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Breeding rabbits seems simple enough. Right? Put a boy and a girl together and you will have babies in about 30 days! How Fun! But its not as simple as it sounds. Not if you want to do it right. Not if you breed according to a breed standard and want to breed to improve overall health and conformation. Just because you think your buck and doe will make the most adorable babies, and I am sure they would because what baby bunny is not adorable? It doesnt mean they should be bred together. Especially if your focus is on showing, and breeding quality animals.
We start planning our breedings during the winter months, since here in Montana, there are no shows and really no other bunny business to attend too. We have kept back several offspring from our fall liters to grow out over the winter in hopes that our next herd sire or top producing doe is in there. First and foremost, the most imporant thing to learn about breeding is how your lines develop and how well they mesh together. Some lines develop slowly and some rather quickly. This is key information to know as when you hold back juniors to grow out, you really dont want to grow out an entire litter for two years. You also want to take note as to how lines mesh. Some lines excell in great offspring when crossed, or line bred. While others bomb horrifically. This in it's self is a learning process. So dont worry too much. After time, watching your litters grow and develop you will lean which lines mesh and which dont as well as how each line develops and matures. And of course this always changes when you bring in new stock, and breed new crossings. To begin our planning we look back at our keepers from the previous breeding seasons. I personally breed in two sets, Spring and Fall. I do not breed for Easter Babies and I will even refuse to sell a rabbit around Easter unless I know you are a ARBA member and will be adding this animal to your current herd for breeding and/or showing. My spring breeders are usually those who I want to move on, holding out my best or previously used does for later litters in the fall. This way my best does do not loose their conditioning for the show season. Each animal is gone over carefully, noting faults and places of improvement as well as good and valuable qualities that I would like to continue. Once again, the standard is pulled out and studied to ensure that I am making the correct choices. I first look at each and every pedigree, I note which crosses did well. What lines combined with what lines meshed perfectly and gave me a result I wanted. I look at how the offspring of certain parings matured and try to match up others the same. To be a buck in my barn, you cannot be mediorcore. Especially if you want to stay. On occasion, some bucks are moved on in the spring, only so I can keep part of that line, and improve the faults on the bucks themselves. Always striving to improve! I take a look at each animal after noting each fault and good quality. I want to match up pairs such as: a doe with a narrow snipey head but great depth and balance to overall body to a buck that had good width to the head, a nice crown and also good overall balance to the body. By doing this, I hope to continue consistancy through the body, while at the same time improving the structure of the head set. In some cases this can easily be done by breeding back to the father or mother. Linebreeding can be done effectively to correct faults if done on occasion. I use the in and out method for linebreeding. Breed in on generation and out the next. The next and final thing taken into consideration when matching up is color. I do have my favorite colors, colors I am hoping to produce, and colors that I hate and dont ever want to produce. Also, I look at those colors that are not showable. Of course, color is not a deal breaker for me. For example, I dislike REW and Opal with a passion and have also worked hard at removing the steel aspect from my breeding program. But alas, REW, Opal and even the occasional steel pops out. And yes, some are held back because type wise, they are the best out of the litter. On the other hand I have kept a couple that may not have been best type wise because they are the color I wish to produce. The one thing I truely want to avoid is unrecgonized colors and unshowable colors. Having several bucks to choose from makes choices easier and gives a bit more wiggle room when planning a litter. So to summarize here is a look at the breakdown: 1st Body type 2nd Lineage 3rd Color Last but not least, when you plan to do your litters dont breed all your first time mom's at the same time. Try to breed a mixture of experienced and first time moms. This way if you are in need of a foster doe, you have one. Also count on all your does taking...chances are one or two will miss, but I have had it happen where they all have took to the breeding. You do not want to overload yourself, as I have many times, with juniors and not having the proper cage space to grow out hopefuls. You want to be able to take your time to pick and choose which is the best. And you cant do this at 6 or 8 weeks of age. Its always best to grow until at least 12 weeks or 3 months and start making your choices there. Every year around the same time, this time, late January, I start suffering from the Winter Blues. I sit here eagerly awaiting the nice warm temperatures of Spring and Summer and most importantly, awaiting the Montana Show Season to start! Due to severe road conditions in the winter time, Montana goes dormant between Fall and Spring as far as shows go.
So to get me through these past few months of no shows, no babies, a rabbit dormancy if you will, I spend my time going over my hopefuls that I have kept, making sure they still meet my standards to stay. I carefully plan out each and every litter, and figure out who is going to be in my Spring Show string. Shortly after Christmas I begin working on my chore list of what needs to be addressed for the bi-annual barn cleaning (a super deep clean done in spring and fall). I also start compiling a list of supplies I need, such as new trays, feeders, etc. Right about now, the end of January, our weather bounces back and forth from warm in the mid 40s to freezing, below zero. This drives me insane! Not only does this throw me off schedule for cleaning and other barn chores, it seriously effects the molting schedules! Of course on the days where I have the extra spare time to go outside and groom, trim nails and what not, it decides its going to freeze. Pretty soon our snow season will turn into the mud and flood season. Hopeing that this year is the year that I can get the new barn put up at the higher part of the property so we dont get all the run off from the mountain in the barn again. Well here is to hoping for spring to come soon! May your molts be quick and your nestboxes full!!! have not written much in a while...but here goes.
Nothing much has been happening in our neck of the woods to report really. Winters here are long and cold. This year we were faced with record snowfall of 2 feet in one day. This left us snowed in for approximately 4 days! Shoveling off the roof of the barn seemed to have been at the top of our to do list weekly. Toting out water by hand several times a day has been time consuming, but in the end we have happy, healthy bunnies and that is what is important! The spring show season in Montana is going to be here before I know it! And, I cannot wait! I am anxious to get a few of these juniors, now seniors on the show table to strut their stuff. On the warmer days, I take a bit of extra time working with the buns on posing and doing a few self evals. There are a few that probably wont make the spring cut, and several that I just look on in amazement of how far I have come in this hobby. I look forward to visiting with my fellow rabbit enthusists this year. It seems like forever since I last attended a show. I am hoping to be able to branch out and show a bit out of state and of course, with 2015 ARBA Convention being on the west coast finally, I cannot not be more stoked to attend my first ever convention!! Lets just hope that my keepers hold up and I have something to show in October! We have added some English Lops to the barn as a small side project. I have always loved this breed, being my second favorite to the Mini Lops. In addition I have been gathering up a few new additions to work on developing a whole new breed, but as of right now that is all top seceret information. More info will be available as we work on developing and advancing through this project. Well it's that time of the morning to fill up my thawed out water bottles and carry them all out to the eagerly awaiting crew! My your spring nest boxes be full of fat, healthy little ones and may your coats be primed and ready for the first show! |
Helpful InfoHere you will find lots of informational articles on how to care for your rabbits, about showing, and just news about our rabbitry in general. Archives
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