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I am a fan of starting with milking stock. You know for sure what the udder texture & support and teats will look like, how she behaves when milking, how much she milks, how loud she is. Kids are an unknown quantity. When I was building my goat dairy herd over 40 years ago, I found that while...

Angora goats are bred to produce more fiber, not more milk, so they tend to have short lactations with little milk, generally (there's always exceptions). So, if you start with good milking stock, that should put you ahead when you cross to Angora for the fiber. If you can find good Nigora stock...

This would be a vote against mini Nubians. I love Nubians, raised them for decades, even had some with good conformation and a gallon and a half of milk a day--but their voice is loud, constant, and insistent. It takes time to get a good quality fiber on the crossbred goats. The first cross...

No, curly (Astrex) is a different gene, which is said to only be expressed in combination with Rex. Wirehaired is supposed to be incompletely dominant. It causes a coat made of mostly guard hair, with reduced hair coverage. There's another thread about this at...

Perfect example, thank you! Harlequin just didn't seem likely, but I couldn't come up with any other explanation for all those orange patches.

Trouble I've found is that the rats will search for a way in, a 1" hole is like an open invitation. So that means that roof sections, sidewalls, around J-feeders/water bottles all need to be covered with the 1/4 to 1/2" hardware cloth. Such a pain.

Sorry, no test for breed that I know of for rabbits. But I have another question--this could just be my monitor, or light differences when the photo was taken, but is the rabbit's right ear (the left looking at the photo) really part chocolate and part yellowish? The back looks like there are...

Looks like a "snowball", a word for two different conditions with the same trait--the dark color only goes a short distance into the fiber before the hair turns white. They got the name snowball because they look like "dirty snowballs", just a little dark color on an otherwise whitish coat. When...

From the looks of the chocolate on the nose, which is in uneven patches, I think this bunny may already carry a harlequin gene. Tort is recessive to harlequin, so a harlequin buck would work well for you. Since you don't want black kits, why not choose a chocolate harlequin? Your rabbit appears...

It sure can be hard to choose which rabbits to keep, which to cull, and which to sell. Been doing this for over four decades, and it gets harder, not easier! Just love those bunnies.

I can't see the attachment either, sorry.

Fascinating colors. Okay, so mom is a brindled harlequin, although she does have eye rings (a proper harlequin shouldn't). You can see all the mottling of colors in her coat: dad looks like a dilute blue/fawn tricolor, and mystery baby also has harlequin. Look at the patches of color on his...

Nope. Black babies have bellies and inner ears all the same color--black. But agouti patterned rabbits have lighter bellies, and most noticeable even as newborns--those light inner ears. By the third day, they should look quite white inside the ears. Regular black agouti rabbits (called...

What things in particular?

Sounds good.

Tell me about your rabbit pen. How far apart are the wires? Standard cage sidewalls are 1" x 2" holes, flooring is usually 1/2" x 1". Rats, weasels, and snakes can go right through holes as small as a quarter, and they all love baby bunnies. If predators were getting into the pen, or simply...

Fascinating colors

Did we determine what the undercolor on the reddish kit was?

Okay, Flemish have interesting color names. Translated: Fawn--rich golden straw color, shading to light cream at base Sandy--chestnut brown, brassy reddish intermediate band, slate gray undercoat--aka chestnut or castor agouti Frosty/ermine--(not a showable color, but it occurs when fawn 'ee'...

The eye rings say either tan 'a(t)' or agouti 'A_'. The banding on the ear hair says it is agouti: The silver band says chinchilla or sable. The lighter shading down the sides of the rabbit looks like a sable based color, which would make it a sable chinchilla. That's my guess, anyway.