I was very surprised when I saw a listing selling four-week-old bunnies this week on Craigslist, suggesting them as Christmas gifts with a few in a Christmas decorated box. They certainly are irresistibly cute at that age! There are many thoughts on when to wean young kits from their mother's milk, which means when to separate them from their mothers also. When it comes to rabbits, we often look how rabbits do things in the wild because those instincts still drive the domesticated rabbits of all breeds. Whether the mother leaves them or they leave on their own at three to five weeks, young wild rabbits can get what they need nutritionally on their own. However, the reality is that young wild bunnies are quite vulnerable to predators who also need to eat. Many breeders wean their bunnies at four weeks and there is nothing particularly wrong with that practice when the breeder's purpose is to keep or sell to other breeders the stronger and faster growing of the kin...

A few days before Christmas, I had contacted another Silver Fox breeder, JRRF, whom 4K had recommended months before. I had tried to get with her in August when I was looking for a buck and she only had does. I had needed a doe then also, so I was hoping to have a look, although a SF buck was my priority at that time. Still, we scheduled a meeting that was canceled because she was called into work and we just did not get back with each other. I did not pursue it then because was a little hesitant about getting Silver Foxes that were white carriers, which usually is not a gene most Silver Fox breeders would want, and at that time, we were still planning to cross with New Zealand Whites, so I already had enough with whites. Since then I had talked to Hannah at  Renaissance Farmstead  when picking up Demin and Lancelot from her and she seemed to know JRRF had no available does, at least the ones breeding ages. Still, I gave it a try because I was hoping for an unrelated...

Since we then had some NZW bucks to breed, the pressure was off about trying to find breeding age bucks and I had some time to think over what we would need to start working toward breeding Silver Foxes only. In purebred Silver Foxes, I had one difficult-to-breed Blue SF doe, Misty Blue, who was turning four years old just before Thanksgiving Day, and one junior Black SF buck, Comet, that would not be ready to breed until the end of January at the earliest and that is being hopeful. Not a very good start!  For one, it was questionable that Misty Blue would even be able to get pregnant. She had more than a year off from breeding, which might had worked against her being ready to be bred, and then there was her age...perhaps she is too old to get pregnant? Then there was the common difficulty I had with her in accepting a breeding and this time with the inexperienced young buck Comet, when he was ready. The odds were not in my favor, but having offspring from Misty Blue wo...

As I wrote previously, NZW were not my favorite rabbits. They have their advantages. They are more heat hardy. They develop faster. They have been bred for commercial use for about a century without concerns about fur colors, just body shape and faster growth were the main goals, so they are often a solid rabbit with which to cross or even improve another breed. Because they are one of the most popular commercial rabbits, they typically are not handled much, therefore are not as tolerant to handling and can even be quite skittish even while in their cages. Our first doe liked to try biting me often, but she never got me, and the other doe was terribly skittish. However, we have been fortunate with good temperament in the NZWs we have had since our first three. Our first two Silver Foxes were not all we hoped them to be either. The buck was rather small and later he had some teeth and ear mite issues. The SF doe was difficult to get bred, but an excellent mother. Still, Silver Foxe...

Since we were getting back into breeding the rabbits this season, I began thinking what I wanted if we were going to continue to crossbreed and it did not include brokens so I planned to test breed the three NZW bucks to see if they carried brokens with my GT Black Steel, Golden Girl, and my Blue Silver Fox, Misty Blue. However, in my heart, I wanted to work with the Silver Fox lines only and we still needed a SF buck. 4K was one of the breeders I first contacted as she had been raising rabbits for several years. The rabbitry was not far away. However, she told me that while they are still homesteading, they cut back on the number and type of animals they were keeping, so she no longer had Silver Foxs. 4K also told me that WF, from whom we had gotten our first Silver Foxes, had moved and were no longer carrying them. She gave me the name of another breeder, JRRF, which was not that far away from 4K but when I contacted her, she only had does available at that time. It was ju...

When we first began crossbreeding our NZWs with Silver Foxes, we would get variety of coats, mostly of brokens. Brokens look mostly white and have spots of color. I just thought it was typical when a person has a white rabbit crossing with a colored rabbit to get about half as spotted and I really did not give it much more thought since our rabbits were mostly for meat, until the one kindle that had two rabbits completely different than anything we had previously.  We had only three colors of rabbits at the time: whites, blacks, and blues, but two from this one kindle had some variation in the skin color. One was black but not quite as black as her all black sibling and one was blue but a bit lighter than the blues typically are. Later when their fur grew out, the nearly black one had variations on hair shaft itself. The other looked like a lighter blue, almost frosted in comparison to his Blue Silver Fox mother. (He probably was a Gold Silver-Tipped Blue Steel. ( Edited...

My husband was the one who did most of the research on rabbits before and even after we had gotten our first three. It was his plan that we would also get a Californian or two and crossbreed with the NZWs. However, we just could not find a breeder with Californians anywhere near us. The few that had Californians were not breeding for purebreds but NZW crosses. We wanted purebreds to cross and also to have purebreds now and then.  So, as I got involved with trying to find Californians, I began reading about meat rabbits and somehow came across a few websites that gave information about two other rare heritage breeds that interested me. One was the American and the other the Silver Fox, but it was the latter that really intrigued me because I once lived close to where they were developed in Ohio. Although this breed was on the critical list at one time, it has been moved down to threatened, because its popularity has grown. Surprisingly, finding a Silver Fox breeder near us ...

I must confess that I have never been particularly fond of Ruby-Eye White (REW) rabbits, although I like their pelts and how they can be dyed. However, New Zealand White (NZW) rabbit breeders are pretty easy to find in these parts and they are a fairly hardy breed. For the most part REWs are not easy to tell apart and we did not mark them since we planned to use them for meat. We even kept the breeders names simple to remind us they had a purpose, in case they did not work out: Doe and Buck. However, the youngest one of three my daughter claimed so she named her White Sugar. Not knowing which of their bunnies was which made it easier for us all, particularly our young daughter, when it was time to cull. We almost always had new bunnies to keep us busy when my husband was processing the ones that had grown up—it became a rhythm in our lives. However, it was even difficult for us adults the first few times. The second thing that made it easier was that NZW rabbits have been bre...

There is always a beginning that really is not a "beginning," but more of a point in life when people make a decision to do something a bit different than they had been. My husband and I have always been homesteaders at heart, but due to many factors, we have not gotten to be there the way we hoped...not yet at least. Still, we had been reading some time about raising rabbits and then one day we just decided to do it. We have been breeding rabbits for our personal use of meat and furs from the winter of 2011. We started with three New Zealand Whites (NZW), one proven doe, one junior doe, and an unproven young buck, all purchased without pedigrees the day after Thanksgiving in 2010 from a breeder in Alabama that sold mostly to medical research facilities, which meant that they had to have a high standard for healthy rabbits and that was our main goal...in the beginning. What has followed is our Tale of Tails.... Our first successful kindle five days old: Buck x Doe in...