Beveren Buck and Californian Doe litter

As part of my Blanc de Hotot breeding program I am crossing a White Beveren with an extremely compact, strong shouldered Californian doe to try and shorten up the shoulder on the mandolin shaped BV and pass along the roll-back fur.

This is an F1 litter CA x BV. They come out solid black and "dutched". I plan to take the best typed rabbit from this litter and breed it to a full HT. The goal here is long, roll-back fur on a not-mandolin body.

I want the Beveren fur, but need to eliminate two things.

• The mandolin body type.


• The blue eyes.
  

This could take a while. Probably two -three years minimum, and that is just a guess.

Because the Vienna (blue eyes) gene can be hidden and show up as flecks generations down the line, I am keeping this line COMPLETELY separate from my pure HT herd.

I feel it is very important to keep as pure a line of HT as possible, with European stock brought in when possible. Even if the body type is lacking right now, I still want to keep my HT line pure. They go back at least five generations as HT only and I think that is needed. With all the cross breeding going on, myself included, it could be possible that a few years from now all we really have in this country is a Satin, or a NZ with eye bands. That would be a terrible loss. The HT we have now has an aquiline head, the ears taper top and bottom and are more refined or delicate in appearance than a NZ, CA or Satin. The fur is longer than normal, is roll-back in nature and must have visible guard hairs. Without all these things, it isn't a Blanc de Hotot. For those reasons, my main focus, probably 3/4 of my cage space is selectively breeding pure HT.

The Blanc de Hotot is a 6 class, commercial type, meat producing rabbit. That means that large litters 9 - 11, good mothering instincts with good milk production for the kits is also required. The breed must be commercially appealing to survive as a breed. A handful of people across the nation aren't enough to save it from disappearing, it must be attractive to small farm and commercial producers to survive in quantity and provide a gene pool that is needed to be healthy and productive.

So while I am working on cross breeding, I keep in mind the object is to PRESERVE and IMPROVE the Blanc de Hotot, not make a New Zealand with eye bands and fly-back fur.