How should you cull?

You've read the magazines, you've heard people talking, you've had someone give you that piece of advice "cull hard", "cull tough", "Cull, Cull, Cull"

How the heck do you cull though?

In my personal opinion first you need to know your breed. Read the standard, show your rabbits under various judges.

Know the standard but see what the comments are as well(from judges). Eventually you will know your breed and will be able to see what your rabbits are lacking-- although all of us have some kind of barn blindness to a certain degree.

Because these are the 2 breeds we raise, they are the breeds I am going to talk about, however these points would likely work for almost any breed.

- Learn your line, some lines are fast developing others are slow. For instance, I am seeing the mini lop lines tend to differentiate. One line is very slow you don't even bother look at them until at least 6 weeks and even then it is 9-10 weeks before you even look at type for the first time. Other lines if you don't look at 4-5 weeks you have a long wait ahead of you! I would say we are accurate 95% of the time. As for the Jerseys we haven't had them too long and only one litter so far, but what I am seeing is that they for the most part hit a terrible gangly stage and there is no point looking at them until 4-5 months!

- Realize what parts are easy to fix, and what parts are harder to fix. Keep long shoulders or low shoulders away if at all possible. We've found they are the HARDEST thing to fix. If your having a problem with heads or bone that is much easier! We like to get certain things going in the right direction before we fix the small things- keep proper toplines and headmount with the jerseys, short bodies, full lower HQ's. Right now we are working on Mini lop bone and head, and short midsections. JW's rounder ears and short bodies will be my this year goals.

- We also have our own personal preferences. I can't stand long ears or pinbones- we never have pinbones in the Mini's(touch wood!) however the Jerseys seem to have that problem in the line so I will be weeding that out(just a few so it isn't too bad). I also can't stand weak heads although that is a fairly easy thing to fix!

I still think in any breed you can be looking at the babies between 4-9 weeks and get a good idea of who goes and who stays. I've never had luck with growing all the babies out in a litter and finding "more" keepers. I find if I keep them until 4-5 months the ones that looked good at 4-9 weeks are still the ones that look good, and the ones that looked like pets at that stage still look like pets. The only thing I find that comes in especially with the mini lops is width of loin and width of shoulder those CAN both fill in. So if you have a beautifully deep animal with tremendous HQ's and shoulders but it is a tad weak in the loin don't be so fast selling it. It may fill in :- )

Of course go over the animals for obvious DQ's- split penises, malocclusion, white spots, mismatched toenails. Don't keep animals that are pinched, undercut, severly long in the shoulder(or just long in the shoulder).

That first culling we go over all these DQ's, we don't keep anything with bad shoulders or lower HQ's. In the mini lops it is hard to tell what the senior weight will end up being. They are usually around the same size for all of them, if one is way bigger you can almost bet it will be over that senior weight. But for the most part it isn't a huge thing in our line with the Mini's. The JW's you know which ones are BUD's-- they will have longer ears, longer bodies, and will be 1/4 size more then your "normal" babies.

Ask yourself what is it that I want to improve in my herd? If it is shoulders then dont keep long shoulders if you can fit fingers at that shoulder don't keep it! Midsections-- you shouldn't be able to get any fingers between the hip bone and front leg if you do the finger test. If you get 1 finger you are okay the rabbit will still balance you will want to lose that finger in later breedings but with one finger you are still okay.

You will want to be culling for bone, ear legnth, heads, HQ's, shoulders, midsections, depth/topline, fur and flesh! And know your breed, read the standard!

Cull hard. It may be tough but in the long run you will thank yourself. In one year we've moved on about 3/4's of our original herd of Mini lops we purchased. However, in the last year we've managed to win double Best of Breeds with home bred stock over 70 animals in Monroe WA against some of the top WA breeders, we also managed to win RBIS, honorable mention(so close!) and many 1sts. A couple of the shows we won every class, we granded 2 homebred animals, almost granded 5 more(they all just need 1 more leg), and were very happy where we went! We kept better kids then all the parents, and have grandkids from some of those now.

So culling may be tough, but when you cull, cull, cull your herd moves faster!