Years ago, when my daughter was raising and showing mini-lops, they were in high demand, especially the blues, which were her best line, and ones she was continuoulsy winning with. We would never sell one with poor confrimation to anone that wanted to breed, but there was a high demand for pets, and it sure helped with the feed bill. We explained to the buyer that these were not show qality animals and they wer not for breeding, and sold them for considerably less than the show quality stock. After about a year, we started seeing a trend, where the animals wer purchased for childrens pets, and many of them ended up in a small hutch out in the corner of the yard, totaly neglected, untill they would get starved, or sick. We stopped selling them as pets. I am not saying anything against those who do. Many people now follow up on the sold pets, place them with adults, not children, and offer a return policy.
There is actually a humorous story out of this whole thing. We had a boy down the street that was constantly pesteering us for a pet rabbit. To be honest, he was a mean kid, so for a couple of years we made one excuse after another. My daughter decide she wanted to get a Netherland Dwarf as a house rabbit. Back then, NDs were notoriously unfriendly (I suspect that has been bred out of them by now).
This little thing was the meanest animal I have ever run across..If it was the size of a rotweiler... they would have made a horror move about it. It would cozy up to somone all nice and cute, and just when they were oohing and aahing about how cute he was he would turn and bite the %$*# out of them. He was also smart enough to know what you didn't want him to do...and if he was displeased in some way would purposefully do it. Anyway, we decided that he and the mean kid would be a nice fit...and we figured one day we would end up murdering the thing.. so we give it to the boy. We were amazed... he kept the ND for several years and they got along great... I suspect he probably "sic"ed it on his friends for fun :shock: