Monday, May 25, 2009

Blanc de Hotot buck and Californian doe


This is an F1 litter from a well typed Californian doe and Blanc de Hotot buck.
It is a litter of nine. Four are solid, jet black while five are varying degrees of what look like a HT Sport. They have what look like perfect eye bands. Some have black "mustache" markings. All 5 have a varying degree of spotting or lines down their spines.
Their feet all seem to be white, which is encouraging.

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.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

How to tattoo your rabbit

I recently answered a question on a rabbit forum about tattooing your rabbit and the response I got was unexpected. MANY people responded with thanks and questions, so I decided to expand that post here. At the bottom are some questions I received and my answers.

What you'll need.

  • Tattoo Equipment. For me this is a (copying from the box) "Stone Small Animal Tattoo Outfit with release". Product #2745. It has 5/16" digits, and the 'release' is a spring loaded bar to push the ear off the tattoo pins. These come with the numbers zero to nine only. So if you want to use your initials or have the number eleven or twenty-two, you will need to buy letters and another set of numbers. This size is good for medium 6lb rabbits to the giant breeds. If you are doing a dwarf breed, you'll need a smaller model. Your tattoo can be up to 5 digits with this model.
  • INK. The kits usually contain a bottle of ink which is big enough to do maybe 50-100 tattoos depending how frugal you are. You can use black on any color rabbit. I guess you can get other colors, red, green. I use black.
  • And Q-Tips to apply the ink to the tattoo.
  • A bath towel to wrap the rabbit up so he is immobile and secure. This is for their safety and yours. A rabbit has sharp nails and can tear you up if they are frightened and trying to escape. Also, a rabbits spine is also relatively fragile and they can injure themselves by flailing about.

The tattoo goes in the rabbits left ear. The right ear is only tattooed by an ARBA Registrar for two reasons, when you register your rabbit or when it becomes a Grand Champion.

Wrap the rabbit securely (real tight) in a bath towel. It is important to keep their front paws inside the towel or they will shoot out. Securing the rabbit is the most important part of the process. If they can wriggle or squirm away they can at the least make your job WAY harder than it has to be, and at the worst hurt themselves by tearing their ear while you are clamping it. Two people are really needed.

Ready? OK, here we go!

Put the towel on your work surface so it is long-ways left to right. Sit the rabbit on the towel facing away from you. Bring one side over the rabbit and snug it under him. Pull the free end of the towel to snug it up and bring it over in the other direction and wrap all the excess towel over its back. Like a burrito. I wrap the bunny up and then my helper holds them securely while I clamp the ear.

Hold the rabbit in front of you with the rabbit facing to your left. Hold the clamp in your right hand with the handle going off to your right. This will orient the tattoo correctly.

Hold the ear with your left hand and place your tattoo between the veins to reduce the likelihood of bleeding. On white rabbits this is easy. On black rabbits I like to tattoo on a bright day or I have my helper hold a flashlight behind the ear so I can see the veins.

Have your helper hold the rabbit very firmly, and remember they like to back up. Squeeze the tattoo clamp firmly making sure all the pins penetrate the ear.

Then take a Q-tip (mix your ink ahead of time) dip it in the ink and RUB it into the tattooed area. I rub pretty vigorously, use a lot of ink, and probably use 2-3 Q-tips (no double dipping, please!) per tattoo. Some ink may come through if one or more pins fully penetrate the ear. No biggie.

Tips:

    • Get your clamp, letters/numbers set up first and check it BEFORE you wrap up and tattoo each rabbit. You can do this on a piece of paper. This will eliminate mistakes. Like I sometimes put a "B" as the last digit if it is a Buck. "D" if... well I have had more than one buck that ends with a D. LOL
    • You do not have to clean the ear with alcohol. I know some people say they do and some sources recommend it to clean the ear and remove wax. I don't and I don't know anyone that does. I have never had an infected tattoo and have never really seen or heard of one.
    • DO NOT clean the ear after you tattoo it or wipe it with Vaseline or Neosporin. Unnecessary and will only cause the tattoo to lighten up or disappear all together. My newly tattooed rabbits ears just have a big black splotch. That gets cleaned up by them or wears off in a couple weeks and only a perfect FOREVER tattoo is left.
    • Be prepared to buy letters and numbers you don't need to re-tattoo rabbits you buy who's tattoos fade or leave all together. I've re-done two this year already where the tattoo was GONE. Like it was never there. Good thing I knew which rabbits they were by sight. And they have been in the same cage a while, too.
    • Does it hurt my rabbit when I tattoo it? Well, does it hurt when you get a tattoo? People vary in their tolerance and so do rabbits. A few, maybe 1 in 10 or 15 will scream like there is no tomorrow! A few will jerk or hunker down real tight at the instant of clamping. Most do nothing at all. This is QUICK and over in a fraction of a second. The rubbing in of the ink is nothing, and once you get it down the whole tattoo process takes 15 - 30 seconds. Changing the numbers in the clamp and getting the letters and numbers right takes way more time.
    • What numbers and letters do I tattoo my rabbit with? In short? Anything you want. Many people use their initials or the initials of their rabbitry followed by a number. Some use a "D" at the front or the back if it is a doe, "B" for a buck and so on. Give it a little thought and go with it. You can always change down the road.
    • At What age do you tattoo? I tattoo at 6 to 8 weeks of age. This is also when I determine sex, weigh, and sort them into keepers and fryers.
    • How hard do you squeeze? Real hard, some of the pins may perforate. That's why they have an "Auto Release" which doesn't really work that well, which is why you hold onto the ear with your left hand and squeeze the clamp with your right so you can pull the ear off the pins. An ear is pretty thin for heavens sake!
    • How long do you squeeze? About "two-one thousand" I guess.
    • I know many people use the tattoo pen. I personally couldn't imagine taking that long or the rabbit staying calm that long for each tattoo, and i like my PERFECT, PERMANENT tattoos.

Why do you need to tattoo?

  • A tattoo is a permanent, legal identification.
  • Dogs, cats, goats, horses, sheep, and cattle are all tattooed and/or chipped to determine ownership.
  • Animal identity. If you have 20 to 500 rabbits that all look the same, it allows you to tell one animal from the next.
  • Showing your rabbit. It must be tattooed to be shown in any sanctioned show.

This is just how I do it and it works for me. I hope it helps you when you start tattooing your rabbits!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

To Hay or to Not? That's the question

From a Blanc de Hotot Breeder
So much is written today about breeding, raising and how to keep your rabbit healthy. I figured I would throw in my two cents worth of opinion.
Now who am I and why should you listen to or value my advice or what I have to say?
I'm just a guy who got into rabbits because of his Daughters. That is pretty everyday and mundane, huh? My oldest Daughter wanted a rabbit and I got her a Dutch rabbit. It perished not long after we got it. That is pretty common too. My younger Daughter wanted a rabbit (now this is like 7 years later) and you can imagine what I thought. But then we started looking online at breeds and reading about rabbits and my thoughts changed.

The Blanc de Hotot caught our eyes. No pun intended. Well, maybe just a little pun. Anyway, it was a rare and endangered breed, which appealed to us and it is also a really cool looking rabbit. They have black eye bands and a luxurious fur with an interesting history. It is the only breed of rabbit developed by a woman. It comes from France. It just barely made it through World War II. Cool stuff we thought. So we searched, and I mean we searched and searched. At the time there were probably fewer than 10 Blanc de Hotot breeders in the U.S. We ended up with a buck and a doe. We acquired another doe a few months later.

You can see our rabbits on our Crystal Creek Rabbitry website. So that's enough about me.
I thought I would make my first post about what I was thinking about today. And it was a topic of discussion among a few breeders today too. That topic was:
HAY: do you need to feed it or not?

Some actually admitted they fed it out of guilt because they thought you had to. Some will never have hay in the barn because it is too messy. Some feed occasionally, maybe once to 3 times a week. Some keep hay available 24/7. Now remember we are talking about people with maybe 50 to 500 rabbits that have been raising rabbits for 10 to 50 years.

Everything you read (well most everything) on breeding and raising rabbits says "Rabbits must have hay available all the time. Their teeth grow all the time and they MUST have hay to chew on to wear their teeth down properly".


Well, if you have ever actually raised rabbits you know that is crap. Just not true. Bad teeth (malocclusion) in rabbits is an inherited genetic trait. And a rabbit with malocclusion is a terrible thing to see and should never be used in a breeding program as they can pass the trait to their offspring.
If a rabbit has good teeth, they wear their teeth down just perfect on their daily food ration.
So back to HAY. I haven't fed hay as a regular ration for over a year now and my rabbits are doing great. Now there are time when I DO feed hay and feel it is necessary.

  • In the Nest Box. Kits will start nibbling on hay or straw before their eyes are open. I think anything to get the bacteria going in their guts is a good thing. I use hay and straw in the nest. Either one or both on top of a bed of pine shavings.
  • At Weaning. Weaning enteritis is when many deaths will occur. This is at the 4-8 week age when many kits begin eating mostly solid food. The transition off the dam's milk to solid food is a dangerous time. I'll feed hay maybe twice a week.
  • During Transport. When rabbits are on the road, to a show, to a buyer, you have to move or whatever. It can be a stressful time. Stress is BAD on a rabbits digestion and disease resistance. We take empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls and stuff them with hay. Stuff them REALLY TIGHT so the hay doesn't come out at all. Put these in the carrier on a trip or at a show and it'll keep most buns busy most of the day. Some will of course shred theirs and eat the hay in a much shorter time.
  • Watery Rabbit Poop. A rabbit pellet is firm and dry. Now all rabbits will have a slightly runny poo once and a while, no biggie unless it goes on for a whole day or two. Truly watery, bubbly or explosive diarrhea is another matter and is life threatening. A water and hay diet is your first action. Remove all other food and go with hay and water.

Now the type of hay most often fed to rabbits is a grass mix (timothy/orchard) or a grass/alfalfa mix. Straight alfalfa is usually not fed due to the fact it has more protein and energy available. Commercial pellets are Alfalfa based, so the pellets PLUS a straight Alfalfa hay is too rich and will upset the rabbits gut bacteria (later post) and can cause enteritis or stasis and can result in death. Some will take this to the extreme and tell you "Rabbits can't have alfalfa, it will KILL them". Well, the main diet breeders used was Alfalfa and grains before pellets were developed. And remember the MAIN ingredient in pellets is Alfalfa.

It's all about balance.