Homepage: Golden Spike Rabbitry

Astrex litter of nine

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:27:43 -0600

Bob Whitman will hopefully receive some Astrex from Golden Spike some time this year, and in fact already a line with his initials (on Ear #) has been started here. BobW Laurel, a chocolate agouti doe, bred to Fred’s Son, a black otter buck, had her first litter last night. There were nine: two blue otters, two black otters, two lilac otters, one chocolate otter, and two lynx!

Fur pulled by Astrex is curlier and finer and that of other rabbits and amazingly dense, and the babies are so lively it was very hard to get a clear photo, but this was the best I could do. Astrex babies have these vertical wrinkles in the skin and you can sort of see these already here.

There will be updates here every three days.

The movie above shows four Astrex playing in the day pen watched by our horses. The two other pens feature a pair of Can. Plush Lops on honeymoon and a lone CPLop doe.

Links

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:40:24 -0700

If you would like to add your link to my website please feel free to send me the address and I will add it as soon as i have reviewed it to be sure it works properly.

The Rabbitry

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:49:28 -0600

The name “Golden Spike” is actually the name of our location on the map. It appears on provincial maps and the name of our range road is not just 273 but also “Golden Spike Road”. The name probably derived from some sentiment about this being the end of the road. Apparently the settlers here were originally located near Medicine Hat where they nearly starved due to extreme drought in the 1880’s. They were granted new land up near Edmonton but they had to walk up from Red Deer as that was as far as the train went in those days.. That is a long way to come through wilderness largely on foot with cows and chickens and small children, but they made it and set about clearing the land by axe and sweat. They are still here today, a pocket of community still all interrelated and helping each other. We feel very fortunate to find ourselves in the thick of it. The old house we live in is on the site of the original Lutheran Church built by a congregation of these German immigrants in the late 1890’s. The congregation split and built two new churches within a mile or two of the original and the site next housed a general store and post office. We bought this building from the last family who had kept the store here. And we still have the cemetery dating back to 1890 on the property. It is a comfort that our beloved special animals are buried on something resembling holy ground.

The rabbitry at Golden Spike consisted until the fall of 2007 of a large enclosure surrounded by six and ten foot slab sided wooden fence, in which the majority of the hutches and other cages were set under core-plaste and tarp roofing. Also there was a rather unsatisfactory arrangement of cages set into an old greenhouse (pictured above). The greenhouse was too hot in summer and was covered in sheets and old feather beds and had wooden sidewalk panels leaned up to it to keep it cool. But in winter it was the only place besides the house itself, where early litters or young stock being readied for show could be kept warm enough to use water bottles. It also was useful for those rabbits needing to be housed on shavings. A new rabbit barn and henhouse (1/3 of the space will house our flock of a dozen hens) is now nearing completion and after this, the greenhouse can resume it’s normal functions (growing plants!!!)

Despite the cold weather we have here in central Alberta, the rabbits do very well as long as they have their straw-filled nest boxes to retreat to on windy days. We made the decision years ago that we would not house the majority of the rabbits indoors. Ammonia build-up is too much of a problem in winter. So we do not have an easy time in winter, when hot water from the house is carried out to the rabbits (about ten buckets) every day. It is summer which is the big killer - any heat over 90”F requires us to put up dark tarps over the rabbitry.

The cages are set about four feet off the ground, and our chickens run underneath scratching up worms and other insects. This keeps the flies down and disposes of dropped feed. We have our own hayfield and the rabbits get big handfulls of hay regularly. The only problem with these arrangements has been that the chocolate based colors get too sunburned even under tarps, so young show animals have to stay indoors after they molt. We breed most does once in the spring and some also get to have another litter once in the fall.

We tried automatic watering systems but the well water seems to produce a lot of debris in the tubes. It had to be cleaned out completely several times a month - a process that took a whole day at least, as the tubes had to all be disconnected and soaked in bleach solution. So now we use plastic or metal crocks. The metal crocks are easier to get ice out of but the rabbits injure their tongues when these get frozen to the metal in cold weather. Most of them only do this once, though.

Feeding: we use an 18% protein pellets. Hay and weedy vegetation (out of the gardens) are given liberally. The outdoor cages are either 24” x 36” or 24 x 32” and a few larger hutches. All the cages have a nest box of wood or plastic except in high summer when only a few really “neatnik” bucks and the does with young litters get to keep their boxes. There is a picture of one of the kinds of nest boxes we use at the bottom of this page. It is a used kitty litter box with a hole cut out of the lid. It is free with the purchase of clumping cat litter and can be disinfected with bleach after each use.

We have four exercise pens that are set up in the garden every day weather permitting for rabbits who are in smaller quarters in the greenhouse or back porch: they get a chance to run around on the lawn. Below, you see the hens under heat lamps last winter (see the sparrows?), on the right, and a wee Lilac Mini Rex peeking out of her next box, and below this, the outside fence around the rabbit compound.

Rabbits in the Family

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:49:18 -0600

Rabbits have been raised in both my own and in my husband’s families for a long time. For instance, our picture shows my husband’s grand parents and his great grandfather (seated on the right) in front of their rabbitry circa 1923 in Scotland. They were raising English Angoras.

When I was a child, I often went over to the neighbours to feed two big white rabbits they kept in a pen in the backyard. One day I noticed a four leaf clover in the hand-full I had picked. I gave the rest to the rabbits and took this home to show my mother. She told me I could make a wish. You guessed it! Within a year I had my own bunny, who started out very tiny and grew up to be a Flemish Giant, He was a steel, although I was not to know this for thirty years.

Over the years I continued to find four leaf clovers. I have hundreds of them pasted inside nearly all the books I had from the age of eight on. I can still go into almost any patch of lawn or pasture with clover and find at least one, any day. But the four leaf clover fairy must have got stuck on that first wish, because I never won the lottery or married that cute boy who sat behind me in grade ten, I just got hundreds of rabbits. I even had one while at University. I was in a department store one day (this was in the old Eaton’s store in Toronto), and I saw a big pen of young bunnies for sale (it was probably around Easter time) and one little white one caught my eye because he looked as though some of the others had chewed off the tops of his little ears. I bought him.

Of course, all the other students helped me hide him when I got him back to my room in the residence (this was in the women’s residence, called Whitney Hall - long since gone co-ed, at the University of Toronto). I think I kept him in a metal garbage can under my bed for a few days until I found a small cage for him, and a litter box for when he was out of the cage. He moved like a slinky toy; and was probably a Himalayan - another fact that I never learned until nearly thirty years had passed. I had him all through several years of college, a BA, and an MA. He passed away before I left for Africa for the first time.

Years later, while I was teaching at the University of Alberta, I met my husband and he suggested we get some rabbits, since he already had hutches that were empty. He often got young rabbits to raise for meat from a friend who lived on a farm next to a Hutterite colony (a religious sect similar in some ways to the Mennonites). That was how we got our first set of rabbits. They got very big and they were either gray (I learned later it was really blue) or white, and for several years we raised them in our backyard for meat. I learned all the ins and outs, as it were, of slaughter. It was perhaps easier for me than it might have been for many other urban-raised North Americans; I had watched hundreds of sheep, goats, cattle, antelope, gnu, hares and other game being butchered in the course of my various periods of African fieldwork. Of course it would be nearly ten years before I learned that these rabbits in the back yard were actually American Blue and Whites.

Now that it has become clear to you that I am not too swift when it comes to identifying rabbit breeds, it will no doubt come as a rude shock that I am even allowed to have any these days, but it is true. I have quite a few, in fact more than anyone knows, including my husband who has long since ceased asking. All he asks now is when does he have to help me build a new fence, hutch, shed, or, um, ...barn? And, plaintively, when can we slaughter some?

Canadian Plush Lops (click my picture for CPLop Website)

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:48:49 -0600

There are now several versions of a rex-coated lop being developed in different parts of the world. In North America, the Mini Push Lop, developed by Devi D’Anniballe is a rexed Holland, small and cuddly and often under 4 lbs in weight, The Velveteens are a miniature English lop with a rex coat. So far, we have seen no other breed which combines the astrex fur with a crowned lop and full arch, and that is running breed, like the Tan.

The Astrex Rabbit

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:47:42 -0600

Of all the breeds of rabbit this curly breed is the most rare in the world today. It It is known mostly from a few photos from the 1920’s and 1930’s before the depression and the long days of WWII made the breed disappear into stew-pots and oblivion. A few specimens crop up here and there in the UK, Canada, Australia, and the USA., usually in herds of Rex and Mini Rex. Here at Golden Spike we were fortunately to be able to use a few of these lovely rabbits to contribute the curly gene in the development of the Curly Canadian Plush Lop.

The original at Golden Spike was a chocolate doe named Mocca. She was nearly seven lbs, had a soft lustre to her coat, and lots of curls and waves every time she molted. I used her to get the chocolate gene into my Mini Rex, since I had read about the Lilac colour and wanted to see if I could make some from my Opals. In the end I got both Lilac and Lynx. Years later, I started seeing my Lynx molt out into curly coats, starting with a buck named Sundial (he’s a wee bit flat). There is a picture of Sundial at the top of the page. To the right, you will see a blue doe. This doe , Isadora, looks like one of the Astrex used in the development of the Canadian Plush Lop. Both her parents are fully lopped and have the typical shape of that breed, but this doe is like a “throwback” to the old type, and looks a lot like one of the original CPLop foundation does, Keeper, who was also blue (and was a great grand-daughter of Mocca). Strangely enough, Isadora would fit the Astrex breed standard in the UK more than she fits the working standard for the Canadian Plush Lop. Nonetheless most of her offspring have lopped and have the typical Canadian Plush Lop conformation.

There are varying kinds of curly coats. Not only is there variation between different individuals, there is also variation in the coat over the lifetime of the animal. Most Astrex start out quite curly as the fur first grows in. There is some variation here as well though. The young Astrex REW doe in the series of pictures (top, right) showed a pronounced body wave pattern even at seven days of age. Many kits show a less pronounced curly coat on the back and flanks, and rather more on the neck, shoulders and belly. This is illustrated here in the pictures on the right. The middle picture shows a CPLop at seven days. The photo below shows the kit at 14 days. You can see how “tousled” the coat appears in the CPLop compared to the Astrex. It is only when the coat goes through the first adult molt that the curly character of the coat can be seen clearly. Animals with this kind of coat also molt in a way unlike other breeds. The bottom picture shows our Sundial during his molt (middle, below) and this may be compared to the picture of Enson (CPLop, far left) molting (thanks to Julie Hickie for this picture). At the far right is the typical Astrex “water wave” effect in Sundial’s coat at the end of the molt.

The curly pattern is clearest when the fur has just grown back in after a molt or a nest building in the case of does. The coat continues to fill in after this until a beautiful “water wave” effect is seen on the surface. It is less easy to photograph than the dramatic “fresh” curls of the newly grown coat.

However in both breeds, the intermediate or “eclipse” coat is fluffy and almost unkempt looking and often has protruding guard hair. On the right is a close-up of the coat of the White doe, China Doll, who appears so dramatically curly in the earlier photos: this was her intermediate coat! Although the Astrex standard (below) calls for a coat that has no guard hair, and the coats of our Astrex animals here often have none, the CPLop coats are still quite variable and many of the most curly animals do have some guard hair in their coats . This guard hair is also curly after the molt. Below are an pictures showing the beautiful two tone effect in the Sable and Sable Point Astrex does, sisters to the White doe seen also above. At the end of this page are a series of shots showing close ups of the Castor kits coats. The last (below right) shows the same REW doe as she now appears, with her coat filled in. It is less dramatic that the look of the “fresh” curls but still very curly, even along her legs... and at the very bottom of the page a photo of one of China’s first litter.

ASTREX STANDARD IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Type, -- Compact body, small to medium ears, erect carriage, weight 5-7 lbs (10 points) Fur, -----Short, firm texture, free from guard hairs, the fur to be curled over the
entire surface of the body, giving a water wave or "broadtail" effect. Ears, feet, and tail to be covered with plain fur (60 points)
Colour -- Any recognized Rex colour (30 points) Total 100 points

Mini Rex: Tort, Lynx, Sable Point, & Red and odds and ends!

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:47:27 -0600

We have had to restrict ourselves to a few main color lines so we do three main programs: the Lynx development (offshoots Chocolate and Lilac), the Tortoise development (offshoots Black and Tricolor~ and Sable Point sometimes) and finally the Sable Point development (offshoots Seal, Sable, and Himalayan). Reds are just a tiny sideline with 4 animals. .

The pictures, from bottom to top, right to left, are: a Himilayan buck and Sable doe, a Sable Point buck, another Sable Point buck looking in on a cage with Sable Point and Broken Seal Point kits, a Sable doe, Sable Point doe and her kit, a Sable Point; a broken Seal Point kit, a Sealpoint doe. Above the Sablepoint buck on the left: a Lynx; a Broken Tort; top view of a posed Tricolor. Very bottom of page --
a nest of Tricolors - Magpie & Harlequin; baby Red.

The American Blue and White

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:47:06 -0600

Adult Weight: 9lbs – 12lbs

The American is one of the large breeds, originally used for meat. They have a calm friendly personality, and enjoy scratches behind the ear. You can reach the online webpage for this breed by clicking on the blue doe just above. Both this doe and the one in the photo below are daughters of the buck “Reb” who was sent to us by Franco Rios of California.

The American considered one of the endangered breeds in the USA, with fewer than 200 found in the last survey of the breed in 2006. In October of that year 2 breeders (that was me, Helga, and my friend Gayle Gordon) from Spruce Grove/Stony Plain discovered that their white “New Zealands” were actually an old lost population of American rabbits, brought to Canada by the Hutterites from the Northern USA in the 1930s.

After many weeks of planning, the Great CAN-AM Migration took place with the breeders traveling to BC to meet with other breeders from as far as California to get them some New Americans. You read all about this on the next page.

A story of CANADIAN AMERICANS

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:20:49 -0600

There has been a surge of interest in rare breeds lately. This is the story of the rarest of all recognized breeds, the American Blue and White.
Americans in Canada,
and the great “CanAms” migration

Photo: Gerlinda, Violet’s daughter. Below is the other buck from her litter. and further down other descendants of Violet. (photo by Helga Vierich-Drever)

Once upon a time, in a land called Canada, there lived a small group of farmers decided to keep rabbits in addition to all their other livestock. S0, from their farms in Central Alberta, they went south to America to buy some. These rabbits came in two colors, gray and white, and they called these rabbits, simply, “American Rabbits”. Many years passed, and several generations of farmers. Eventually they heard that there must have been a mistake, because someone said that in fact those white rabbits came from New Zealand
If this were a fairy tale, then one of these rabbits would be an enchanted Princess or have solid gold poop. Well, it is not a fairy tale, not quite. But the story does have a sort of a princess and it does have a sort of a prince charming. Now, who, you may ask, is the princess? Well, her name was Violet. And she was a white rabbit who came into the world in 1998, a year or so after we got some of these “white and gray” rabbits through a friend who farmed near Edmonton, Alberta. Violet was the only white baby in a litter of ten. All the others were various shades of gray. I had actually gone to the public Library by this time and read up on New Zealands. I learned that the color “gray” was known to people in the world of purebred rabbits as “blue”. The book stated uncompromisingly that the New Zealand only came in three colors, white, red, and black. No “blue”. I was very disappointed, as it was a pretty color, but resolved to stamp it out. So the white baby was to be saved and since we needed another doe we also kept her sister, a blue –named “Puttyface” by the little girl who lived in the downstairs flat of our house. They both grew up with a lot of freedom because we had a big enclosure where all the young does were allowed to roam. The bucks and the breeding does lived in hutches.

Violet had by the time she was four months old decided to stake out an unusual territory. It consisted of the high ground – the tops of all the hitches and even the top of the compound fencing and the lower branches in the tree that stood in the rabbitry. She leapt from hutchtop to hutchtop and even along the lower branches like a big white cat. Always eager to be petted, Violet intercepted anyone who opened the gate
In due course Violet was bred and put into a hutch with a nest box to have her babies. She escaped again and again, always returning to her high places. One day she slipped on the ice during one of her leaps and sprained her hind leg As she was heavily pregnant the only way we could ensure that she rested and allowed it to heal was by confining her to a cage in our laundry room.

Four days later, she had sixteen babies, all blue. Half of these were immediately fostered into other litters. The rest grew vigorously. But Violet was finding the house too hot. She had a coat like a mink and panted and looked miserable. She kept breaking the top off the cage and heading for the door. Eventually, after a few days of this, I gave in and let her back into the rabbit enclosure. I told my husband, since he got up so early every morning, that he should go out at 5:30 or 6:00 AM and bring Violet in to feed her babies. Gordon told me later that he was quite willing to do this, but had his doubts about being able to go out and catch this rabbit every morning.

Well, the first morning he went down to the gate and called her name and she came to sit at his feet, looking up at him. He picked her up and he took her into the house. The next morning and all the mornings thereafter, she was already waiting by the gate when he came to get her. She raised her first litter this way. When we finally moved them all out into a hutch that was the first time Violet stayed voluntarily confined. We moved to our acreage south of Spruce Grove when Violet was two, She had several more litters at Golden Spike, and we stopped letting her breed after an eye infection led to surgery.

Violet retired into the house, with a cage in the living room that was always kept open. She house-trained herself, took to being a couch potato and also spent long hours simply stretched out in front of the wood-stove. She is buried with the two dogs and the old cat with which she shared her last years, on a grassy hill on our property. I still miss her everyday.

While all this was going on, the rabbitry had expanded to other breeds, my husband and I had become members of the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA), and I had begun to attend local rabbit shows. I became very discouraged with my New Zealands; no matter how hard I tried, they continued to have coats that seemed too fine, ears too long, shoulders too low, and an overall shape and size that did not fit the Standard of Perfection. The judges were often kindly but firm: “Get better New Zealands shipped in from the States,” I was told. But that would mean putting an end to Violet descendants, which I did not want to do. My friend Gayle Gordon liked their temperament and asked for some breeding stock. So Violet’s daughter Gerlinda and a number of her offspring went to Gayle’s rabbitry. I kept a few, but did not really plan to show these rabbits again anyway.

Then Fate took a hand. One of the rabbit discussion groups I had joined in 2006 was devoted to rare breeds. It is moderated by Franco Rios, of California. One day I happened to see discussion about the difficulties people were having breeding “Americans” . I looked up the pictures of American rabbits in their albums. They were mostly blue rabbits. They looked like the same blue rabbits that I had been culling for years to get a herd of white rabbits…. I felt stunned. I went over to Gayle’s and we pulled one of Gerlinda’s sons out of the cull pens and I took a photograph of him . I sent that picture into the internet group and explained the origin of the rabbit and asked the question “Could these actually be a remnant population of Americans?”

The result was a flood of commentary, almost all of it positive and also disturbing. I had not known quite how endangered the American Breed had become. The 2006 survey by Franco Rios counted 109 Blue and 35 Whites in the continental USA. Bob Whitman, author of a new book just out on the origins and history of the domestic rabbit, wrote several emails commenting that it was entirely possible that a remnant of the American breed had survived in Canada. When the farmers here got breeding stock from the USA in the period of the 1920, 30s and even as late as 1960, there were still Americans being bred commercially and it was possible that these, rather than New Zealands, were the original stock that was imported. The colors fit too. The fact that I had done a few outcrosses with “real” New Zealands – even a black one – was not necessarily a bad thing, as Franco Rios explained, several judges had recommended such crosses might become needed just to save the breed from extinction. Meanwhile, Gerlinda’s young buck -the “Prince Charmng” of our story? - was featured not only on the American Blue and White Rabbit breeders own internet group, but also on the Breed Website!

Gayle and I were flabbergasted. Then Jolynn Marie Wagner, of Monroe, Washington, asked if we could somehow manage to meet her with a consignment of stock, some for herself, and some to be moved on to other breeders all through the Pacific Northwest and down to California. Chris Hemp and her daughter Amythest, breeders from Central California, agreed to drive up to Seattle and back to take the animals on to breeders in Oregon and California. Franco Rios and Rebecca Ruegsegger offered Blue Americans in trade, and it was finally arranged that two Blue bucks (a junior and a senior) and one senior Blue doe would make the long journey north to us in Alberta while twenty-five juniors made their way south.

On October 26th, Chris Hemp and her daughter began their journey from California, stopping along the way to pick up Franco’s Blue buck Reb, and at the Oregon border, to pick up Miranda, the Senior doe and a junior buck from Rebecca Ruegsegger. The great American Migration, as the internet chat-rooms soon labeled it, had begun. On the evening of October 27, all the rabbits were loaded into my Suburban. The next morning at 6 AM we set off in a blizzard! We crept cautiously up past Nordegg and Lake Louise and up over Kicking Horse Pass. By the time we got over the Pass we had left the storm behind and had been traveling nearly seven hours. We stopped and took a little while to feed and water the rabbits and take a picture.

We finally reached Kelowna as it was getting dark. We rendezvoused with Jolynn through cell phone calls back and forth, helped by Teresa Lynes of Violet Acres Rabbitry (Salmon Arm) who arranged the best place for our meeting.

Next morning we encountered the snowstorm we had left behind and it was over 15 hours before we got home. Soon, all the rabbits had reached their new owners, including Gerlinda’s son, “Captain America” who had gone all the way to Sacramento to his new home with Franco Rios.

The story is not over yet, as lately we have been hearing about various “CANAMS” as they are now universally known, winning Best of variety and Best of Opposite Sex of Variety and Best of Opposite Sex of Breed all over the West Coast. In spite of the unknown stray color white CANAMs might carry hidden after nearly a century of unrecorded breeding, everyone is hopeful that they may help save the American Breed from extinction.
As for me, this story will always begin with that big white leaping shape, affectionate and willful and wonderful. I think of all those white bunnies, spread all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond, and I think Violet would have been proud.

By Helga Vierich-Drever
Golden Spike Rabbitry
goldenspikerabbity@yahoo.ca

Below: we have had lots of violets springing up all over the property since Violet died.. We have never planted any and have no ideas, save for the obvious spooky one, for this phenomenon.

Sable Silver Marten

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:39:45 -0600

Above you see one of the junior does born in 2007 (top left), a litter born 2007 and pictured at 10 weeks, a doe in her exercise pen (doe is 16 months) a kit from the same litter (at 5 weeks). We have been working on the Silver Martens here for over ten years. Our first specimens were in many cases actually Otter marked, meaning they had fawn color where they ought to have white. This indicted that many did not have the chinchilla gene in a double dose, but only one copy or none. To test this, they were out-crossed to white (REW), and sure enough, very few Silver Martens resulted. But we did get some chinchillas. However there was one Sabled individual with the white trim. It was a Sable Silver Marten, which is produced using the light rather than the dark chin gene. This was the founding animal of all of our Sable Silver Marten stock.

The genetic code for the Sable Silver Marten(SSM) is unlike that of the other kinds of Silver Martens (Black, Blue, Chocolate and Lilac) in that it is the light chinchilla allele c(chl) at the “C” locus that causes the silvering. In these other Silver Martens it is the dark chinchilla allele c(chd). In a sense, it would be correct to call the Sable Silver Marten a Sable Otter, since it is only because it is the light chinchilla allele that removes the red colour (rufus) from the inside of the ear, the neck triangle, the flanks and so on. Also, because it is the light chinchilla allele in conjunction with an allele recessive to it -either “c” or “c(h)” that produces the Sable color.

It is for this reason that we have only Sable Silver Martens here now. We do not have the space for a separate breeding program for the other Silver Martens. The colour Sable is unstable. Each mating of two SSM animals will produce roughly 25% Seal Silver Martens - atat BB c(chl)c(chl) EE DD - 25% Red Eyed Whites -atatDDccDDEE-, and 50% Sables animals like their parents - atatBBc(chl)c DDEE. We have got the albinism allele -”c” - here instead of the allele for Himalayan colouring- “c(h)”.

In the beginning we had thin coats and poor. blotchy shading. To improve the coat and the conformation as well as the richness of the Sable color, so we brought in the American Sable and some nice colored sable and chocolate animals from two other breeds, the Satin, and the Astrex. This was probably a mistake, as even now, almost tens years later, we get the occasional chocolate, Satin, or Astrex pop up in a litter. But we have been getting closer and closer to the Standard every year and need never cross anything in these days.

The Silver Martens in Europe are shown with a flatter outline than on this side of the pond, and recently A young woman from Germany brought some of her prized Black Silver Martens with her when she married a local farmer. I have been surprised at how alike the animals are in terms of head and ears, and fur. Only the posed animal appears quite different. We have very few breeds of this boxy long rectangular outline in North America, although it is very frequently seen in European meat breeds.Here the fashion is for the high rising topline peaking over the hips.

Due to the space needed to continue the work on the Astrex, the American and the Can. Plush Lops, The Golden Spike Silver Marten herd has been transferred to new owners We will SOON be adding a link to this page that will take you to each of these rabbitries if you would be interested in finding out more about them.