Raising Standard Rex breeders

I have acquired a trio of standard Rex Castor rabbits. They are 9 weeks old now. I plan to breed for both show and meat/pelts. I may be over thinking this but I want to get them on a good path to show. The first show in our area that they can be shown at is in Sept when they will be about 5 months old. I would like to know what I can do to get them in good coat, good condition, and used to being handled and posed.

The breeder fed them a mix of pellets, oats, BOSS, and calf manna along with forage. I will be setting up a sprouting system for sprouting wheat/oats/BOSS/Flaxseed to feed them along with pellets and forage. I'm not a fan of calf manna because it's first ingredient is soybeans.

Is it true that too much BOSS can cause them to blow their coat? (and make them fat) Is that true just for unsprouted BOSS or also for sprouted BOSS?

What specific things can I feed that will get them in good coat without feeding soybean based supplements?

What grooming, if any, should I do with their baby coats?

How often should I practice posing them?

The only grooming I do on my Rex is if they get pee stained or are moulting. Then I mostly just wipe them off if they're moulting and for stains I mist with 1/2 & 1/2 vinegar and water then scrub. While feed does play a role good coat is mostly genetics in my experience but I also only feed pellets and hay cubes.
While I handle my rabbits a lot I don't do a ton of posing, mostly because I really suck at it.

I'm just getting into rex as well. The breeder I spoke to supplemented with flaxseed and black sunflower seeds. All of her rabbits looked really good and she was winning at the show table with it. I'll probably do the same for mine because of how hers looked.

CloverHen":2fyw9cxq said:

I'm just getting into rex as well. The breeder I spoke to supplemented with flaxseed and black sunflower seeds. All of her rabbits looked really good and she was winning at the show table with it. I'll probably do the same for mine because of how hers looked.

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Having looked at various supplements sold to "condition" rabbits for show, it seems like BOSS, Flaxseed (Linseed) along with things like brewers yeast, nutritional yeast, and kelp are popular ingredients in the supplements. Oh, and most of them recommend adding some wheat germ oil as well.

I would recommend being careful with the use of BOSS as it can fatten the rabbits up. But, the other ingredients mentioned above are good sources of B vitamins, probiotics, antioxidants, and various vitamins and minerals. The thing about the supplements that I don't like is they usually use either corn or soybeans (or both) as the "carrier/filler" and I don't want to feed either corn or soybeans to my rabbits. But, I'm thinking I can mix up my own mixture of the active ingredients and sprinkle on sprouted grains before serving.

I weighed my Rexs' and found that their growth has been adversely affected since I got them two weeks ago. I not sure but either I was giving them too much forage that was too low in protein or ??? ...I have cut down on the forage so they will eat more pellets and I'll see if their weight gain starts up again. As soon as possible, I'm going to mix up the supplement and get the grains sprouting so I can begin giving it to them and see how that goes.

BOSS can cause rabbits to blow coat, if too much of it is suddenly given. From what I've read on RT, a teaspoon a day should be enough to condition the coat without causing it to blow.