My thoughts to those who suffered damages from the storms yesterday and early this morning. Luckily Bella’s Bunnies and all of my immediate bunny friends made it through just fine. I hunkered down with everyone in the basement if in case it got really bad.
The Salt City RBA show yesterday which for being a double show was over by mid afternoon (nice!). It didn’t go so well overall for me but that’s okay, progress is slow. I’m just starting out and I know how long many of the breeders have been in this and the time and dedication they put into it. Good news is Dwight & Marion of Kammalops (one of the big breeders of English & French in KS) had 2 Best in Shows with their french lop! Wow!!! I love to see the big lops win and congrats to them! I also ran into Mallory, the owner of Eva, which is one of the velveteen babies from Tiger’s litter! She was just hanging around the show seeing what it was all about and it’s really great to see her getting involved in 4-H!
I also experienced my first negativity from a judge with the velveteen lops. Usually judges don’t mind getting their hands on a new breed or just checking them out. But one judge didn’t even try to appear interested in giving any constructive criticism (which is actually what I love to hear). He did give me his opinion though. Unrecognized breeds always go last so I made sure when he was finishing up with the second to last group I went and got the rabbits so they would be there and ready for him to just breeze through. But he took off his show jacket as apparently he thought he was done for the morning. My mistake I guess was asking him if he had time to do them even though I could already tell he had checked out. First he got into comments about how they lowered their ear length standard from 17″ to 14″ because they couldn’t get any to pass the judging, followed by questioning why I would even be interested in this breed anyway (ummm, long ears + rex fur, is there a question? and who doesn’t love a challenge?!) and then when the writer asked him about what to mark for their coats he didn’t even bother to compare them and said ‘they’re velvets, of course its poor, never going to get the density of a rex.’ I found that last remark exceptionally condescending as rex breeders spend careers questing for the perfect density of fur. This is a rare breed in many parts of the US still and still has a long way to go…of course their density isn’t going to be like the rexes. Obviously its bothered me enough where I’m writing about it (thanks for letting me vent) but at the same time there are always the negative nancy’s in life. I don’t take it personally but they are my fur babies and you don’t get between a mom and her cub 
Guess I’ll just have to breed more and bring a whole slew of them to shows just to annoy certain judges, lol.
Someday, the velvets will pass just like every other breed that is a current ARBA approved. It takes years of polish and careful selection to make a breed what it is (and much shorter of a time span to undo that perfection). It takes years of dedication and hard work to breed rabbits that meet that level. There are many bigger players that are responsible for the fate of this breed. The current COD holder (who is the next in line to present rabbits at National Convention to pass the breed as a standard) is Lorrie Stillo of Canton, OH from Journey Home Rabbitry. There is another group who has a COD to present as well. They will be presented again in 2014 (keep your fingers crossed!). You can read more about velveteen lop news here. There is alot I still don’t know about the inner happenings of the breed since I’m pretty detached but hopefully if there is a velveteen lop convention somewhere this year I vowed I would try my hardest to attend so I can meet some of these velvet experts.
On a side note, Octoberfest is not filling out like I would like to see him do as a senior so he is going to be retired (and neutered) and be kept as a pet. By June, his litter will be able to be shown as juniors and I’ll have lots of stock for Nationals this year. Lincoln is going to be retired as well to the ‘breeding barn’ since his ears aren’t competing as well against the others in overall appearance. Lincoln’s sister did well and they liked her good bone and hips (which is what I really liked). She was bred to Pokerface’s brother, Monster, and will be hopefully having a litter around 5/15/12. Should be more orange and blue tort babies! Hats off to Caryn for letting me borrow her and for taking care of her through her (hopefully successful) motherhood. If you’ve been waiting for a doe between Pokerface’s second litter coming up at the end of the month and Maggie’s litter most likely we will have a few available so keep watch on the site for updates. Think we should name them after tornado storm categories?! Or better yet maybe some Wizard of Oz names.
p.s. Once again I failed and didn’t get any pictures of the show. Bad Katie! Here is a video of a tornado instead that went across Salina.
He was doing so well. But that’s how it is with baby rabbits, they are very sensitive and most of the time its easier to just foster them to another mother if available.
