I THINK I WANT A RABBIT BUT WHAT KIND?????
That is the proverbial question many people ask. First you need to ask yourself "What do I want to do with this rabbit?"
Well here are 10 suggestions, listed in popular order.
- Pet Rabbit / Classroom Rabbit.
- For food, many people eat Rabbit meat.
- Rabbit Fancy- showing and breeding
- Pet Food (Snakes have to eat too)
- For Fur (similar to the meat market)
- Composting and fertilizer for Gardening (rabbit waste is GREAT for this)
- Worm farming (goes with Composting)
- Laboratory use (Extremely hard market to get in to but most profitable.)
- Training rabbit hunting dogs
- Genetics studies (color crossings and marking traits)
Once you have decided what you want your rabbit (s) for find the type of rabbit that would best suit your needs. These are the five types and the uses they are good for.
- Commercial Type. Commercial type is good for all of the above with the exception of training hunting dogs, they are slow and don’t give much chase. They are considered ideal for meat though. Some commercial breeds include: Rex, Satin, Californian, and New Zealand.
- Compact Type. Compact type is usually a smaller breed, great for pets or showing, not usually showing enough size to be worth the meat. Because they stay smaller, the snake food market is a bigger one for compact type. Examples of the compacts breeds: Dutch, Netherland Dwarf, Polish, Jersey Wooly, Havana, Mini Rex, and English Angora.
- Full Arch Type. Full arch breeds are bred to run on the show table, most are good for training dogs on, as they are quick and aggressive runners. They are not usually the first choice for labs, and have larger bones so meat isn’t really worth it. They are very nice show animals however, not for small children, they don’t make good pets. Some of the full arch breeds are: Checkered Giant, Britannia Petite, English Spot, and Belgian Hare.
- Semi-Arch Type. Theses animals are great rabbits for size meat quality is questionable due to they have larger bone to meat ratio and are slow growers. They are great show rabbits and make good, although large, pets. There are only 5 semi-arch breeds and they are: American, Beveren, English Lop, Flemish Giant, and Giant Chinchilla.
- Cylindrical Type. There is only one breed of rabbit that is a cylindrical type, and that is the Himalayan. Himi’s are nice pets, easy to cage and fun to show. They don’t, however, make good meat rabbits, due to their small size. (Max 4 ½ lbs)
For more info on rabbit breeds and criteria visit www.arba.net (American Rabbit Breeders Assoc.)
