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3 Rabbit Photo / Selfie Content Announced Want a chance to make your bunny rabbit famous? Interested in winning cool prizes? This month we are super excited to announce that we are launching an exclusive ongoing weekly bunny rabbit photo contest. Each week we will select a new winner to win a cool prize and have their rabbit s photo featured in our weekly edition of The Rabbit Times newsletter. To participate simply: your best rabbit photos to therabbittimes@gmail.com with the subject as Photo Contest Entry. Within the attach the photo(s) you wish to submit and a short description about your rabbit(s). Please include rabbit name(s) and name of breed (if not sure or breed is mixed just put that). Photos will be judged based upon quality, cuteness and uniqueness. Alternatively you can simply post your photo to the Rabbit Breeders facebook page to be entered as well: A new photo winner will be selected each week and announced via this newsletter! So stay tuned and good luck!

4 Weekly Rabbit Photo Contest Winners Photo 1 (submitted by Luke Phillips) Breed: Netherland Dwarf Doe Name: Snowbell.

5 Photo 2 (submitted by Luke Phillips) Breed: Six week old Netherland Dwarf Buck Name: Cumulus. Photo 3 Submitted by: Kathleen Adams Ms Bunns. Maid of Honor, Rosa, the Blushing Bride, Monty, Handsome Groom, Hotdog, Best Bunny

6 Rabbits in the News Latest News Stories and Headlines: Interspecies Jailbreak! Rabbit Helps Dig Cat Friend Out of Tight Spot: Pet of the week: Obie: Missing bunny reappears in cage weeks after presumed stolen: Her stolen bunny seemed to be gone for good. Aurora s return was no magic trick: Pet of the week: Adopt Poppy, a 1-year-old rabbit:

7 Breed of the Week Blanc de Hotot Rabbit information and facts about the Blanc de Hotot Rabbit Breed. We love pandas for their black body, white head and black eye circles feature. What about white rabbits with black eye circles? Will we find them equally cute as pandas? Interestingly, people all over the globe love this rabbit breed. It s nothing else but the Blanc de Hotot Rabbits. Despite its declining number, Blanc de Hotots remain to be appreciated for their unique look that makes them easily identifiable. Now, if you re wondering why they are called by the unique name Blanc de Hotot, it actually means White of Hotot and it refers to the region where the breed was developed. I ll discuss more about that in the historical origin of the breed below. Also, Hotot is correctly pronounced oh-toe but in America you will hear it more often said hoe-toe. Blanc de Hotot Rabbit Facts

8 1. History The Blanc de Hotot rabbit breed is a 6 class, commercial type rabbit that produces meat. This rabbit breed usually produces 9-11 litters. Therefore, it s important for them to have good mothering instincts with good milk production for the baby bunnies. Eugenie Ernahrd, chatelaine du Calvados, developed it in Hotot-en-Auge, in Normandy near the port of LeHavre in northern France. She kept a large rabbitry made up of Flemish Giants and Giant Papillion Francais (Checkered Giants), and from this she came up with a new breed. Interestingly, Bernhard s goal for breeding just worked under the weather after some time the meat and fur, with a white coat and black eyes. In the year 1902, she crossed the Papillion with White Vienna and White Flemish Giants. However, the progress towards her goal is very slow. As a result, she saved only the lightly marked animals that were the product of more than 500 crosses. And as the reward for her time and effort to wait for her goal to finally happen, in the year 1912, she was able to successfully breed the rabbit that we have today. The black bands around their eyes already became their signature feature. The first time it was introduced to the rabbit community is as a Giant Blanc de Hotot in the 1920 Exposition Internationaled Aviculture in Paris. Briskly 2 years after that, in October 13, 1922, the Blanc de Hotot was recognized as a breed by the French rabbit governing body. It was the first international recognition on the existence of the rabbit breed. In the French standardization of the Blanc de Hotot s classification, there is no mention of eye bands. Instead, they referred to the black area as black eyelashes and lower eyelids that were more or less colored gray. Right on the year of French acknowledgment, the Blanc de Hotot was brought to America around , but they soon died out. 5 years later, in 1927, Switzerland imported the breed and the Swiss love the eye markings. When the World War II broke, the Blanc de Hotot almost vanished in the countries France, Holland (now Netherlands) and Germany. In 1978, Bob Whitman, a resident of Texas, imported 9 Blanc de Hotots. Consequently, ARBA recognized the rabbit breed on March 5, Bob Whitman is elemental in the development and mainstreaming of Blanc de Hotot in America. Breeders responded to the fact that Blanc de Hotots have a very small gene pool as well as the body type of the breed that they claim needs improvement. Because of this, rabbit breeders started to cross the Blanc de Hotots with White New Zealands, Blue-Eyed White Beverens, as well as the Satins. In 2004, additional Blanc de Hotots were imported into this country from UK, Germany and Holland. It is to be noted that these are the very same countries that almost lost their Blanc de Hotot breeds at the height of the World War II.

9 It s also important to note that Blanc de Hotot is recognized by ARBA by the name that it is today. But in the 1986 Standard of Perfection, the breed is just printed as Hotot, for some unknown reasons. This is probably because most breeders forget the part Blan de. They would often just call the breed Standard or Large Hotots. Indeed, it was him who championed the name change of the breed back to its original name in In order for the breed to survive, they need to be commercially appealing. The rabbit enthusiasts themselves are looking for ways to ensure the provision of a gene pool that is needed to be healthy and productive. This is massively due to the fact that Blanc de Hotot is considered as globally endangered. 2. Appearance The Blanc de Hotot breed is a large, six-class rabbit with bucks weighing 8 to 10 pounds and does 9 to 11 pounds, respectively. Blanc dehotots are large white rabbits that are well known for having thin black bands around each of their eyes. Their remarkable black eye bands should not be over an eight to quarter of an inch wide. These bands give the rabbits the appearance of fine spectacles around the eye. They have lustrous, rollback fur and a lot of guard hairs that give their fur an unusual frosty white sheen. Their body type is compact, thickset and rounded. In an effort to improve the body type of Blanc de Hotot, it was crossed with other breeds. However, the frostiness of the fur could hardly be found. Sometimes, the does have dewlaps. But if the dewlaps occur in bucks, they are being penalized for it in shows. The breed has a wide chest, short neck and well-muscled fore- and hind-quarters. If you are familiar with the Dwarf Hotot, the Blanc de Hotot breed is the commercial-type version of it. And despite not being too common, Blanc de Hotot came earlier than the Dwarf Hotot. In comparison, Dwarf Hotots weigh only about 3 pounds, and also don t have the frosty sheen of the fur. Both of the breeds show mismarked sports in their litters. The difference though is that sports of the Dwarf Hotots are usually sold as pets, but the sports for the Blanc de Hotots are useful for meat as well. They are an active, hardy breed and are easily raised in wire cages. They can be good mothers and can have good-sized litters. Show quality Blanc de Hotots are white all over, with the exemption of the very dark brown eyes and narrow black eyeglasses, black eyelids and black eyelashes.

10 Today, Blanc de Hotots are considered threatened by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy due to its small population both in United States as well as in abroad. Hopefully, rabbit breeders will find a way to ensure a healthy population for Blanc de Hotots, in order to prevent their nearing global extinction.

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12 Types of Rabbits There are five main different type rabbit type categories that rabbits are commonly classified by; Rabbit Body Type, Rabbit Fur Type, Rabbit Sizes, Rabbit Purpose, and Domestic vs. Wild Rabbits. We will mainly be focusing on the classification of the domestic rabbit breeds in this article as those are the only ones that ARBA recognizes and the ones that the vast majority of rabbit breeders raise. Rabbit Body Types Rabbits by ARBA standards are commonly classified by their rabbit body type. That being said there are currently 5 different rabbit body type classifications. The rabbit body type breed classifications include; Commercial Rabbit Breeds, Compact Rabbit Breeds, Cylindrical Rabbit Breeds, Full-Arch Rabbit Breeds and lastly Semi-Arch Rabbit Breeds. In this article we will be looking at all five of these classifications in great detail. Commercial Rabbit Breeds One of most common rabbit body types include the Commercial Rabbit Breeds. Like indicated by the name, the rabbits that make up this category tend to be used as production animals and meat rabbits. The rabbits that make up this Commercial category tend to grow fast and have large meaty loins. Many rabbit breeders have pointed out that these bunny rabbits look very similar to the Compact Rabbit Breeds except they are a lot bigger. Compact Rabbit Breeds

13 Some of the smaller breeds of rabbits make up the Compact Rabbit Breeds category. Rabbits in this Compact category will many times look well balanced when you set them up properly. Cylindrical Rabbit Breeds The Cylindrical Rabbit Breed category currently consists of only one representative. The sole representative from this Cylindrical category is the Himalayan Rabbit. Many breeders have noted that the Himalayan Rabbits looks a lot like a smaller version of the Californian Rabbit however their shape is cylindrical in nature. When these rabbits are posed properly on the judging table they should be laid out in a cylindrical like fashion. Full-Arch Rabbit Breeds Rabbits that have been categorized in the Full-Arch Rabbit Breed category tend to be always alert and energetic in nature. Many of the rabbits in this category have very erect ears and possess a spotted fur coat.

14 Semi-Arch Rabbit Breeds The final rabbit body type category contains the Semi-Arch Rabbit Breeds. The Semi-Arch rabbits that are found in this category are commonly referred to as the Gentle Giants because of their larger size. These rabbits tend to be the largest out of all 47 of the ARBA recognized breeds and possess low shoulders along with a high hip. Rabbit Fur Types In addition to being commonly classified by Rabbit Body Type rabbits are also classified by the fur on their pelts. There are four main types of rabbit fur; Normal Rabbit Fur, Rex Rabbit Fur, Satin Rabbit Fur, Wool Rabbit Fur. Normal Rabbit Fur The most common rabbit fur classification is; Normal Rabbit Fur. The majority of the different breeds of rabbits have normal rabbit fur. Within the Normal Rabbit Fur category there are two different rabbit fur sub-types; Fly-back Fur and Rollback Fur. Fly-Back Rabbit Fur A fly-back rabbit fur coat is basically just a coat that will fly-back into place after rubbing your hand across the pelt in the opposite direction of the natural rabbit fur. Rollback Fur When you rub your hand against Rollback fur it should essentially roll back into place after running your hand against it. Rex Rabbit Fur

15 One of the rarest types of rabbit fur is; Rex Rabbit Fur. Currently there are only two ARBA classified breeds that contain Rex Rabbit Fur. These breeds consist of the; Rex and Mini Rex rabbits which are known to have a softer and more velvety texture fur coat. Satin Rabbit Fur The fur on a Satin Rabbit Fur Coat is generally much softer than normal fur. Similar to the Rex Rabbit Fur Classification there are only two breeds of rabbits which possess Satin Fur ; the Satin and Mini Satin. Wool Rabbit Fur Lastly there is Wool Rabbit Fur, which is sometimes referred to as simply Angora Rabbit Fur. As indicated by its revealing name Wool Rabbit Fur is quite similar to the fur found on sheep however it has been proven to be of a higher density. Rabbit Sizes

16 In addition to being classified by their fur and body type, rabbits are also classified by their size and weight. Although many experts have categorized rabbit size in different ways, for the purpose of this Rabbit Types Article I am going to categorize the ARBA breeds into four average full grown weight groups. These four rabbit size-weight groups consist of the Small Rabbit Breeds, Medium Rabbit Breeds, Large Rabbit Breeds and lastly Giant Rabbit Breeds. The categorization rules are as follows Small Rabbit Breeds: Under six pounds (2.7 kg) Medium Rabbit Breeds: Over six pounds (2.7) through 9 pounds (4.1 kg) Large Rabbit Breeds: Over 9 pounds (4.1 kg) through 11 pounds (5 kg) Giant Rabbit Breeds: Over 11 pounds (5 kg+) Rabbit Purpose In addition to the other rabbit type classifications, rabbits can be classified by their purpose for being raised. As you can imagine, some rabbit breeds are better for certain purposes than others are. In my opinion there are four many reasons why people choose to raise rabbits 1. Fancy: to show them or to simply raise as pets 2. Meat: rabbits that are raised or sold specifically for meat 3. Research: animals that are raised and bred specifically for research and experimentation purposes 4. Textiles: rabbits that used for their fur Domestic vs Wild Rabbits In simple terms, all rabbits regardless of the categories that they have been categorized in, fall into two main rabbit types. These two main types include: Domestic Rabbits and Wild Rabbits. As mentioned already, all of the breeds of rabbits mentioned in this article are domestic rabbit breeds. Wild rabbit breeds are not categorized in the same way that domestic breeds are.

17 Also pet rabbits are almost always domestic rabbits. Domestic rabbits have been bred over the years to live peacefully in human enclosures, wild rabbits on the other hand need to live in the wild because that is their natural habitat. Source: