Last Sunday I spent the entire day in the rabbitry. I set up my grooming table and my scale, lined up brushes and nail clippers, and put on my kevlar sleeves. I was organized and ready! Ladies First The first to come out was Canyon . She was in molt, but not particularly matted. However, she was more underweight than I had hoped. It is not uncommon for rabbits to eat less during the summer heat, but she ended up being the one most under the senior weight requirements. She is also the one I hope to breed first when the temperatures drop just a bit more, but I would like to see an improvement in her condition now as well. Second out was Twilight . She was still quite shy of me, but she accepted the grooming well. She is 6½ months old, but already over senior weight at 10 lbs. 4 oz. That was a surprise with the heat. I am happy of course, but I was hoping to show her as an 6/8 intermediate for her first show over a month away. However, she can be bumped up to the second in lin...

After getting my rabbitry binder back into shape, I was thinking I would sit down and start devising a breeding plan that would work around the fall shows I want to attend. I also needed to add all my breeders here on my blog as well! I had only one doe listed as I began writing this post, but I also had three with a fourth potential and two bucks with a third potential for some time. Yet, just when I thought it was time to gear up and plan for the breeding season and upcoming shows...and opportunity presented itself that would have blown up those brilliant breeding plans anyway! Beth of Silver Lox Rabbitry had made a difficult decision to sell out of her rabbits because her work schedule and its inflexibility had been making it completely impossible for her to show. I cannot express my sadness about that. I was so looking forward to going to shows and having her there; the Silver Fox breed is rare because breeders are rare and good breeders are rarer still. I had bought a proven d...

This past year I have been in the process of making, remaking, and modifying an rabbitry record keeping system that works for me. I started with wanting to organize my pedigrees and to keep track of weights because a year ago, I was meat breeder just wanting to work toward that sweet goal of five pounds at eight weeks old and a 65% dress out weight. (So much has changed since then, but that would still be ideal!) I looked into the few programs for pedigrees and I decided on  KinTraks . It created customizable pedigrees, at a least to a point that I was happy enough with it. It also had other features that I like and will use like keep track of show records and and business side of things: sales, purchases, retired stock, and such. I liked that I did not have to have an Internet connection as it is all on my computer. There is both good and bad in that, but I prefer it for that reason. I make hard copy pedigrees on all my rabbits homebred that I plan to keep or sell and place the...

There may be those who disagree, but I have found that most responsible breeders do not breed their rabbits in the summer, particularly in the southern states. While it is true that some rabbit breeds are more heat hardy than others and those in the most northern areas of the United States have cooler summers, the Silver Fox is a breed that was developed to have unique, long, stand-up fur coat and it is best for the cooler climates or at least colder seasons. It is also a heavier, meaty rabbit therefore one that is not built for the heat that way either. In the wild, rabbits sleep in holes dug out in the ground where the temperatures are consistently in the 50's. Some rabbit breeders do the colony style method advocating it is a more natural way to raise rabbits and requires less work for the rabbit keeper. This method allows rabbits to create burrows like their wild cousins. However, the downside of the colony method outweighs the upside of it for those who have chosen cag...