Dress-out weight on a mini rex?

[Devon's Mom Lauren]

When breeding the next generation of half rexes to each other you will get a 50% chance of rex fur back; 25% normal fur and 25% normal fur but carrying rex .Anything with a rex parent will have the rex gene, just not show it. so you will get that fur back fairly fast.

 

[eco2pia]

neato!

 

[mybighair]

The percentages are a little off on breeding first generation rex crosses to each other, you get 50% normal fur that carry a rex gene, 25% normal fur that don't carry a rex gene, and 25% rex fur.

Those 25% rex will still have roughly 50% of the non rex (Cal/NW) genes, so by crossing the best of them back to the meat breed parent and repeating the sibling cross over a few generations you could develop a rex furred NW or Cal line. With the dwarf gene being dominant you could also maintain the smaller size of the mini rex in your line while selecting for faster grown, better feed conversion and better bone to meat ratios. A few years work could produce something that's equally attractive to the meat, pelt, and pet market.

So out of curiosity, and seeing as this thread is a few years old now. Has anyone gone anywhere with these crosses?

 

[Nymphadora]

So out of curiosity, and seeing as this thread is a few years old now. Has anyone gone anywhere with these crosses?

As you pointed out, mybighair, this thread is pretty darn old... and some of the members might not even be very active on RabbitTalk anymore.

To avoid resurrecting zombie threads (like this one :zombiebun, it would be best to start a fresh new thread and maybe reference this one with a link, if you'd like.

Best of luck! :good-luck:


PS: I'd also like to welcome you to the RabbitTalk forums! May you find our little community helpful and fun!
:welcomewagon:

 

[michaels4gardens]

In years past.... many breeds were "Rexed" when the fur market was big ..

 

[GBov]

I quite liked MR for meat, from memory - without weights as I am chronic about forgetting to weigh things - it took THREE MR fryers to equal TWO NZ fryers when making them into a meal for my crew and took about 3 extra weeks to get to that point.

So not bad at all, esp. as the adults can have much smaller cages and eat less. Don't be fooled, they act like they are starving all the time but they really can eat less. :roll:

BUT!!!

They also have much smaller livers, hearts and kidneys AND pelts and to be honest, the livers won so we went back to Standard Rex.

If they exist in your area and you want the plush coat, just go with Rex, either size. You can breed down in size or up in size, adding chunkiness or a more refined body while just working with rex.

Having done crosses when Rex were hard to find in my area I found it was very hard to get rid of the longer guard hairs on the chest and shoulders, no matter how many generations I went to and finally gave it up on, I think, generation 6 and ate them all.

My favorite part of a pelt is the dewlap so to have it not perfect was frustrating, when searching my dried hide pile just lately I came across one of "those rabbits" hide and it was just as odd now, short plush pelt with long wispy random hairs. Not much use for anything but dog toys.

Sometimes is it worth it to start the easy way and go from there instead of the hard way. :lol: