Hi everybody

Welcome, everybunny!

It's funny how one can becomes tongue tied; even in this print format, when talking about themselves.
I suppose for myself at any rate; it's a question of how little there is to tell!
Okay, I'll jump in the pool. The water can't be that cold.

My wife and I have moved from a highly populated area of the American East coast. I'm from central Canada, she's from the U.S.A.

We travel back and forth between the two nations but spend most of our time in Atlantic Canada. That's where we own an old Acadian farmhouse about twenty miles inland from the sea.

The border guards tell us we're considered a mixed marriage! That makes my wife angry when ever they've jerked us around but I figure they're just doing their jobs.

We write. I've written my first fiction book. An editor has read it and sent it back with what they'd like to see corrected. Hopefully I'll amend it this winter.

My wife has written quite a bit as well, much better than anything I've penned. Neither one of us is published as of yet. We may never be and we accept this, it's part of the life.

Enough about us. Gosh, I've been to enough parties to know when talking about yourself becomes boring for the people listening....or in this case reading.

We decided to get rabbits in the winter of 2010, around February if I'm not mistaken. We'd been kicking the idea around for at least six months before that, if not in fact a year. Our goal was and still is to be self sufficient....or at the very least as much as possible. We garden as well and have a small orchard.

It's hard! We're determined but by all that I hold dear it's like breaking big rocks into little rocks!

Anyway in February we bought two does from a lovely couple out of Sunny Corner in the Miramichi. What you have to understand is everything is at least an hour drive away from where we live. One of the does is mostly New Zealand White with a little Flemish Giant. We named her Krystal and she's a good momma, but a little on the mean side; although she's come round quite a bit. She's had a terrible time with sore hocks but we've fixed her up by following the suggestions on this forum. Her kits are always white with red eyes, cute as buttons! Because we're raising meat rabbits I make it a point not to get too lovey dovey with them. That's really hard.

Our other doe is near enough half and half New Zealand White and Flemish Giant. Her name is Gingersnap and she has a wonderful temperament with me. She's as mean as a rattlesnake with my wife for some reason, very aggressive. I can pick her up and she loves it when I pet her,she even enjoys it when I hand feed her. Not the same with my wife at all! She tries to scratch her and has even leaped up out of the hutch towards her on several occasions.
The latest episode was today in fact. At first I thought my wife ....well; may have exaggerated it a bit. I found it hard to believe that rabbits would have this sort of complexity of character. I've observed the behavior first hand and there's no deny it.

Weird. Who knew?

Gingersnap has white and black/silver offspring. The black/silver kits are really lovely. No dancing around how pretty they are, they are really something to see. Another interesting thing is some of them have blue eyes. She's proved to be a good momma too.

Our buck is pure New Zealand White. My wife thinks he's the most handsome rabbit she's ever seen, and she's got a point I suppose. He does his job, eats very little and doesn't cause me much fuss. We've only had one nasty episode with him. He stopped drinking and eating for a couple of days and we ended up having to force him to drink with a syringe full of water.

It was horrible! On the one side I felt like we were being so mean to him but I didn't want him to die and we had all these plans. On the other side of things he's not entirely likable. He came out of a different environment than the girls, lets just say it was a lot more production orientated. A harsher realm, a meaner rabbit.

So far our little colony has produced 38 offspring in four litters of which we've sold 10 and retained seven for meat. I've culled one, and plan on dispatching the six remaining three month olds this holiday Monday. The remaining 21 in the second group of litters are roughly half pre-sold, half for ourselves.

We plan on breeding the does twice more before winter. Our marketing is challenging to say the least.

My wife feels we shouldn't even bother to attempt to sell any more, however I see the potential; albeit severely limited.

Our goal is to recoup the expenses laid out and take our profit in the form of meat stocks. So far we're on target with a projected 18 month turn around.

The trick as we see it is not to become too big of producers as our market is extremely weak. If the public became more interested in this type of meat, or even an opportunity to sell the pelts arose; then we'd consider scaling up.

Frankly I'm not very optimistic about that. I'll be very happy if we can enjoy the surplus of our investment and labor in sustenance.

It's hard to complain when your belly's full!

welcome john_francis nice to learn a bit more about you...

Yes, nice to hear your story, John Francis! I write too, so we have something in common besides rabbits. Getting published would certainly be nice, but I'd write anyway. You're doing great with the rabbits. Selling some does help offset feed costs etc. but it is hard to get what they are worth.

I started showing rabbits when I was all of 14 years old and continued until I was 21 and headed onto active duty in the US Air Force. Now that I am nearly 3 years past retirement some 25 years later, I am about to get back into it.

I started out showing black New Zealands, then quickly moved to standard Californians, Palominos and Red Satins. Over time, the move to Satins led to Cal Satins, then Black Satins and White Satins. Along the way, I also raised a few Cinnamons, Mini Lops, Florida Whites and Rex, but it was plainly obvious to anyone who knew me at the time that my true love in the show arenas was Satins, and the varieties I was most successful with were Whites, Blacks, and Californian Satins.

My first Best of Breed winner in the Satin world was a Black Satin doe named Magic. The bizarre circumstance in which I happened upon Magic was by breeding a Red Satin to a Cal Satin after a summer drought wiped out nearly my entire herd, leaving me with little more than the two rabbits which became her parents. How in the world a Red breeding with a Cal brings about a Black is beyond me, but that is how it happened, and Magic was an absolute powerhouse.

It should surprise no one who ever knew me that Blacks, Whites, and Cals are what I am going raise when I hit full speed ahead with this thing, but Whites and Blacks are what I will start out with, probably this coming spring folliwng the National All-Satin show.

Nice to meet you!

Welcome to RabbitTalk, Billylilwigeon!

Satins are gorgeous rabbits and I look forward to hearing about yours when you get them.

Thanks, ya'll. It was a relief to find this website.

well.. a lil intro of me..

I came here looking for help into what my kits colors were.. and have been lurking and reading and have found some very nice interesting topics to read.. a whole lot of info.. hehe

anyway.. I bought two bunnies.. male and female.. buck is a castor rex.. doe is a chestnut dwarf/angora mix although she doesn´t looks like either.. lol.. bought them in december.. and it was just until this june that they gave me their first litter.. 2 kits only a red and a chestnut...I still have those as I plan to get one of em back to dad and see what I get from them...

now like a week or so ago they gave their second.. which I expected way earlier.. around the time I removed the first litter.. but no.. they kept me hanging for over a month..lol.. anyway this time they gave me 8 kits.. 3 chestnuts, 2 red/orange, 2 opals or otters (still unsure of these ones) and a cream one (cream as in almost white one.. sadly this passed away )

from this batch I´m intending of keeping the opals as well as the older babies...the rest will be sold.. as I don´t think I could use them for meat.. at least not for myself.. I get too attached in just one day.. lol..

I wonder what are my chances of getting a rex out of dad and one of his daughters?.. hmm.. only time will tell...

I´m pretty much a newbie but want to get some rex´s going as they are practically non-existant where I live.. I had bought them in another state and struggle to drive them over as no airline would fly them.. so now i gotta work with what I´ve got.. nonetheless I´m still trying to figure a way to get me some more shipped over..

Where do you live? Maybe someone on here lives close to you and could help you out or give you some connections for more bunnies?

haha.. thanks.. but I really don´t think so.. lol..I´m from Mexico.. I can´t even fly them nationally, my guess is it´d be beyond impossible to do so internationally.. but thanks ..

Welcome to the Happiest Bunny site on the web! (okay..that's a bit over the top...)

Make sure you look around and find the GALLERY section!! Upload pictures! We love pictures. Once you upload tho, you need to tell us about it in a post I love pictures!!

Loads of info here suited to most everyone. LOTS of points of view. Chat rooms where you can have private or public "table chats". Kinda cool if you are online at the same time and have a question or plan to hash out.

breeding dad to one of his offspring should give you a 50-50 chance of getting some rex coated kits. Castor is one of the dominant colours in rabbits so expect if you breed dad to daughter you'll get a lot of castor coloured kits. hopefully some with that lovely rex fur as well.

hehe.. thanks.. I´d really love some rex coats..in bunnies.. hence I kept the two older babies they gave me.. still unsure on sex..lol.. although I´ve looks of tons of online pics.. I still can´t be sure.. I think both female..

anyway.. from the new babies.. I think I´ll be keeping the opal/otters (still deciding on those as well..lol).. and maybe maybe a lil orange one too.. they are just so lovely!!

you can see a few pics of em all in this thread
http://rabbittalk.com/newbie-want-to-know-more-about-kits-colors-t1330.html