bunposting
All Buns, All The Time
HOUSE RABBIT SOCIETY DO NOT INTERACT!This is a breeder blog that also has interest in meat rabbit production and pelt/bone processing - you have been warned.
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Whoa. Hey Guys.
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I am always happy to share Information™ when asked for it 😁
Sometimes I'll get the random urge to ramble about stuff as well - but this blog is very much specifically for rabbit stuff. I try to keep other livestock stuff out of it because rabbits are what I have by far the most experience and what I feel the most qualified to talk about. Someday I might make another side blog that caters more toward general animal welfare things if I feel compelled enough now that I'm feeling a bit more confident in my general knowledge 😅
Do you have any good recommendations for anti-ara pro animal welfare blogs?
iiiii do not, besides the little circle i’m in. but i think we’ve all kinda given up on all animal welfare blogs due to The Horrors. we kinda just activate to defend ourselves or talk about grievously horrible animal welfare stuff that we see. i’ll ask around for you though
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Oh yeah lol so, and Update on this because I'm just realizing I never posted an update about her.
She turned out to be godawful on so many levels. Her type turned from very decent to absolutely atrocious, her fur texture ended up being grainy and gross, her temperament became one of the worst I've ever dealt with (she screamed bloody murder while getting her nails clipped despite having had them clipped many times in her life and never having a quick nipped - and then tried to rip my hand off any time I even tried to just feed her or give her water), and it turned out when I culled her that she was about 90% fat (the most internal fat I've ever seen on a rabbit - I literally would have had to dig through it to find the organs).
Needless to say, definitely not the start of a tort Silver line. I do still fully intend to start one, but she certainly was not it.
Much to the dismay of Silver breeders everywhere, she's sticking around.
{don't mind how patchy she looks she's still molting out her baby coat}
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I'm very curious. Would Silvers be considered a primitive rabbit breed? And speaking of, is the concept/construct of a primitive breed a thing in rabbits?
While the concept/construct of "primitive breeds" doesn't technically exist in rabbits, I would absolutely consider them to be a primitive breed due to how little (in theory) they have changed from their wild ancestors! I can't think of many, if any, other breeds that would fit that same description. Tans are said to have directly come from wild rabbits as well, but I would say that they have changed to the point where they can no longer be considered a primitive breed like Silvers could.
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do you have some resources on bone & pelt processing? i’ve tried doing research but it seems like everyone uses different methods. and i’m confused about what will work best for me. i want to have minimal parts wasted, so id prefer to not experiment
Oh boy you caught me just a little too early lol. I don't currently have any resources for pelt processing that I have found to be entirely helpful, so I can't help with that quite yet.
As for bone processing, my final independent study for college is actually on bone processing (I'm currently beetle cleaning bones from rabbits culled from my last independent study), and I'm working on putting together a comprehensive guide for all of the different methods of bone processing! Expect that to be posted here some time in early May.
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do you have any posts about dispatching? do you use a hopper popper? in your experience, what’s the easiest way to dispatch?
I currently don't have any posts about dispatching! But I guess now I will lol.
Currently, I use the broomstick method. This is mostly because it's the method I was first taught and therefore it's the method I'm most accustomed to.
For those who don't know, the broomstick method is when you place the rabbit down on the ground, gently hold it still, place a broomstick (or other long, solid object large enough to fit over the rabbit's neck) over the rabbit's neck, stand on either side of the broomstick with the rabbit in between, hold the rabbit's hind legs and then swiftly pull upward while keeping all your weight on the broomstick. This will cause the cervical (neck) vertebrae to come apart and break the spinal cord. The rabbit dies instantly but will usually still thrash and kick for a few moments as the nerves from the rest of the body suddenly lose signal from the brain.
There are some challenges to it - you have to be able to balance enough to quickly put both feet onto the broomstick, you have to be able to bend enough to reach down and grab the rabbit's hind legs, and you have to be able to quickly stand upright while pulling upwards with as much strength as you can to ensure a quick and painless death.
The hopper popper works under the same notion of what's called cervical dislocation, but instead of needing to bend, everything is at your height. I have yet to use a hopper popper yet personally, mostly because I'm nervous about if I have the kind of strength to do it properly at the angle it requires. Another method is the choke chain method, which I do want to try out someday, and that also is cervical dislocation but through the use of gravity along with muscular force rather than relying solely on physical strength.
If folks are interested I could try to do a more formal post about the steps for each different type of dispatch method and the pros/cons of each!
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what do you wish you knew when you were first starting out with rabbits?
Honestly, I wish I knew just how absolutely feral rabbits rights activists can be. How much more intense they can be than even the standard animal rights activist.
When I got into the world of breeding rabbits, I had no idea the lengths of absolute evil these people would be willing to go to. I joined so many facebook groups dedicated to rabbits of all different kinds, and I got into this habit of attempting to educate these rabbits rights activists, trying to be kind and trying to gently explain why certain practices are they way they are, why responsible breeders are necessary for the existence and health of domestic rabbits.
That ended with threats against me, threats against those close to me, threats against my rabbits, and, in the end, an entire litter dead with a sprinkling of trauma for good measure.
I learned a lot about the importance of knowing when to stand down, why privacy is so vitally important, but most of all just how little these people actually care about the health, safety, and welfare of rabbits - regardless of what they claim.
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That's so wild - I was involved in breeding mice for a bit and I actually found the community to be extremely pro-cull, to the point where it was just considered standard/best practice to cull large litters down by a few literally within a day of being born (usually culling just by size/gender). I don't think I ever any anti-cull people when it came to mice and I never met any absolutely nuts pet owners. Is this a very recent thing? Or maybe I was just in the right circles lol
honestly I’d like to hear what people who are adamantly against culling babies have to say about feeder mice or rats.
even breeding feeders for other animals is a necessary part of life and rabbits have that many babies in the first place because rabbits are an integral part of the food chain, and small animals seem to love to die for fun anyways. I used to “volunteer” at farms and I’d spend maybe 15 minutes plucking the stillborn babies out of the nestboxes. they just do that anyways.
the only thing that I’m personally weirded out by is when people do just toss the dead ones away. like that’s perfectly good meat for your animals dude :/
To be fair, kits shouldn't generally be dying just for the hell of it unless they do have something wrong with them or there are too many for the doe to take care of. You're right though - there really is no difference between culling a healthy newborn rabbit for whatever reason (be it mismarking or too many in the litter) and feeding it to something, and killing newborn mice and rats for feeders.
Totally agree about being a bit weirded out by folks who just throw the kits away though - at least let their brief lives mean something after they're gone, y'know?
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#the only chance I'd ever let a rabbit leave my care as a pet would be if-#it had the literal best temperament in the world but i didn't have the space to keep it-#and i personally knew somebody that i trusted who was in the market for a pet rabbit.#ideally somebody else who currently does or used to breed rabbits.#other than that - no way in hell i'm letting a rabbit go to the average pet rabbit person.#at *any* time of year.
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The desire to do Mad Science* is so strong...
*breed a tan to a silver and then cross a tan-patterned kit from that litter back to a silver and so on until I eventually end up with silvered tans
#could i technically call it a brand new color variety if all it is is two existing varieties put together? 🤔#it would be fun though#create an entirely new variety that has as far as i know not yet been seen in rabbits#tbh I've wanted to do this for a few years now lmao#someday I'll get around to it#I'm just thinking about it a lot right now for whatever reason lmao
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Turns out an 80% hay diet - which House Rabbit Society purports as part of what they consider to be the only humane diet for rabbits - may actually be in and of itself actively harmful to rabbits.
Post directly copied from MMC Farmstead on Facebook:
"This is what the back teeth and cheek of a rabbit who was feed a 80% hay diet looks like.
the dental spurs caused by the hay are razor sharp and sliced groves into the inner cheek and tounge.
Every bite this rabbit took was agony due to how a hay heavy diet unevenly wears the teeth and causes malocusion.
Pellets are formulated to help prevent this by being the correct hardness. A healthy well bred rabbit does not require any thing special to keep teeth in check they file them down naturally in a motion referred to as " Bruxing".
This is one of many reasons why Hay should be restricted in Rabbit diets , and is not nessicarry when fed a properly balanced complete pellet .
We do not recomend Feeding hay to rabbits as a staple.
Hay is for enrichment and medicinal/transitional use only.
Hay dilutes the nutrients already in a balanced feed regimen, causes dental impaction, tooth spurs, abscesses. Its difficulty to chew causes mechanical maloculsion.
Hay from a nutrition perspective is not easily defined as a base nutrient , with the levels of protien and quality of other nutrients dependent on the individual harvest .
Hay is also a vector for disease, coccidia, mites, RHDV2, EC ,And many other vectors are carried into the Rabbitry on hay.
We also Run bunclub which is an educational group here: Bun Club
references :
2017 Shape Variation in the Craniomandibular System and Prevalence of Dental Problems in Domestic Rabbits: A Case Study in Evolutionary Veterinary Science
Vet Sci. 2017 Mar; 4(1): 5. Published online 2017 Jan 24. doi: 10.3390/vetsci4010005 PMCID: PMC5606619 PMID: 29056664 Christine Böhmer1,* and Estella Böhmer2 Patrick Butaye, Academic Editor https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5606619/
" Hay seems to be the most mechanically challenging food as it is tougher and stiffer than pellets ......... [70]. It requires more chews per gram to be processed which results in longer chewing bouts compared to pellets and carrots. This means that over a longer period of time the teeth are predominantly axially loaded due to the elevated bite force. If we take into consideration that hay with a lot of hard stems has reduced nutritive properties and potential limits on digestibility, then rabbits eating predominantly hay need to consume large quantities to meet basic metabolic and nutritional demands [70]. All of this promotes retrograde tooth elongation and incursion of the apices into the adjacent bone (most common finding in malocclusions) [1]. Furthermore, hay also promotes periodontal diseases (impacted food) and, therefore is not the best nutrition for rabbits [31]. Grasses and other fresh plants, however, are abrasive, but relatively soft and, thus, can be ground down with relatively low axial load of the cheek teeth as the primary strain on the (pre-) molars occurs in a more physiological laterorostral direction with the aid of the shearing power stroke"""
"Considering additionally that hay is more resistant than fresh grasses, it seems logical to develop further the hypothesis that pet and breeding rabbits had to develope stronger jaw muscles and secondarily larger axial bite forces than their wild counterparts to be able to crush their unnatural food more effectively. This might be supported by a shorter skull and more vertically oriented muscle fibers whereas a longer skull with a more anteriorly positioned masseter muscle (as seen in wild rabbits) reduces the vertical bite force due to a greater distribution of bite forces on all cheek teeth. As teeth at the rear of the dentition generally exert higher bite forces than the more rostrally positioned teeth, this might be an explanation for the found tendency of the cheek teeth to shift caudally in the group of the domestic rabbits. Furthermore, the presence of stronger muscles may explain the more salient appearance of the caudoventral part of the masseteric fossa (mandibular angle) in pet rabbits, as in different mammals (re-)modeling of the mandibular cortical bone has proven to be associated with oral processing of tough food (reviewed in [70]). This research has shown that especially a postnatal variation in diet-related jaw-loading patterns had a marked influence on the masticatory bone formation, leading to morphological variations between sister taxa in the long term [70]. With age, however, plasticity decreases. Based on this, rabbit breeders feeding predominantly pellets and hay seem to promote malocclusions in adult rabbits unknowingly as the masticatory apparatus of the weanlings is exposed to unphysiological strains that may result in changes of the skull morphology."
"
Genetic and environmental factors influencing tooth and jaw malformations in rabbits
Korn, A. K., Brandt, H. R., & Erhardt, G. (2016). Genetic and environmental factors influencing tooth and jaw malformations in rabbits. Veterinary Record, 178(14), 341–341. doi:10.1136/vr.103293
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.103293
<- this describes tooth morphology but also makes a strong case to increasing rabbit calcium levels as I have stated in earlier posts. all these rabbit were fed with free choice hay . latter studies showed a correlation between hay and instance of tooth issues when rabbits were fed a limited diet."
Pictures mentioned in the post added below 👇
#absolutely wild#rabbits#there are some things they said that may not totally have scientific basis in their own words but#still entirely worth sharing
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Going to big rabbit shows is such a problem for me. I want to collect breeds like pokemon.
Somebody at PaSRBA is selling St Huberts and I'm like GIMME
Do I have room for literally any more rabbits whatsoever right now? Absolutely not. But a guy can dream 😔
#listen I know st huberts aren't recognized by the arba#but they're recognized by me for being beautiful#every time I go to big shows it's like#I could get a silver marten. as a treat.#Or perhaps a champagne#Maybe a czech frosty#mayhaps an argente brun??#A belgian hare... But only as a pet I'd never breed those. I love them but. No.#adds a million different breeds to 'maybe get this someday' list#i also still want to try to create a silvered tan rabbit#someday...
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Hi, I just came across your blog and just wanted to say thanks for sharing all this information. I did vent a bit in the comments of the really long post you did about HRA nonsense, but wanted to thank you personally because I have just spent seven agonising years taking care of my rabbits according to HRA advice (it was also the advice my vet and the SPCA gave me) and it was so hard that I resolved to never ever keep rabbits again after they passed away this year, even though I love them. I’m pretty upset about it to be honest, because I really tried and it cost thousands and thousands of dollars and who knows how many tears. I think my rabbits generally did ok, and lived a reasonably long time (7 years) but it was so hard to keep the weight on or off and manage their feet and their teeth and their diet and stop them chewing things they weren’t supposed to chew. They made me sick with worry at times. I built them an enormous pen but in the end they did spend most of their time in the same places, just sleeping.
I do also strongly agree with your position on meat and fur rabbits. It’s a real shame it’s not more common and acceptable, and in future I think I might consider keeping meat rabbits (I have to eat meat for health reasons since I have a gut issue that prevents me digesting plant protein, and if circumstances permit I’d prefer to raise my own meat). I grew up in a rural area and one of my first jobs was on a chicken farm and I helped in the slaughterhouse. It wasn’t pleasant, but it also helped me see that animal consumption could be ethical and hygienic and efficient.
I think the main thing that is getting me right now is suddenly how much it makes sense that rabbit specific rescues struggle to adopt out rabbits, and how immense their vet bills are. They’re always having trouble with GI stasis and almost nobody can meet their incredibly high standards. They try to save animals that would probably be better off euthanised. They persistently demonise people who eat rabbits, and meat in general. I always felt weird about it because I’d happily eat a rabbit and wondered if that made me a bad person. Literally I spent so many nights awake worrying about whether I was keeping my rabbits well enough to HRA standards, and now I learn that so much of that was unnecessary and even sometimes dangerous. It actually really sucked.
Anyway, sorry for rambling, but thank you. I might actually keep rabbits again one day now that I know it doesn’t have to be such a wretched experience.
No need to apologize for rambling! I'm sorry I'm so late to respond to this!
I'm so sorry to hear what you went through in trying to keep up with HRS standards - just goes to show how unreasonable they are, honestly. I wish you the best of luck with your future rabbit endeavors should you choose to get back into keeping them someday!
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Got my first ever grand champion leg! Constellations' Dark Lightning ("Electra") won Best in Show for Show A at the South Jersey RCBA show today!
#to say i was Shocked is an understatement lmao#especially considering the only reason she even got into the running for best in show for show A...#was because the judge disqualified her sister for a scar spot 🙄#but then in show b the judge (who is a well known silver breeder) didn't dq her sister and still picked her first#he said she was super nice and that when she fills out more she'll be even better.#and then show a's best in show was being judged by someone totally different and she gave Electra the BiS#but show b's best in show was being judged by the guy who judged my girls in show a's breed competition#and i get the feeling that may have influenced his opinion because he did hesitate and look at her quite a bit when making the decision#rabbits#rabbit breeder#silver rabbit#show rabbit
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Fun little update to this.
I'm planning on taking the kits to a show this weekend because I need some Opinions™ about them before I decide which one(s) I'm officially going to be keeping, and I asked the show secretary about showing Gemini (the tort doe) as an exhibition entry.
From what I understand, technically exhibition entries are supposed to be allowed so long as the exhibitor provides a standard of perfection for the rabbit.
Tell me how I was told that the only exhibition entries being accepted for Silvers are blues.
Again, blue isn't even an endemic variety to USA-bred Silvers, and the Certificate of Development that they had is expired.
If I could provide a standard, why the heck wouldn't Gemini be allowed to be shown as an exhibition?! Why should blues get that right but not torts?! I am going to scream! And also yell! And I honestly might just bring Gem with me anyways because she's... at least the last I looked she honestly has the best type out of the three of them right now 😶 So that might also influence how salty I am about this lmao.
I think regardless of what happens at this show I might just keep her out of spite at this point. And I'm gonna write the best goddamn standard the world has ever seen because she and all the other tort Silvers that have existed in the world deserve it 😭
Super hot take. I mean like the hottest take ever in the history of rabbits. The literal spiciest take of all time. The carolina reaper of takes, even.
If a color variety is endemic to a breed, it should probably, in many if not most cases, be an accepted variety for that breed.
Ok so now that all the color purists are foaming at the mouth and running to their keyboards to chew me out, lemme explain for those who might not know what I'm talking about. As usual, this will be lengthy and in depth because I am incapable of Shutting Up.
Those three color varieties are black, brown (chestnut/agouti), and fawn. The thing with these three color varieties is that with one main exception (we'll get to that in a moment), you're not going to get any colors except those three when you intermix them. If you breed a black to a brown, you'll get browns and blacks. If you breed a brown to a fawn, you'll probably get browns. It makes sense to generally not want to intermix them though, because in theory if you mix these colors, it can result in the kits not having quite the depth of color you want (apparently. This is what I was told by other Silver breeders). A black to a brown could result in browns with too much black, and blacks that aren't as deep as would be desirable. A brown to a fawn could result in browns that are just too dull or light in color. I can understand the reasoning behind not wanting to do this kind of color mixing, especially in a breed where fur color is such an important part of their Standard of Perfection. (In fact, other than silvering and fur texture.. it is *the most important* part in the modern Silver standard... I have opinions on that, but I've shared some of those in a separate post)
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Example that I am currently aware of in the breed I am currently working with: The Silver technically only has three accepted color varieties for the breed in the United States (four in the UK, but we'll get to that in a moment). That means there are only three color varieties that can be shown, and generally means only three color varieties that will be considered 'part of the breed.'
Remember how I mentioned about the UK having a fourth accepted color variety? You'd think - well considering the only other endemic color that isn't red-eyed white is tort, it's gotta be tort, right? NOPE. It's blue. Where does blue fit in the other three color varieties? It doesn't. It's the dilute of black, yes, but the dilute gene isn't present in any of the other varieties, so technically, dilute isn't a gene that should generally exist in the breed. The only way you can get purebred blue Silvers is to import them from the UK. Other than that, you've got to do some crossbreeding in order to get it, and doing that means you need years and years of careful breeding to take all the traits of the rabbit you're using for crossbreeding out of the breed you're going for. It's a long, difficult process that requires a lot of breeders to work on it, a lot of money, a lot of cage space, and a lot of culling. There had been a Certificate of Development (CoD) for blue Silvers in the states, but it just expired this year because folks just couldn't keep up with it and there wasn't enough interest I guess.
The one typical exception is black to fawn. This pairing can result in a new color, known as black tortoiseshell (or black tort - I'll just be referring to it as 'tort' here). Basically that means the rabbit has a primarily fawn body with black points and black belly/side markings. The other less typical exception is red-eyed white, but this is, so far as I can tell, fairly rare compared to tort in the case of Silvers. Which is good, because perhaps the most important part of a Silver is the silvering, and you can't see silvering if the rabbit is already white. This is one case where a potentially endemic color variety is one that definitely shouldn't be accepted I think, especially considering it's not a common thing to have pop up.
(disclaimer for the two above paragraphs; this is based on the knowledge I have of rabbit color genetics. I absolutely do not claim to be an expert in color genetics and it is a topic I am definitely still learning. If something mentioned is inaccurate, please let me know!!)
Why is that relevant? Because one of the main reasons I was told why tort Silvers shouldn't be a thing, other than just being told that "we don't need another variety," is that getting a CoD and creating a new variety is such a long and difficult process.
That's just it though - it's not a long and difficult process in this case. The color variety already exists in the breed. There's no need to worry about the rabbits having the wrong body or fur type or not having enough silvering any more than you would any other Silver, because they're already purebred Silvers. The effort is minimal, to be honest. It wouldn't be any different than breeding and showing any other 'normal' Silver with the exception of needing to write the standard - which, again, would be as easy as looking at any other breed's standard for the black tort coloration and pretty much just copying and pasting that into the color section. Is it maybe more difficult than I'm able to perceive it as? Sure. Maybe. But that doesn't negate the reason why this is important.
And why is it important?
Because Silvers are already an incredibly endangered breed. They're already genetically bottlenecked enough as it is, not just because there's only about 500 left in the world, but also because breeders insist on only breeding pure colors. Tort Silvers could contain extremely valuable genetic variation to help prevent some of that bottlenecking.
Because tort Silvers are freaking beautiful. I've been told on numerous occasions how stunningly beautiful a tort Silver can be. Beautiful rabbits draw in more breeders. A rare breed can only be saved if there are enough breeders willing to keep it alive. If people can get interested in the breed from this variety, it could be a key to helping to save the breed.
Because we don't need to be wasting anymore perfectly good genetic material. Yeah this kind of ties in with point number one, but here's the other side of it: if tort Silvers aren't an accepted variety, that means any tort Silver technically should be culled. I wish it were as easy as saying "well just don't breed blacks to fawns then." Problem is, folks have already done it, and they've already sold the offspring, and those offspring have already bred and become part of the overall gene pool. It is entirely possible and honestly not even that uncommon to pair a black Silver to another black Silver, to not know of any fawn in the immediate pedigrees of either one, and to end up with a litter of over half black tort. By the logic of breeders right now, those entire litters are pretty much worthless beyond maybe food or fur, or at least the tort half are. This breed can't afford to have 'worthless' rabbits that otherwise fully meet the breed standard and would be a good candidates for continuing the breed.
And so, to make a long story short, especially in the case of a rare breed like a Silver, it is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion and honestly potentially damaging to decide that a truly endemic color variety (especially one that is commonly found in litters where it wasn't even being intentionally bred for) can't or shouldn't become an accepted variety for a breed.
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Rabbits are truly multi-talented, they can even choke you out like a skunk if you look at their crotch the wrong way.
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Much to the dismay of Silver breeders everywhere, she's sticking around.
{don't mind how patchy she looks she's still molting out her baby coat}
#oh the irony that of the three i held back she's the one who has the best type right now#hopefully she'll be my foundation for a tort Silver breeding program#speaking of which... anyone who's been an ARBA member for five years wanna start a tort Silver CoD with me? haha jk... unless? 👀#rabbits#rabbit breeder#silver rabbit
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