Yesterday morning I was all ready to get some work done on the little breeder pen before we headed off to my brothers house for the Thanksgiving feast. The weather man said the cold front would not get here till after noon so I was ready to go at daylight.
Well the weather man was a little off because at 6:30 in the morning it was 35 degrees and falling. Needless to say, nothing more than the normal feeding and watering was done.
The afternoon was not any better plus I was in no shape to do any work after eating enough for two people.
We ended up having to leave the family early due to the ever demanding two hour feedings from Lucy.
Today was a little different though. A spare of the moment road trip almost two hours away for rabbits took up the whole day. The youngest girl found some Mini Rex rabbits on the South side of FT. Worth and just had to have them. I thought we would get back in time to get some stuff done but I was wrong.
These are the rabbits we ended up with.
Lucky is a one year old, Castor Mini Rex Buck. He has won Best in Show, Best of Variety and Grand Champion. He will be our show and breeder buck for the next couple of years.
Onyx is a seven month old, Black Mini Rex Doe. She has won best in show so far and was just bred to a Grand Champion Broken Black Buck today. She will be having babies the day after Christmas.
Black Jack is a little over a year old, Broken Black buck. He will be our primary breeder buck. He comes from a long line of Grand Champions and has won best in show.
These two eight week old babies are the future of the rabbit business for the Mini Farm. Through these, we hope to start our own line of Grand Champions. All and all I think the girl made a good choice in going with the Mini Rex instead of the Flemish Giants. These will be a lot better to handle and to train. We have found out the hard way, people do not want those large rabbits except to eat.
Maybe with these kinds of pedigrees the Mini Rex's will pay for themselves in the long run.
Good looking rabbits. This is coming from someone who grew up on a farm with 150 meat rabbits. hehehehe
ReplyDeleteLike your rabbits. We recently started raising Calif. and New Zealand and some mixed breed? for meat abou 6 months ago. My husband is looking to get 3 Florida Whites to add to the group, they are a small meat rabbit, which actually dresses out better percentage wise than a larger breed like the Flemish according to the books I've read, smaller bones and all. My grown son wants a Flemish just to have the biggest rabbit around... but I would much rather stick with the smaller breeds, the mini-rex is really cute. If you time it right you should be able to make a few bucks around Easter and 4-H time, sounds like you have good bloodlines going. Good luck with them.
ReplyDeleteThank yall for the comments.
ReplyDeleteWe will be marketing them for show next year to the FFA and the 4-H kids. This year the shows are either to close or already happened. We decided not to do the meat rabbits because they eat way to much plus there is not much of a market here for them except show. If by chance we get some regular buyers and they request the Calif. then I guess we will expand one more time.