some colors work better than others. Breeding a black and an orange will probably get a smutty orange that won’t be showable.

There are a lot of helpful rabbit sites out there that will help you with this.

Check out: http://www.islandgems.net/compatible-colors.html

Strong Points - Every rabbit has strong points with it’s body. Good hindquaters, thick ears, nice eyes. Make sure you understand the standard of perfection for rabbits and then find out your rabbits.

Breeding rabbits with the same strong points probably won’t help you breeding program. You want to get a rabbit that has a wide variety of strong points.

Faults - the same thing as with the strong points. make sure the parents don’t have the same. and if a rabbit has a ton of faults (especially the buck) you should probably just sell it as a pet.

Ages - this is an obvious one but be careful with it. Young or old rabbits don’t breed well. Breed rabbits between 6 months  - 2 1/2 years for the best results.

Line-breeding vs. Cross-breeding

Understand what you want. If you are looking for strong rabbits to start your rabbitry. Cross-breed. This is breeding other rabbits into your lines that you have already. Once you have what you want, start breeding “seriously”.

Linebreeding happens when you have a great rabbit and want more like it. Breed back into the same rabbit again and again. (daughter to father, grand-daughter to the same, great-granddaughter, etc)

Understanding your goals and plans will save you time, money and trouble.

Problems with Birthing

During birth of the rabbit kits, problems can happen.

Dead kits

This often happens with first time moms. Their kits are born dead. That’s the end of it. Just bury them.

If you think they may still be alive. Take them inside. Fill up Ziplock bags with hot water and put them in a basket. Then wrap the kits in a blanket/towel and place them on top of the ziplock bags. This can revive just very cold kits.

Peanuts

If a kit is extermely small, it is most likely a peanut. These linger for about a week and then die. Only about 1 in 100 live, don’t feel bad about it.

What is a Peanut?

A peanut is a name for a kit that is born with two dwarf genes (dwarf rabbit have one dwarf gene and one rabbit gene) the kit is normally just too small to eat or survive.

Stuck kits

Sometimes a doe gets a kit stuck. Most likely, the kit is already dead by the time you start to help you so don’t be very concerned about hurting it.

You should put mineral oil (or some type of oil) around the area to help her. Put the doe in your lap and when she pushes, pull at the kit to get it out.

Retained kits

Sometimes the doe doesn’t have her kits, but they’re still inside her. (Try palpating . . . it’s hard to miss kits that big!)

You should probably take her to the vet and have him induce labor. Sometimes a doe will just pass her kits, but there’s a high chance of infection.

KITS

1- 2 weeks old

After you’ve gotten through the first week, the kits that are left have a 90% chance of living. You should be able to see what color they are. Their eyes will start to open about the 12th day and they’ll start eating food sometime during the second week. They’ll start moving and jumping.

3-4 weeks

3 weeks is when they’re the cutest (in my opinion) they’ll be active and friendly and you should be handling them a lot.

4 weeks may be early enough to start weaning some kits.

6- 8 weeks

at six weeks old start weaning the kits and looking for their quality - although with kits it’s hard to tell this early.

At 8 weeks the kits are old enough to leave their mom.

Culling

When you breed and want to keep rabbits from the litters, you must do a process called Culling. This doesn’t mean that you kill the rabbits, it’s merely decieded which rabbits you are going to keep. Things to consider:

Teeth - you should check a rabbits teeth to make sure it doesn’t have malclusion or anything abnormal (overbite, crossbite, underbite) rabbit’s whos teeth have these problems probably will have to be put down. Some rabbits teeth grow extremely fast and must be clipped or filed down very frequently. Never buy a rabbit with these problems and if you happen to, cull it fast. These problems are genetic and will pass to offspring. If one of your kits has bad teeth, check the parents very carefully.

Sex

This may seem a no brainer, but even if you love a rabbit, it’s sex should affect whether or not you keep it.

Having two many bucks can be bad (although you want lots of show bucks too many means you won’t be able to breed as much).

Having a tiny little doe that’s perfect probably means she won’t produce as many babies and may have birth complications.

Type

Make sure you understand the Standard of Perfection for your breed. Keep a copy and look over your rabbits baised on that standard. Most of the time, does are exempt from this part of culling for me because I want brood does but if you want a show doe do this.

I also do this with all my bucks. I really (it’s a personal thing) don’t like the idea of brood bucks. Not my thing. I want typey bucks so I cull bucks very heavily in this area but not heavy at all for my does.

Color

Is it useful? No matter how cute you need to be able to use the color in your program. If you breed blacks you can’t breed an orange into them. (or doing so would be very hard!)

Also, the different colors have standards, you can most likely find them online. If a rabbit does not meet the standards of its color it will probably be dq’d at a show. Again, this isn’t as big a deal with brood does as it is with show bucks. However, understand that the bad color will probably be passed to the kits. I cull very heavily for color for both bucks and does.

Temperment

No matter how wonderful a show rabbit, if you can’t handle it, it won’t help. Often with a lot of TLC temperments can come round however if you are new to rabbit breeding make sure you get rabbits with good temperments. I really like my bucks to have good temperments, if they don’t, I work with them A LOT. I’ve never yet had to cull a rabbit because I couldn’t improve it’s temperment but it does take a lot of work.

Nails

Nails cannot be broken, missing or the wrong color (color standard again!) .

Broken nails should be culled for show bucks, but can still be used in breeding as it is genetic. Missing are probably just more sever broken ones but very rarely can be genetics (I would risk mating to see if it is if you have a really nice rabbit with a missing nail)

Nails that are the wrong color should not be used for breeding and cannot be used for showing, these are rabbits that should definetly be culled.

Selling

Selling rabbits is a huge part of every rabbit breeders business. How to sell your rabbits and Where to sell them to are very important.

How - For my first litter of rabbits I was desperetly trying to sell them. I put up flyers everywhere and asked around but I must say this is the most in effective way of doing it. Then, I upgraded a bit. I sold them at my 4-H fair. Now this works, but most fairs are once (at most twice) a year so if you sell your rabbits only at fairs your business will be low. Also, you have no clue about the people that are buying from you and you can’t develop a relationship. (Note: a good advitiser is to put out your business cards, at the fair I had 50 taken per day) If you can’t sell at a fair many people decide to sell to petstores. Now this isn’t necessarily bad, but sometimes it is. If you want to sell to a petstore get to the owner/manager first. Know the conditions that your rabbits will be in, the way they’ll be sold, the attention you’ll get. You’ll only regret selling blind to pet stores.

Ineffective Ways:

Flyers

Asking friends

Selling to Petstores

Fairs

Now that we’re done talking about the ways how not to sell rabbits, we can talk about the ways to sell rabbits.

Get known - advertise on websites, online directories, go to shows, leave business cards places

The best way to sell rabbits is to have a website! This gets the most. Many people would prefer to be able to see a website than call or email. You can get really cool free websites so make sure you look into it.

For getting known online advertising is the best way.

We’ve covered the How now let’s cover the Where of selling rabbits:

Where - we already talked about petstores. That can be good or not depending on how much time you look into the petstore.

Fairs we covered as a way you can sell pets but not necessarily the best idea.

In my personal opinion, the best place to sell rabbits would be at your house (or nearby place) having already email/talked to a potential buyer.

Fairs and petstores work but if you want to sell a rabbit to a good family it doesn’t necessary.

Selling show rabbits is easy enough, you can bring them to a show, enter them, and if they do well you can probably sell them right there.

Showing

Showing rabbits isn’t for everyone. (That would be me!) But shows can be helpful and enjoyable (to some!) So it’s important to understand about them.

Contents in This Section:

Finding A Show

Attending A Show - What to Expect, What to do

How A Show Works

The Benefits of Showing

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Finding A Show:

Go to http://www.arba.net/Shows.htm where you can find shows by state. That’s the simplist and easiest way to do things.

Attending A Show - If you plan to show a rabbit, make sure you contact the show secretary (should be available with the show information found with the above link) and ask for a show catalog. This will include a piece of paper you fill out for your entries. I don’t have one of these entries in front of me, so I can’t go over what everything means, however, if you have any trouble please contact the show secretary or myself (in extreme cases!)

Things to Bring To A Show Would Be:

Rabbits plus carriers, food, water, hay, brushes, grooming table, apron (if you have a really fuzzy rabbit)

Chair - Shows can take a long time!

Money - You may find a rabbit you want or want to enter a raffle or buy some food

Food - Most shows start at around 8 in the morning and last until the afternoon so make sure you bring lunch (or you can buy it!)

Book/movie/music - Depending on what breed is in line for showing, you may have to wait several hours before you even put your rabbits on the table and you’ll probably end up being bored. Once a show starts, people don’t have time to chat and show you their rabbits (usually)

Sale Rabbits - you may want to bring any rabbits you have for sale

What NOT to bring:

Rabbits out of condition, underweight, overweight, with DQ’s or otherwise inappropriate for showing.

Other pets - people really don’t appreciate this

Noisy kids/siblings or friends - it’s common curtesy

How A Show Works -

Once you get into the building the show is being held out, you’ll need to check in with the show secretary and get your comment cards. Look for a table with a line at it or ask someone hanging around.

On one side of the building there’ll be tables with lists above them with breeds . . . usually something like this:

Netherland Dwarf - 49 Y

Belgian Hare - 4 O

Silver Fox - 1 Y

Tan - 7 O

Mini Rex - 82 Y

This has three things on it. 1) It shows you the show order (Netherland Dwarfs first, etc) and it also shows you the number of rabbits being shown (Netherland Dwarfs have 49 rabbits) and lastly it shows you wether it’s youth or open (y or o)

What’s Youth and Open?

Youth is for 18 year olds or younger who which to show against fellow 18 year olds or younger

Open is for adults.

A Youth can show as an Open but an Open cannot show as a Youth.

However, once you see what table has your breed at it, you want to get as close to there as possible. Usually at shows, carriers are used to create aisles for the rabbits. Be sure to stack your carriers if you have multiple.

Show Time!

Once it’s your breed’s turn to show, listen carefully. A writer (or the judge) will call out something like, “First Call for Senior Smoke Pearl Marten Netherland Dwarf Bucks!”

If you have a senior (adult) SPM ND buck bring it up to the table, as well as it’s comment card (hand this to the writer) and place your buck in holder. (Just copy what everyone else is doing, or ask)

The judge will look over all the rabbits in that catergory and give evaluations. If the judge hands your rabbit back, DQ’s it, or picks another buck over yours, bring your buck and your comment card back to the carrier.

If the judge picks your rabbit, be very happy!

A Rabbit Can Win These Awards:

Best of Variety - BOV

Best of Group - BOG

Best of Breed - BOB

Best Opposite Sex - BOS

BRIS - Best Reserve in Show

BIS - Best in Show

If five or more rabbits with three or more exhibeters are competeing for any of these, and you win it, you get a leg!

3 legs means your rabbit is a grand champion!

That’s the basics of how a show works, if anything seems unclear or incorrect feel free to contact me and I’ll try to fix it.

The Benefits of Showing

Showing:

1) Helps you meet new rabbit people

2) Helps your rabbitry gain fame

3) Can be an enjoyable experience

4) Can help you find/sell rabbits

I encourage you to attend a few shows and see if you like them!

That’s all in the Digging Deeper section for now! More will probably be added in the future!