Hello! My family and I are new to the rabbit world. My daughter wanted to show market rabbits for her local county fair, so we have been open ears and learning so much! Our litter (Californians) of 8 rabbits will be 66 days old on show day (5 weeks from today). She also has another litter of 2 that will be 64 days old on show day. They are all still with mom, but we plan to hold back the twins once we separate after validation on Sunday. They are about 10oz more than the litter of 8.
Our litter of 8 weighed in a little over 17 ounces at 4 weeks (this past Sunday) so we are behind unfortunately. I’m also aware for next year to have our breeder try to breed out at 101-103 days out for show. With this behind said, we have some catching up to do. My goal is to try to have the litter of 8 gain a minimum of 10 ounces a week. We are currently feeding a high protein, BOSS and cal manna to try and catch them up. I was also suggested to sprinkle in oats now. We provide fresh water and food twice daily. The rabbits tend to eat a lot more a night compared to their snacking through the day. Does 10 ounces a week for gain sound possible per kit? I feel confident that these rabbits came from good genetics. We were able to see the buck and doe and everyone looked nice and healthy. There were about 8 does to pick from and he helped us pick out the two best.
On average, our meat pen bunnies grow about a half pound a week, though of course that does not translate to 8 ounces each and every week as the growth is almost exponential during much of that time. I think that a 10 ounce gain per week may be a little overly optimistic, but some Californian lines do have incredible growth rates, so I wouldn't say it's impossible. (I rarely say
anything is impossible.
)
In our Satins, last year's Grand and Reserve Champion meat pen bunnies weighed between 1#13oz and 2#1oz at 4 weeks, and between 5.0 and 5.5lbs at 10 weeks, which translates to roughly 3 to 3.5 pounds in 6 weeks. Maybe your Cals will have faster growth rates than our Satins.
Different fairs can have different judging standards, but if the judging goes according to the ARBA standard (which those weights come from), I wouldn't be excessively concerned with getting the bunnies to a 5.5lb weight. As long as they're within the correct range, meat type and flesh condition of the bunnies is more important, as well as the uniformity of the three rabbits. The ARBA Standard of Perfection (I'd encourage you/your daughter to get a copy if you don't already have one
https://arba.net/product/standard-of-perfection/) gives this point schedule for judging meat pens:
Meat type...............................................40pts
Flesh Condition....................................30 pts
Uniformity of body and weight.....20 pts
Fur.............................................................10 pts
Total........................................................100 pts
You see that there are no points for weight, per se. If an entry is very young - say, someone enters 6-week-old Cals that weigh 3.5 lbs each - they won't lose on weight, but they will lose points on flesh condition, since they will not be well-developed, well-muscled fryers by that point. All things being equal (they rarely are), bigger rabbits will beat smaller rabbits; however, fryers that weigh 4lbs each but have excellent muscle tone and type will generally beat 5lb fryers that are soft and blubbery.
So, feeding to put on extra fat isn't ideal. If you've been feeding BOSS and Calf Manna all along, that's probably just fine, but I'd be careful about adding too much of that if they and their dams haven't been eating it already. Four to 10 weeks is prime time for enteritis, which will totally tank your growth rates (and might kill the bunnies), so be careful about changes.
In our experience (our daughters have been raising and showing winning meat pens at our fair since 2020), weaning age has more to do with growth rates than feed, assuming you're feeding a good diet. It sounds like maybe you're leasing some does from a breeder? My suggestion would be to wean the bunnies as late as you can get away with. Eight weeks is better than 6 weeks, and in fact we get our best results with leaving the bunnies with the dam until fair time. If you can't do that, second best is leaving the bunnies in the cage they grew up in and moving the dam to a different cage. If you can't do that either, your bunnies will still probably do fine, though you might see a plateau in growth while they adjust to their new situation. In that case, I'd recommend keeping everything about their diet and schedule as similar as possible to what they're used to.
I posted some growth rate charts for meat pen bunnies, with more information about the effects of weaning timing, here:
https://rabbittalk.com/threads/weaning-kits.37607/#post-365104
