A Cruise thru S.F. Bay Area Craigslist just now...

[DogCatMom]

...showed me that all kinds of rabbit announcements can be posted--and survive--in the "Farm and Garden" section. I also wanted a reality check on some of the prices....

(1) Dwarf Netherlands 6-week-old kits $85 each
(2) "Feral Bunnies and Rabbits"--a family has been trapping rabbits in their yard and wants to sell them for $5 each!!! I shuddered; feelings of fear re. disease, attacking people and other rabbits, who knows what....
(3) "Friendly Flemish Giant" bunnies 9 weeks old--$45 each (price has been "lowered")
(4) "Rare Blue-Eyed Lionhead Bunnies"--$100 each (age not provided, but definitely very young)
(5) "Are you looking for fresh organic rabbit meat?" with a picture of a whole, skinned rabbit (sorry, but I found it too graphic, even though I accept the idea that other people do eat rabbit--please show me the cuts, not a posed whole rabbit). This provider is in Hollister; price not provided.

Do responsible breeders really ask for prices like this? I'm pretty sure that responsible breeders don't trawl Craigslist for clients.... Although, since things in the dog world are so different from the rabbit world, maybe it's an accepted practice. I'm still figuring stuff out.

It looks like "Farm and Garden," and not "Pets," is the place to go--even in the San Francisco region--to avoid flagging, should one be pushed into a situation of needing to use CL.

 

[Kyle@theWintertime]

I use Craigslist because I feel it gives me more exposure. However I also use other websites and utilize Facebook rabbit groups, too. Mostly though, I think a lot of show-breeders just bring stock to sell to shows and put up signs. Gotten a few really nice rabbits that way.

As to these specifically.......

(1) Dwarf Netherlands 6-week-old kits $85 each

Can't recall where you are from but that is illegally young for selling in several states. If the kits are show-quality from good bloodlines, I would say $85 might be okay but since they're selling at six weeks, when they can't even be evaluated for true type IMO, I doubt they are worth that.

(2) "Feral Bunnies and Rabbits"--a family has been trapping rabbits in their yard and wants to sell them for $5 each!!! I shuddered; feelings of fear re. disease, attacking people and other rabbits, who knows what....

HOLY COW. :x I doubt that's legal...and yeah, the disease thing scares me. Poor rabbits...wait, are they cottontails or just feral domestics?!

(3) "Friendly Flemish Giant" bunnies 9 weeks old--$45 each (price has been "lowered")

That might not be too bad. Broodstock or show quality juniors can be pricey. Flemish are popular so I imagine that will drive the price up since the demand is high.

(4) "Rare Blue-Eyed Lionhead Bunnies"--$100 each (age not provided, but definitely very young)

LOL rip off. They are either BEW or Vienna marked with blue eyes, and either way NOT RARE. Sadly though the Lionhead breed is actually really cool and a very good, established breed, a few people have begun treating them like the designer dog puppies of the rabbit world. :evil: Makes it that much harder on the REAL breeders.

Some perspective: gal was selling out of Lionheads and had a bunch at the last show I went to. She had Vienna marked Lionheads for $20 for broodstock. GOOD ones, too. We had a nice conversation about dogs and she spent a while admiring the Angora doe I was delivering to a new home...she'd moved from Angoras to Lionheads when she retired.

Any time you see "rare color" be leery, that's my rule.

(5) "Are you looking for fresh organic rabbit meat?" with a picture of a whole, skinned rabbit (sorry, but I found it too graphic, even though I accept the idea that other people do eat rabbit--please show me the cuts, not a posed whole rabbit). This provider is in Hollister; price not provided.

Odd that they wouldn't include price. :shock:

Basically, what drives prices is quality, availability, and demand. Quality usually costs a lot more, for obvious reasons. Availability and demand are more breed-related. More popular breeds will have higher demand but the market may be saturated so sometimes you can get a sweet deal.

I have seen good, show-quality, registered, show-winning rabbits sold for hundreds. I've also seen them go for a lot less.

Since you are aiming at an Angora...I hate to say it but a good pet-quality or wooler-quality Angora is likely going to be expensive. Show-quality can get CRAZY expensive. I've seen people charge--and get--$100 for a pet-quality Angora.

Does that mean they will all be that expensive? Naw. I got one doe for $20. Her breeder had a random fluke: every litter she had was ALL BLACK, ALL DOES. She reached the point where she had to make space in her rabbitry, and so the price went down to $20 per kit. Doesn't mean the doe wasn't worth the original $100 asking price...just that there was no more demand in her area.

Some of the rarer breeds, you'd be amazed...they can go shockingly inexpensive. My biggest winner, my BOB and two-time BOSB winner buck? Was $25. He's obviously high-quality, the right bloodlines, fantastic buck...but there just isn't too much demand for some of the rarer breeds.

Ultimately what you are paying for is a breeder's hard work, time and effort as much as the animal itself. Breeding good rabbits is tough, and can be expensive; most breeders are so deep in the red it's not even funny.

However some of the Craigslist ads there...seem questionable to me.

 

[DogCatMom]

Thank you for validating my "WHAT?!" on the Netherlands babies. 6 weeks old...too young.

The photo in the "feral trapped rabbits" announcement showed a young boy (6 or 7 y.o.) holding a rabbit face-on to the camera, so all the viewer can see is a tawny colored rabbit (brown and white ticking on the face) and brownish straight-up ears. No body style is visible, no tail is visible. But still...trapping and *selling* unknown vectors??? Let's hope they're turned in...Wait a minute! They're in MY county (although the county likes to pretend our corner of it doesn't exist). Does this fall under Vector Control? Animal Control? Suggestions?

I've seen many pix of Lionheads in the last few weeks--ever since I began looking into rabbits. Rescues describe some of their longer-haired rabbits as "Lionheads" when they're not calling them "Angoras," and the "Lionhead" ID seems accurate more often than the "Angora" ID (maybe 25% of the time vs. 0 to 5% of the time so far).

Re. "Rare [whatever] coloring" reminding you of "designer dogs": All of these purpose-bred dog mutts are driving purebred types, purebred rescue groups, regular rescues, and shelters ABSOLUTELY NUTS. "Oh, I was looking for a Schnoodle" (or whatever weird smushed-up conglomeration is hot this week). "Sorry; I'm not sure what those look like." "What?! Several of my friends have them [flipping out phone pix, showing very different-looking dogs]." "Umm...we have a few dogs that look like some of these; would you like to meet them?" "Not unless they're Schnoodles." Exits stage right, leaving rescue worker completely weirded out. These people will pay Purebred Bux and then some for a cross-bred dog of some kind and then (most likely) will try to put their "boy" together with a friend's "girl" and wonder, "What bizarre puppies! They don't look anything like the parents!" And of course their dreams of Really Big Bux go down the drain, and the shelter gets more mutts. *sigh*

Flemish Giant--hey, if it's a popular breed, then "what the market will bear" IS the price.

Re. pastured, organic rabbit to eat: I've purchased grass-fed steak and I've purchased a whole grass-fed lamb (Jacob lamb, so pretty small; he dressed out at approx. 70 lb, including the odd bits for the dogs). You def. pay more per pound for grass-fed/pastured meat, but I would've expected to see a per-pound price in the CL announcement. The only objectionable feature to me of that ad was the "rabbit running" pose. I have a terminal case of "Fuzzy Bunny Syndrome," or whatever the meat people call it. I'll probably have to have one of them bail my rear end out, though, if a bun of mine gets into so much medical trouble that I just can't afford to have him/her "repaired." I'm still paying off dog vet bills and will be for a while.

(Hypothetical phone call/email: "Hi, Rabbit Meat Person: I'm in a fix." "Umm...OK." "I have a really sick/whatever rabbit." "Is it contagious?" "[me: response]" "[meat person] What can I do for you?" "I'd like to deliver it to you on a one-way ticket...." and so forth.)

I'm not expecting to get a healthy, fiber-producing Angora of any variety for $25!!! Right now, it looks like there are only two varieties bred within a 4-hour driving distance of my house, but maybe at the Monterey County Fair (Labor Day weekend) and/or the two Angora shows mid-September I can meet all four varieties and some breeders, get an understanding of reasonable/normal prices, etc. As with the Flemish Giants, I expect the price for an Angora to be a "market will bear" situation, as well as showing consideration to the breeder for all of her (or his) efforts. Definitely.

I was looking at CL b/c of a discussion here at RT where a member was harassed by Animal Rights types for announcing her rabbit young for sale as pets and being flagged and sent flaming, practically obscene emails. :angry: That kind of stuff makes me crazy mad, sending obscene emails. Somewhere in that exchange, somebody remarked that "even on the Farm & Garden section" one probably couldn't put the word "rabbit" in a San Francisco CL, or words to that effect.

So I checked it out. There were TONS of rabbit announcements in F&G; these were just five of them--a couple of "normals," and a couple (trapped rabbits?!) definitely NOT. I didn't bother checking the "Pets" section, though.

 

[Kyle@theWintertime]

Thank you for validating my "WHAT?!" on the Netherlands babies. 6 weeks old...too young.

I'd frankly consider reporting that. :evil: You are in Cali, right? I do believe it's illegal to sell a kit under eight weeks there. Poor babies!!! Yeah I had a jaw-drop "whaaat!" moment when I read it, very not cool!!!

The photo in the "feral trapped rabbits" announcement showed a young boy (6 or 7 y.o.) holding a rabbit face-on to the camera, so all the viewer can see is a tawny colored rabbit (brown and white ticking on the face) and brownish straight-up ears. No body style is visible, no tail is visible. But still...trapping and *selling* unknown vectors??? Let's hope they're turned in...Wait a minute! They're in MY county (although the county likes to pretend our corner of it doesn't exist). Does this fall under Vector Control? Animal Control? Suggestions?

Maybe give Animal Control a call and just ask if that's legal or not...and if not, tell them to look at Craigslist.

I've seen many pix of Lionheads in the last few weeks--ever since I began looking into rabbits. Rescues describe some of their longer-haired rabbits as "Lionheads" when they're not calling them "Angoras," and the "Lionhead" ID seems accurate more often than the "Angora" ID (maybe 25% of the time vs. 0 to 5% of the time so far).

Yeah I think rescues assume any hairy rabbit is an Angora...or a Lionhead...or both. Can't remember what rabbit site it was (wasn't here) but a gal was posting pictures of her brand new "Angora" from a rescue and we all kind of cringed and had to tell her it's a Lionhead at best.

Likewise, saw a rescue claiming to have rare "Mini Angoras" available. Clicked...and oh look, really shoddy-looking Jersey Woolies. :roll:

Re. "Rare [whatever] coloring" reminding you of "designer dogs": All of these purpose-bred dog mutts are driving purebred types, purebred rescue groups, regular rescues, and shelters ABSOLUTELY NUTS. "Oh, I was looking for a Schnoodle" (or whatever weird smushed-up conglomeration is hot this week). "Sorry; I'm not sure what those look like." "What?! Several of my friends have them [flipping out phone pix, showing very different-looking dogs]." "Umm...we have a few dogs that look like some of these; would you like to meet them?" "Not unless they're Schnoodles." Exits stage right, leaving rescue worker completely weirded out. These people will pay Purebred Bux and then some for a cross-bred dog of some kind and then (most likely) will try to put their "boy" together with a friend's "girl" and wonder, "What bizarre puppies! They don't look anything like the parents!" And of course their dreams of Really Big Bux go down the drain, and the shelter gets more mutts. *sigh*

Oh don't get me started on designer mutts, LOL!!! Makes me crazy. I have no problem whatsoever with crossing dogs for a purpose...knew a guy who crossed a few different Pointing breeds to make his own perfect Pointers...I know a gal on the forum here who produces REALLY nice Australian Shepherd crossed with I think ACD (look like AWESOME farm/working dogs!!!) and I remember somewhere a person crossed a Malinois with a GSD hoping for a dog that was as keen as the Mal but less "hot" for Ringsport. All very valid crosses!!!!!

Crossing a Poodle to whatever...NO PURPOSE. I hate how people misrepresent them. "Oh, my Chugishnoodle is HYPOALLERGENIC because it's part POOOOOOODLE!!!" Uhhhno. Fun fact! Poodles produce allergens, too!!! They are mostly non-shedding, MOSTLY...but not hypoallergenic...and when crossed, the pups may NOT inherit the non-shedding.

As a groomer, I dread it when an owner says "Oh, I have a purebred Goldendoodle I'd like to get groomed!" SORRY, I WON'T. I'm done with them. Every single one I've met has inherited the Golden's propensity to shed, and the Poodle's tight-curling mat-prone coat...shedding plus Poodle curl...I've literally had NIGHTMI ARES about these dogs. And inevitably, the owner REFUSES to let me just shave their matted mess. So what if the dog is matted to the BONE, covered in maggots, smells like rancid bologna mixed with vomit, and has plants growing out of it's mats...NAW LET ME BRUSH THAT OUT FOR YA!!!! :roll:

Had a crazy lady yell at me once. I have a Chihuahua x Dachshund. She's a Chihuahua mix...I call her that because she took HEAVILY after her mom. I got her from a rescue...some fool didn't know that two different breeds can breed together and surrendered the litter, dam AND sire one day after the pups were born, so I have met her parents and siblings. Lady went off on me for spaying my "Chiweenie." LMAO oh gods I will never call her that. She's a mutt. A delightful mutt, but a MUTT. Lady insisted I could sell her puppies for THOUSANDS because "Chiweenies" are a fancy new, rare breed!!! Dude, my dog has major health issues. My vet told me pregnancy would KILL HER. No way am I risking my dog! Besides, she has bilateral luxating patellas, tiny-dog-style hip dysplasia, bone density problems, a malformed jaw, a hole in her skull and she has episodes of hypoglycemia. NO WAY SHOULD SHE EVER, EVER BE BRED!!! She's a genetic nightmare!!!!!!!

I have no problem with mutts but they are not "fancy new breeds" and I swear, most all designer "breeders" really ARE in it for the money, and that gives GOOD breeders a bad name. :evil:

LOL told you I'm cranky when it comes to designer dogs!!!

Flemish Giant--hey, if it's a popular breed, then "what the market will bear" IS the price.

Well, I only know that anecdotally, may be different where you are, but around here seems like EVERYBODY wants one, and local breeders almost NEVER sell, so they get pretty pricey around here.

The only objectionable feature to me of that ad was the "rabbit running" pose. I have a terminal case of "Fuzzy Bunny Syndrome," or whatever the meat people call it.

I think the reason they do that is to show that the whole animal is fresh and healthy. I would frankly be suspicious of an add where they've already cut up the carcass. But then again I'm also weird about meat looking like meat instead of a carcass.

I have "fuzzy bunny" syndrome for my nestlings. It wears off when I think about all the ways to prepare dinner and realize my freezer is empty.

I've purchased grass-fed steak and I've purchased a whole grass-fed lamb (Jacob lamb, so pretty small; he dressed out at approx. 70 lb, including the odd bits for the dogs). You def. pay more per pound for grass-fed/pastured meat, but I would've expected to see a per-pound price in the CL announcement.

Yeah I do find that strange that they didn't list price. :?

Grass-fed is soooo good. Grass fed LAMB is the best. Plus it makes me feel good that it was a happy lamb.

(Hypothetical phone call/email: "Hi, Rabbit Meat Person: I'm in a fix." "Umm...OK." "I have a really sick/whatever rabbit." "Is it contagious?" "[me: response]" "[meat person] What can I do for you?" "I'd like to deliver it to you on a one-way ticket...." and so forth.)

Well for what it's worth, if someone called me up and said they needed a rabbit to be euthanized, I'd do it for them. I know how hard it is to lose a pet but...honestly I was just reading on FB where some people went to HORRIBLE lengths. One gal had a rabbit with severe head tilt...according to her posts, her rabbit was unable to walk, was rolling constantly...and she kept it alive in that terrible state for EIGHT MONTHS. I cannot even imagine the suffering...so I'd do that for anyone who asked. And then bleach the heck out of my Wringer just in case. :x

I'm not expecting to get a healthy, fiber-producing Angora of any variety for $25!!! Right now, it looks like there are only two varieties bred within a 4-hour driving distance of my house, but maybe at the Monterey County Fair (Labor Day weekend) and/or the two Angora shows mid-September I can meet all four varieties and some breeders, get an understanding of reasonable/normal prices, etc. As with the Flemish Giants, I expect the price for an Angora to be a "market will bear" situation, as well as showing consideration to the breeder for all of her (or his) efforts. Definitely.

Well you never know. My "cheap" Angora was a very decent little doe; I kept that breeder's card when I had to sell out of Angoras, I'll be knocking on her door again when I'm ready to get back into them. But yeah most will cost more than that...and I'm sure I'll be paying her regular price when I'm ready to take on Angoras again.

I was looking at CL b/c of a discussion here at RT where a member was harassed by Animal Rights types for announcing her rabbit young for sale as pets and being flagged and sent flaming, practically obscene emails. :angry: That kind of stuff makes me crazy mad, sending obscene emails. Somewhere in that exchange, somebody remarked that "even on the Farm & Garden section" one probably couldn't put the word "rabbit" in a San Francisco CL, or words to that effect.

A lot of anti-breeder Animal Rights radicals can be vicious. I got threatened and called the "new Hitler" for breeding and showing rabbits. I had to laugh at the very notion that producing pampered show bunnies is comparable in their eyes to the genocide of MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE...but the scary thing is that's really how they see it. So they easily justify harassment and cruelty towards good breeders because they see us as vicious genocidal maniacs. The person even went so far as to claim that breeding for good health and temperament as well as good type (which is my ultimate goal...I want the "total package" of traits!) is basically a cruel eugenics experiment. :roll:

I'm never shocked by the rudeness and obscenities the ARs fling, merely shocked at each new (and increasingly absurd) accusation.

By the by...I really wish they would go find a family who was touched by the horrors of the Holocaust and explain to THEM how what I'm doing is totally as bad as that. I'm pretty sure they'd get ripped a new one...or worse. To even imply that breeding responsibly for a clear purpose is the same as genocide is an insult to the victims of genocide as well as the survivors.

So I checked it out. There were TONS of rabbit announcements in F&G; these were just five of them--a couple of "normals," and a couple (trapped rabbits?!) definitely NOT. I didn't bother checking the "Pets" section, though.

There may be more there...I see a lot of "free bunny with cage" posts on the pet section though, less breeder-oriented. :?