A Year's Improvement

This is something that I've always enjoyed doing with my bunnies. After waiting a while, it's fun to take out old pictures of my stock from about a year ago with recent pictures of my stock as well and set them side by side. I usually do this on my rabbitry's anniversary but may compare them at 6 month intervals. When you set the pictures side by side, the improvements you have made will stand out a lot!
These pictures are from a year ago. They were taken on July 2nd, 2012.


..... O.o .....

Eek! Shoulders!! :P




These next pictures were taken just recently:

Ooo-La-La!

Pretty nice for a doe who has had 2 litters and pregnant
with her 3rd! What a beautiful home bred doe!

^_^ LOVE!

Home bred junior buck

Home bred senior doe







































































Do you see what I mean? This little blog post can encourage me so much to keep going! This hobby is so fun but you definitely need something to show yourself that you are truly making improvements. After a while, you can really loose sight of what you have done to better your whole herd.
Strict culling will either make or break your herd which is something I have learned over the years of raising various breeds. This is where the importance of learning type comes in. If you know type and know the traits that are appropriate to keep in a herd, you can breed out the traits that you want to improve on. Someone that doesn't know type will be very disappointed when their expensive bunnies hit the show tables and do less than pleasing against a breeder that knows type like the back of their hand.
After looking at hotots for many years, I can judge a hotot thoroughly in less than 30 seconds. When first starting out, it took me many attempts to judge a rabbit and even after several attempts, I'd still miss things that were very important. The experience comes from seeing many different hotots and lines. Getting your hands on them so you can see the variety in type that is available helps gain a lot of knowledge on the breed as well.