Rabbit Show

Yesterday we went to a rabbit show. We've not traveled to one in over 6 months, so I'll admit we were a bit rusty. The basics came back fairly quickly, but I've found that too much time between shows tends to have an impact of the quality of a herd. I'm not necessarily giving it a majority influence, but it really does help to have outside opinions of your ongoing selection methodology. In other words, someone else to evaluate your work in relation to others that are working toward the same goals. It seems like everything in the rabbitry has chosen this particular time to molt anyway, so we took the only rabbits that were in relatively decent fur condition. Even though it meant taking rabbits that were not necessarily the very best in the barn. Those beauties, I'm sorry to say, are currently visiting nestboxes.

So with that in mind, we really were not the best exhibitors in the showroom. It's rather a shame, considering the cost of gasoline to get there and the ever-increasing entry fees. I mean really, $6 per entry per show adds up quickly when you have several animals to bring! We took 2 Havanas and 1 Holland Lop. It's sad though when your best placing was Best Sr Doe (Havana) and when you can say, "well at least we weren't the first off the table!" (the Holland). Honestly, it was actually rather refreshing because there were a lot of new faces, and the old 'winners' were nowhere to be found. That means that the newer breeders and the breeders that don't have a lot of $$$ to sink into buying the top stock actually have a shot at winning the big awards.

I did manage to sell more than half the Button Quail I'd purchased for that reason, as well as several toys and a pint of fig jam. And I picked up a beautiful pair of cream/white Satin American cavies! Yep!! I'm back into show-cavies... on a smaller basis.