Hamilton area youth breeder picked up these two youngsters yesterday. We had a bit of a talk. I hope she does well with these two. I told her they were good starter bunnies. Advised her to always breed for health.
Just one of the many things your companion rabbit can be trained to do. :)
Five kits born, one confirmed peanut, another quite small not sure if runt or peanut at this time. Look to be tricolour or japanese in colour. Watch Me GrowGone to a pet home. Daughter off Olivia. Nice young doe, just not good markings for showing. Nice young doe. Homed in the London area. Owner a young teen male. :) They are experienced bunny people. :)
And below I have Rodney. Sold to a breeder home. Will use him in the fall on one or two of my young does. Breeder will get a kit back from the breeding.
So Rick has lost his herd.
He's lost his equipment, his animals, his hard work of breeding show buns. Animals that by all reports were healthy, but their cages weren't clean. and YET the HRS folks TOOK those cages to house the rabbits in. Hmmm.... seems a double standard that. He can't have them in his garage, but they (HRS/ACC) most certainly CAN take them and use those same cages and keep them in THEIR garage. Seems sad. Seems like court sanctioned theft. And to add insult to injury... he has to pay bond and spay/neuter to get 15 of his favourite rabbits back. AND should he ever want to breed rabbits again he is required to move. Deplorable. And yet it happens more and more frequently. Animal control gets involved and they do one of two things 1. charge too high of fees to retrieve the animals (surrender them or pay the fees now) 2. start spay/neuter of all animals immediately without waiting for a resolution of the case should people wish to fight the charges. Either way, the owner, loses. How do people protect themselves? HOW? All it takes is one person complaining and one animal control officer deciding to take a pet fancy (as opposed to a breeder support viewpoint) and a person has lost everything. Smeared through the papers. Hate mail. Reputation destroyed. Keep your rabbitries clean folks. Keep your animals healthy. And now it seems....keep them well hidden as too. People wonder why breeder take a closed herd/door approach? THIS is why. It's not only herd health reasons, it's also a self-protection thing. Protect your herd from nay-sayers and less than helpful minded folks. Breeding for health is of high importance in my rabbitry. On one of the boards that I am on, a person was mentioning they were isolating their buck in order to determine the cause of his sneezing and many people said that "oh, we hope it's just allergies". My thought was... I don't care if it's allergies. I would not want to keep around a repeated sneezer. It's one thing if it's the odd thing...water up the nose, dust in the air, food bowl dive. That's a one off type of thing that you just don't worry on and say "silly rabbit" to (at least at this point in my regime). But a rabbit that sneezes when you feed him hay, or sneezes when put into a different cage, or sneezes when you change the bedding... A rabbit that you are fair certain has allergies... that rabbit I would not want to keep around as a breeding animal. Why?
Sneezing animals are animals to be watchful of. - pneumonia - bordatella - snuffles (pasteurella) Sneezing is one of the first signs of herd health that tell you that something is wrong. That your animals are in distress of some sort whether it be short-lived (silly rabbit stuff listed above) or that there is something more serious going on. So to tolerate, or to have to work round an animal that sneezes does one of two things. 1. causes excess worry. Oh.. that rabbit has sneezed, let me stand around watching for snot, let me pull out out that rabbit and isolate him for a month, let me check him over for other signs of distress. 2. and when all that proves no signs of illness, over time that produces a lack of concern over sneezing. WHICH can prove to be deadly should something significant develop. My goal is to produce animals that look, act, sound, that for all intents and purposes are as healthy as I can breed them to be. To that end I cull out sneezers (that are from silly rabbit issues). They will go for critter food as I don't want other people potentially breeding that weakness into their own lines. To that end if I have rabbits that do odd things (for instance I have two rabbits that for the last two nail trimmings have wheezed when I pick them up)...both of those rabbits will be going to pet homes. They don't sneeze or otherwise act poorly. They in fact act in perfect health. But they will be leaving this rabbitry and going to pet homes. Why do I treat them differently? Because sneezing is an indicator problem. Wheezing (at this point in my knowledge) is not. These two rabbits don't sneeze. They simply wheeze and ONLY when picked up and carried about. The wheezing gets louder when flipped to trim nails, but as soon as bun is returned to cage stops wheezing. IMMEDIATELY. it's actually quite interesting to observe. I leads me to think that it's a stress reaction. I want to breed fairly bomb proof rabbits and breeding rabbits that react to stress by wheezing is not something I want to do. So repeated sneezers get culled, wheezers get rehomed to pet homes, with full disclosure. :) I have purebred, pedigreed show and pet type of rabbits. I also have meat rabbits. This standard holds true for all my rabbits regardless of their purpose in life. I think that if someone is breeding rabbits they should reach for the highest goals they can maintain, regardless of what their purpose is in breeding. To always breed for healthy rabbits. They are far easier to maintain and less worrisome on the brain and heart. |
AuthorI have been breeding rabbits for a quite a few years. I thoroughly enjoy them as animals and think they make great pets. I also like to take some of them to rabbit shows to see how they measure up to the standards. For the BEST rabbit forum I've ever found. Go to Rabbittalk.com. Good for the pet rabbit owner as well as the breeder for meat or show.
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