Record-keeping but not for show/registration

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dfr1973

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So, I have found one of my unused comp books and begun to fill out what information I have on my bunnies. Along with names, I am assigning each bunny an alpha-numeric identifier. I may or may not find a pen style tattooer to put the identifier on ears (have not decided). I will be getting weights on all my adults over the next couple days. When known, I am jotting down birth dates, parents, where and when purchased if not born here, and started tabulating breeding records.
:bunnyhop:
I am not interested in registering with ARBA, nor showing. (I happily live in the middle of nowhere and feel no desire to travel for shows.) I do work with the bunnies, and will take good pet prospects up to the farm market to sell, so that is a big reason I am keeping the pedigrees (along with production notes!) as people tend to pull the wallet out faster if a critter has a pedigree. Hey, this is one of the top five counties in the state when ranked by lowest income per capita, so any selling point helps.
:pancake:
One of the data points in the litter notes will be average live weight, dressed weight, and from there calculate percentage. If I get good at deboning rabbit, then I can include bone:meat ratio as well. Question: What are some good milestone ages in weeks for weighing litters? :?:
Am I overlooking any useful information? I should probably state here I am breeding Rex-furred meat mutts for both meat and fur, with the practical goal of getting heat-tolerant breeders to extend our rather short breeding season here.
:popcorn:
Hit me with your best shot (as the old song goes ... age check!)
 
I record,
dam, sire, breeding dates, number born in litter,[and the kindling date] number weaned, 8 week weaning weight for individuals I may keep, and for the entire litter.
When I raised for fur, i also recorded notes about color and fur quality... I kept hutch cards on all breedstock cages, to make sure things were written down when they happened... I recorded the info from hutch cards in the notebook, and transferred some info from the mother's hutch card , to a new doe or buck's hutch card. I kept the notebook in a cabinet in the rabbitry, so there was no excuse for procrastinating my record keeping...
 
If you happen to have an older computer (Win7 is considered 'older', I think?) then you can get a free copy of Kintracks which is a really useful pedigree program. Even if your computer is too new and you have to pay for the program, it's under $20. And, if you're not decided as to if it's useful or not, you can download a free version of it and use it for up to somewhere around 400 animals before you have to pay to let you add more.

I've been using it for about ten years now and it's really brilliant to be able to go back and search the database for all sorts of things.

Here's the 'older computer' description from their website: "Kintraks programs are FREE AND UNRESTRICTED for Windows 7, Mac Mavericks and earlier, and all Linux distros." and here's a link for the download: [b]https://kintraks.com/downloads.htm[/b]

You can put in your own things to keep track of and there's already a lot of categories that can be filled in.

For mine, I made an 'animal' entry for the whole farm itself so I keep journal notes that are for all the bunnies instead of an individual bunny.

We also live in the middle of nowhere without bunny shows around, but I still breed to ARBA standards and occasionally will sell a bunny to someone on another island who does have the option to take the bunny to a show. "Show quality" and "pedigree" does make a difference in the price and folks seem willing to go along with the increase with those two characteristics even though I doubt many of the bunnies actually get to a show
 

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