I have two rabbits, let's breed em!

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imajpm

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This is why I dislike casual rabbit breeders, and why Craigslist should be the last place you buy rabbits if you can help it. Now I have bought some good rabbits from there but there are alot like this one. I've been seeing alot of bad French's in the last few months and every time I see an English being sold with the instructions to groom daily, I cringe.

This is Miss Piggy. She is two years old and retired to garden bunny/pet status. She is one of two angoras I went to look at on Craigslist some time ago. The other I rehomed to a groomer. He had a terrible coat and will live his life out in a puppy cut. They are English/French crosses. Just breeding because you can, can produce rabbits like this. It's especially bad in angora because a poor one is often too much for even an experienced person to handle. The coats of those two breeds are incompatible. One molts, one shears. If you're lucky you get one or the other type, if not you get Miss Piggy and Mr Darling. If your crossing for a reason then you can breed out the undesirable but selling these types is...well, irresponsible.

Miss Piggy has a partially molting coat. It grows in unevenly so her wool is not really very good. She has to be sheared and picked through due to the varying lengths. Miss Piggy has epilepsy and also regularly goes through gut stasis. She is just recovering from another episode of stasis. Two weeks ago she stopped eating and drinking. Three days into it, when nothing was tempting her, I started giving her "candy" just to get some food going through her. She liked that because candy (barley, BOSS, calf mana) is YUM! She was not eating hay, which she loves, but candy did the trick. Three days of candy and she was back on her food and water. If she had not begun eating and drinking then we'd have moved on to syringe feeding/watering.

She is a fantastic mother and loves babies. I discovered the epilepsy during her second litter. She has had one other litter in winter when her stress was the lowest and so it was not noticeable. Heat increases her seizures tremendously, to the point where they occur every day. Sadly for her, she won't ever have another litter. It's too stressful. With her problems, all of her kits were culled, as health is my number one. But she is a wonderful bunny and will stay here until life becomes too much for her.

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Blurry as usual. I cannot get a clear pic to save my life lol. That is barley fodder. She doesn't usually have any stasis issues on that but it won't grow in summer so she was back on pellets. The bunnies love it and are thrilled to have it back :D
 
I actually don't have a problem with breeding 2 animals because it's the ones you have or you wonder what they will make. The problem is no one thinks of what to do with the consequences. They sell everything they get to pet homes. I would never send a rabbit like that out into the pet trade. If a breeder could use it then I will sell it cheap. Otherwise it would stay here or it would go in the freezer. If everything I produced could only go on to a pet home I'd be a lot more careful with what I breed.
 
Yep I grow fodder in my kitchen. Bit crowded in there. I am just annoyed about Miss P. Made me think about Mr D who is a rabbit born to turn a person off angora forever. I guess I should have said, purposeless breeding or the one I hate the most, showing the kids the miracle of birth. I eat my experiments :) <br /><br /> -- Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:35 pm -- <br /><br />
Ramjet":2uxweu1o said:
You have two rabbits .... I hope they are both bucks! :p

Lol I tried to breed two bucks before. My "doe" was not amused.
 
I guess I'm a breeding snob, because it displeases me when I see people mixing 2 breeds together just for the sake of making more bunnies and trying to get $10-$15 each for them. Sadly there is a huge influx of "breeding cuz I can" in my area right now. I've seen "Netherland Dwarfs" that had bigger ears than my NZ mixes, "Dwarf Lionheads" that were clearly a mix between NDs and Lions, "Purebred Lionlops" that were first generation crosses of lionheads and some kind of lop, "Angora Lionheads" that I wasn't even quite sure what they were(maybe teddy lions, or lion x angora, or lion x wooly?).

Of course, if I speak out against them and their poor breeding practices(I normally see them in FB groups) I am just jealous that they are undercutting my prices and don't want the competition. Uhm, no, I have an issue with these mutt rabbits being sold as something they aren't and at the buyers for being mislead. But then I remind myself that the people who are buying these cheap, poor quality rabbits are exactly the type of person I wouldn't want to sell my rabbits to anyway, and I should be thanking these haphazard breeders for weeding out the poor homes that I wouldn't want my rabbits in!
 
I have no problem making pet ND that don't have ears that can be shown. They are still better quality than what such people are buying in pet stores. I know they will stay small (relatively on the ones without enough dwarf genes but again still better than pet stores) and I spent more money and time getting and then breeding ND with good personalities than on other breed characteristics. I have been breeding colors that aren't recognized so nearly everything goes as a pet and the main concern with a pet is personality, health, and then the basics like size. After that *some* people will care about the details but I only turned them into dog food if they failed the first 3 aspects. It's not that I'm randomly breeding things and don't care. I just have different goals. As long as people don't market what they have as something it's not or cross things like the original example when they know they will only sell to pet owners for the most part I don't care what they are producing. I would question any breeder who didn't keep health among their goals though.
 
Yep pets are fine. Rabbits make lovely pets. But akane your a breeder. What I consider, and maybe I am a snob too :), a breeder, is someone who has a plan, personal standards and an outlet for the product. Whether you breed crosses or stick to specific breeds, you have criteria that must be met.

Pets should be friendly, healthy, and cute. But what bunny isn't cute? Angora are a bit different. I raise meat breeds and Angora both. An angora can get away with some things that my meat bunnies cannot. If they have structural issues they can still produce wool. Those go in my no sale no breeding group though. What burns me up about cruddy angora breeding, and everyone thinks they will make a bundle with them, is the horrible coats. Those guys end up with terrible lives. The owners end up frustrated, discouraged and thinking they are poor rabbit owners when they are not! I want more people to buy angoras not more thinking they are too much work. Because they are not, if they have correct and quality coats.

Bad Habit":22m3xrxg said:
Of course, if I speak out against them and their poor breeding practices(I normally see them in FB groups) I am just jealous that they are undercutting my prices and don't want the competition. Uhm, no, I have an issue with these mutt rabbits being sold as something they aren't and at the buyers for being mislead. But then I remind myself that the people who are buying these cheap, poor quality rabbits are exactly the type of person I wouldn't want to sell my rabbits to anyway, and I should be thanking these haphazard breeders for weeding out the poor homes that I wouldn't want my rabbits in!

lol so true. I have to bite my tongue. Some of those FB groups can be ok but there is always some wackjob showing up! One who is bugging me right now "specializes in lionhead crosses" Umm...then she goes and asks some very basic care questions lol. *sighs* I looked that lady up and she was busted for animal hoarding just three weeks ago, and all her animals seized, but is back at it already. Digressing... :lol:
 
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