Monthly Archives: April 2015

Posing and Evaluating Commercial Rabbits

Meat Rabbits, Show Rabbits April 9, 2015 Comments: 10

As a new breeder it was very hard for us to understand exactly what people meant when they would say “Commercial Type.” We started out by basically describing it as a basketball with a head!

 

We went to shows and did our best to listen and learn whenever any breed of rabbit that is supposed to have the body type of our breeds was on the table. We also discovered some really great resources, like this diagram of Commercial rabbit type:

 

 

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Even as awesome as photos and diagrams are, sometimes it’s helpful to actually see something, so I took a few (very amateur!) videos of our rabbits and what we look for when posing and evaluating them. The disclaimer is that we are not rabbit judges and we are not the be all end all of rabbit breeders – but we are pretty good listeners and active learners from those who will teach!

 

Here is a dialogue of a few of the things we have learned and try to implement in our rabbitry. If these videos can be helpful, we’re happy to share!

 

This is Triton. He’s a Grand Champion Silver Fox with six championship legs to date and has won Reserve in Show.
 
This is Dawn. She is a blue silver fox, which cannot win any awards as it’s not a recognized color yet, but you can see that we like her depth and don’t prefer her fur. There’s no perfect rabbit!
This is Lucy. She is a Grand Champion Cinnamon with six championship legs to date. She was kind enough to show you the difference between an unposed rabbit and a posed rabbit.
Here are a pair of two 10 week old Silver Fox kits.

BunnyVac: Two Years Later

Meat Rabbits April 5, 2015 Comments: 4

BunnyVacLabelHi, friends.

 

At least once a month I get a message from someone who wants to know our experience with BunnyVac. I don’t blame them, whenever BunnyVac is mentioned on a facebook group there is a violent debate about those who are completely pro-vac and others who consider BunnyVac a horrible hoax at best and blatant subterfuge at worst.

 

We use BunnyVac. We’ve never had an outbreak of snuffles in our rabbitry and I feel confident that the rabbits we’ve sold have had healthy lives and done well for their new owners.

We are not pro-vaccination. In fact, we don’t vaccinate for anything else. We do our best to raise rabbits that are low maintenance and don’t require anything except humane treatment. We add Apple Cider Vinegar to their water daily, worm with grapefruit seed extract once every 4-6 months. When we have a mama with a brand new litter she gets a little calf manna as a treat. We’ve seen nestbox eye occasionally and treat it with vetricyn; every once in awhile we use Nutri-Drops as a supplement. That’s it. You now know our whole medicine chest for rabbits!

 

Because of our philosophy we don’t feel much angst about using BunnyVac, despite those people who are passionately speaking out against its use. BunnyVac is an insurance policy in our mind, a way to protect our investment in livestock.

 

At the beginning we vaccinated everything in our barn. Now, we only vaccinate a rabbit that goes out of our barn to a show. I believe it works – we haven’t seen any pastuerella here (knock on wood!) and I am aware that one of my rabbits who went to a large cooped show was definitely exposed to something, as the rabbit in the coop next to it was sneezing/snotting. Once that rabbit came home we kept it in quarantine for almost four months before putting it back in the main rabbitry. To date we still have seen no signs of any sickness.

We’ve written a few blog posts on BunnyVac over the years if you’d like to learn more about our personal experiences with it and more in-depth reasoning:

Snuffles, the Rabbit Boogie Man
Bunny Vac:
Bunny Vac: The 8 Month Follow Up

 

We’re always happy to answer any questions about this product, but honestly all of our answers are in these links! We’re almost two years into using it and have had good results. Just that simple!