Gene puddle - not enough for a pool

hotzcatz · #1 10/29/10, 01:47 AM

Aloha Rabbit folks!

We just found out the rescue angora we had hoped to increase our gene pool with is not only a full sibling to my rabbit, but a litter mate as well! Arrgh!

We have all of THREE adult English Angora rabbits on our island, the Island of Hawaii, that I know of. Two of them are here, a mother/son combo, and the other one is in Hilo. When my veterinary friend in Hilo got an English Angora rescue from Oahu (a different island) we hoped to be able to breed more. We did one mating before we found out the rescue doe is a full sister to my buck. Ack! So far there are four babies from the brother/sister cross and eight from the mother/son cross. We are having problems with dropped ears and his sister doesn't have that good of a coat so further breeding with her isn't recommended.

The obvious answer is to get more rabbits. Does anyone have any recommendations of where to get really good quality English Angora rabbits from? This will be the foundation herd for the whole island, so we want to get some really good ones. There are at least a half dozen folks looking to get English angoras and we are all spinners as well so we would probably prefer a "pluckable" rabbit. We'd like to get the best quality wool English angora rabbits possible. Where does one go online to get the best rabbits?

There aren't any rabbit shows on our island - at least not yet, we are hoping to start a rabbit club soon. The 4H kids don't have any English Angoras and there aren't even any pet shops with rabbits, let alone English angora rabbits. Online is probably our best option, but where online?

If anyone wants to hand carry an English angora rabbit over here, we can find a guest room for you for at least several days!

A hui hou!

KSALguy · #2 10/29/10, 11:25 AM

while that gene pool is small and would not normally be a problem and can still be used it sounds like the pool has quite a bit of flaws already in it,

how did you find out the one pair is Brother Sister? and where did these two come from originally?

if it was me, untill i was able to find more blood to bring in i would continue to breed the rabbits i had available and CULL HARD, only keeping the absolute best, this is something that has been done MANY times before and as long as you cull for all the aspects you want it will work for you.

now also do you have ANY other Angora breeds on the island? even a Jerzy wooly or a Lion head that got a double main all over, an out cross to something as close to what your wanting just to bring in some new blood and then breed back to the English to fix type in a few generations has also worked for alot of breeds.

if no other wool breeds are available breed to a NZ, it will take a little longer maybe but its still an options if you cant get new stock in right away,

how hard would it be to import from the mainland for you?

hotzcatz · #3 10/29/10, 01:01 PM

Aloha KSALguy,

Importing from the mainland isn't too hard. The rabbits need a health certificate from a veterinary and they get picked up at the Agricultural inspection station at Honolulu Airport. I have some friends on Oahu who will pick them up at the inspection station and either put them on a plane to send them over to our island or hold them until we get over to Oahu to pick them up. The hard part about importing from the mainland is finding the bunnies online to import. A lot of breeders don't want to bother with shipping.

So far most of the flaws in our baby bunnies have been in ear carriage, although the sister is a "chocolate agouti" with poor coloring and her wool isn't as dense as I would like. The mom rabbit was imported from Bumblebee Acres and then mated to a son of two Angels' rabbits. Which from the names on the pedigree was bred by the person who imported the mom rabbit unless breeders let folks importing rabbits choose the name. The person who imported the rabbits has moved back to the mainland and we haven't been able to find any of the other rabbits she had although they would likely be related to these three anyway. I'll email her and ask if she has names and address of any of the other folks she sold her stock to.

When my veterinary friend got his bunny, she had been accidently bred to another buck, although that buck went to someone on Oahu and we haven't been able to find out where. We later found out the buck had been from the same breeder as my rabbits and was a brother to the one bred. Asking the breeder, we found out my veterinary friend's rabbit was a full sister to my rabbit so our gene pool is still really small.

Well, maybe we can work up to where we can breed cousins instead of siblings. Sigh!

There are very few rabbits around although we hope to find more when we start a rabbit club. There area lot of meat type rabbits, but very few wooly rabbits.

So far, in the first litter of five, there is one good buck rabbit and two "okay" female rabbits and two "pet" rabbits. The brother/sister litter and the second mom/son litter are still less than two weeks old so we don't know how they will turn out yet.

KSALguy · #4 10/29/10, 01:21 PM

ONLY keep the best for breeding, it will be a slow process working with small numbers, but if you can get more litters to sort thru you will make some progress. in the situation you have going on the island i would put anything not breeding quality into freezer camp, other wise your going to run into the problem/temptation to breed everything just toget numbers, even if your not someone else might, sence your looking at forming the Foundation herd this is important, if you would not consider them breedable eather put them in the freezer or pay to get them fixed,

SilverFlame819 · #5 10/29/10, 02:50 PM

Just off the top of my head...

http://bettychuenglishangora.com/

Betty's Angoras (and Betty herself) are legendary in my mind. And the only English to ever win ARBA Nationals?? You should drop her an email. I have no idea if she ships. The website doesn't give any info about her flock of furballs. Her rabbits are BEAUTIFUL in person. Some of the fluffiest, most cotton-candy looking coats I've ever seen!

Reauxman · #6 10/29/10, 08:51 PM

Betty Chu in CA or Linda Cassella in NY State. Both have great English Angoras.

hotzcatz · #7 10/30/10, 12:11 AM

One of the other folks in our group has a friend of a friend who knows Betty so he's hoping to get one or two with the help of his friend. He's also looking into getting some from Bumblebee Acres although all they have at the moment seem to be bucks.

Betty's website has loads of good advice, but I doubt she needs to put her bunnies online to sell them.

Yeah, I was thinking we could end up with too many bunnies because of so few good ones in each litter. Out of a litter of five, there's only one I'd use for breeding. I'm sure they're edible and all, but I had trouble doing in New Zealand whites because they were too cute, these are even worse! Maybe selling them after they've been fixed is the thing to do.

Blue Oak Ranch · #8 10/30/10, 01:19 AM

A good breeder will help you choose. If you contact a potential breeder, you can discuss your rabbits' shortcomings, and what you'd need in a potential mate to help overcome them. You can always send your photos of your animals for that breeder to evaluate. Even if they don't list sales animals online, they might ship.

I wouldn't pick an animal based on a web photo and blurb only anyway - I'd still talk to the breeder and see if that potential animal would be a good fit for my breeding program.

Also, breeding mother/son or father/daughter isn't necessarily bad, but a good breeding tool as long as you have good traits you want to concentrate, not poor ones. Cousins are also acceptable, but brother/sister isn't so good. One mating won't really hurt you, it's breeding several generations of brother/sister where you can run into trouble.

Good luck with your projects! I'm on the west coast, and have never been to Hawaii.... (wink wink grin)

Cheers!

Katherine

lonelyfarmgirl · #9 10/30/10, 06:12 AM

I, also, was going to suggest Betty Chu. She has the top English Angoras in the country, but her animals arent cheap. you get what you pay for.

here is another link. I always forget which kind of angora is which, so maybe this isn't the right kind, but this lady broke the North American wool production record with her animals in 2008.
http://bungalowfarm.wordpress.com/

PulpFaction · #10 11/01/10, 09:22 PM

It shouldn't be difficult to find someone to ship to you. A friend of mine just had English Angoras shipped up to AK, I can ask where from...but I think if you simply join the Yahoo Angora group and ask around you'll get plenty of response.

Also, that same friend just inquired of Betty Chu. Her babies start at $500, she has very stringent guidelines of how they should be housed, and she breeds rarely, primarily for her own purposes. I also think Betty is a legend in the world of Angoras, but if I was seriously looking I would not buy directly from Betty unless I just had a lot of cash to burn. There are lots of solid bloodlines out there with her stock in the recent pedigree, and if your primary interest is woolers I don't think you need to spend $500 per head for excellent stock.

All that being said, I have a friend that travels to Maui frequently and others that should have EA litters on the ground by Christmas. If getting them as far as Maui would help, we might be able to figure something out.

hotzcatz · #11 11/02/10, 02:21 AM

There is a Yahoo group for Angoras? Do you have a link to it? I'll go search for it and see if I can find it, though, but my searches sometimes end up somewhere else.

I was looking at importing some but they are asking $175 each plus $360 for shipping and they were possibly related to the rabbits already here since they are the same rabbitry the Mother-Of-All is from. One of the folks here is going to bring in two bucks from this source, but IMHO it's a bit expensive and I've not seen a pedigree yet to know how closely related the new rabbits will be to the existing rabbits.

On a good note, though, someone is willing to bring some rabbits in February when they will be visiting Oahu. I'll only have to fly to Honolulu and pick them up from there which is a lot closer than the mainland. So far the rabbits haven't been born, sometime next week, I think is the date. They have some nice bloodlines, too. I'm also gonna lean on my younger brother and explain to him that he's going to have some interesting luggage when he comes to visit in January.

And the other person in our group is still pursuing several other online sites, so if the quality of the rabbits is high and the shipping not so radically expensive, then we will reconsider.

Would it be considered proper for us to see a copy of the pedigree before we buy a rabbit?

(Aha! Found the Yahoo Angora Group!~)

PulpFaction · #12 11/02/10, 01:37 PM

Some people are funny about sharing the whole pedigree before the sale of the rabbit, but no one should be opposed to at least telling you what bloodlines they have so you can make an informed decision.

Good luck!

hotzcatz · #13 11/02/10, 11:41 PM

Hmm, perhaps I could send them a list of the rabbits on the pedigree here and see if they match? Buying a pedigreed rabbit and not knowing what the pedigree is first doesn't seem right. Our poor rabbits are so linebred/inbred we really need some new lines and considering the cost of shipping in rabbits, we'd certainly want to get ones not related to the ones we have here!

KSALguy · #14 11/02/10, 11:51 PM

your best option if they are going to be expencive to ship is to get at least one bred doe, that way you get more bang for your buck,

Honorine · #15 11/03/10, 08:57 AM

Definitely try and get new stock, a unrelated trio would jumpstart your breeding program. You can just breed what you have initially, and cull hard as suggested. Rabbits can handle quite a bit of inbreeding, there was this study were they bred full siblings for 18 generations before really starting to have problems, so a few tight crosses isn't going be that big of a deal, unless you have some serious problems hiding in the line, like seizures, or wolf teeth, or immune problems. My fawn Silvers have numerous full sibling crosses on their peds, and then I bred them parent to offspring, and sibling to sibling. Often thats the case with rare breeds. You breed what you have until you get something less/not related to cross in.

hotzcatz · #16 11/04/10, 12:31 PM

We did find out that the mother of a litter I get "pick of the litter" from is a niece of my buck instead of a full sister to my buck. Yay! Using the "pick of the litter" drops the inbreeding percentage down to 28% which is an improvement.

What do folks do with the "culls" of wool type rabbits? I could get them spayed and neutered and then sell them so there wouldn't be a flood of inferior angora rabbits all over the place, except the spay and neuter will drive the cost of the "wooler" rabbit up above the cost of a quality "show" rabbit. Does selling "pet" and "woolers" depress the price of quality rabbits or do the folks understand the difference between quality and pets and are willing to pay the difference for quality rabbits?

KSALguy · #17 11/04/10, 12:57 PM

no people dont understand that concept in the general public which is where you would be selling,
honestly if it were me i would put the culls in the freezer, especially here early on when your trying to get it just right, if you eat rabbit great, if someone else does great, if not you can always feed to your dogs,

AllEarsRabbitry · #18 11/04/10, 10:09 PM

I was going to suggest Betty Chu as well. When I think of English Angoras, I think of Betty Chu =)

hotzcatz · #19 11/05/10, 01:05 AM

I don't think I'd be able to talk my DH into letting me spend $500 for a rabbit. That's what I heard Betty's rabbits sell for so I haven't even looked at them. Someone suggested I get rabbits from someone who bought some of their stock from Betty so then I'll have Betty Chu's genetics at a price I can rationalize.

The idea is to at least break even on rabbits, perhaps even make some money although not much, I'm sure. Spending $500 on a rabbit before adding in the shipping costs just puts it way over the top. We don't have enough rabbit shows around here to justify that level of expense.

PulpFaction · #20 11/05/10, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

We did find out that the mother of a litter I get "pick of the litter" from is a niece of my buck instead of a full sister to my buck. Yay! Using the "pick of the litter" drops the inbreeding percentage down to 28% which is an improvement.

What do folks do with the "culls" of wool type rabbits? I could get them spayed and neutered and then sell them so there wouldn't be a flood of inferior angora rabbits all over the place, except the spay and neuter will drive the cost of the "wooler" rabbit up above the cost of a quality "show" rabbit. Does selling "pet" and "woolers" depress the price of quality rabbits or do the folks understand the difference between quality and pets and are willing to pay the difference for quality rabbits?

If you're not wanting to flood the market with YOUR culls, you'll have to "send them to freezer camp.

I have been in discussions with some people that have successfully used a "banding" method of neutering young bucks. I think this was done successfully on Angoras and Rex rabbits. You could sell off your banded bucks as woolers, and just send the does to freezer camp, or sell them. At least any of their offspring would be clearly cross-bred if you pretty much have your thumb on all the intact bucks.

In Hawaii though, I would be very reticent to sell pet Angoras. With the heat and humidity, it's asking for trouble with even just a little neglect.

This reminds me, too, if at all possible, import rabbits from comparable climates to yours. Otherwise, the stress from travel AND a drastic climate change can be VERY rough on them.