pure bred Blanc de Hotot litter

I talk about my crossbreeding program here, but neglect the "pure" Blanc de Hotot rabbits that I breed. The standard Blanc de Hotot is in fact my main breeding program. These are the rabbits my daughter and I show, and the entire reason for us being in rabbits in the first place. I have a litter in the nest box right now, so it made me think that I should talk about them for a change.

The pure HT are kept pure, breeding for improvement. I plan to maintain a "pure" line to be kept separate from the cross-bred line. They are to be run parallel to each other, bringing the best HT into the cross line, but not the other way around.

This litter is from a Standard HT buck and a sport HT doe. Both their pedigrees go back at least 4 generations as pure Blanc de Hotots. There were 12 kits total, two were runts and were culled, 2 were born on the floor of the cage and died. The remaining 8 were warm and well in a nicely made nest. A few days later I found a big, beautiful HT kit dead on the floor of the cage.

I suspect that the kit held on tightly while nursing and the doe got out of the nest with the kit still clinging on. Sadly, it seems to be the biggest, most robust kits that die like this. They have the strength to stay tightly clamped to the teat and nurse, which does them in if the doe gets out suddenly.

Of the seven remaining kits, four are properly marked and the rest are "sports". I am working toward having only show marked animals as breeders, weeding the sports out of my barn, but that will take a few generations. Right now type has to be king! More on sports later.