These little guys are step one in my project to develop a show quality line of red French Angoras. They are 2 month old red New Zealands, chosen to insert wideband, rufus modifiers and a super commercial body into my existing line of grand champion fawn French Angoras.
It will take at least 5 generations to produce registerable red French Angoras.
OK, so I got anxious to start...picked up a nice 6-8 NZR buck this past week, and Carmen is now bred to him. I will clip Paulette and breed her tomorrow.
My plan is to save all good typed fawns from these 2 litters. They will all carry angora wool recessively, as well as wide band recessively. Now the trick will be to breed these F1 fawns together and get all the genes to line up so that I get good typed wooled rabbits with wideband and rufus modifiers.
For those of you interested in the project, these are my initial plans:
F1 generation rabbits used for breeding will not get ear numbers. They will simply show as Wild Hare NZR Cross on pedigrees. This is because these rabbits will not be eligible to show up on ARBA registerable French Angoras, since they will be short haired, and therefore will not meet FA breed standards. Any subsequent generation of wool rabbit will have the Wild Hare name,and their ear number will begin with "X". Not until the rabbit has a full FA pedigree and is registerable will the Somerhill rabbitry name and tattoo prefix be used.
We have liftoff! Carmen kindled during the night, and was nursing the kits while I was feeding this AM. She has 9 kits.
Guess how many are fawns?
Right- ONE......
Oh well, its a start. So now lets hope it does not get dragged out of the nestbox or is a fader. Tomorrow, Paulette is due, and since she is a tort, all the kits should be fawns or torts.
So I just had to say something, didn't I? This AM, I found 4 of Carmen's kits on the floor, and one was the fawn. One of the chestnuts was still alive, so I did save it. So Carmen has 6 chestnuts, which are very fat and active and already showing red in their coats.
Paulette had kindled,making her nest in the corner of the cage instead of the nestbox. She had 8 kits, 6 of which were cold, but still alive. I warmed them, and noticed some even had eaten. The remaining 6 are fat and doing well. They also have a strong red color already, so the rufus modifiers are there!
Phoenix has 7 kits - 3 reds and 4 chestnuts
I've got another litter of F1 crosses, this time from a NZR doe and my GC fawn FA buck, Evan. All 5 are doing great. Hopefully there will be an exceptional buck in this group.
I bred Phoenix red son to Carmen's copper daughter, Cupra, last night. I'll breed Paulette's red daughter, Aurum tonight. They are fairly young yet, but both weigh 8#. I'll have an adult FA kindling at the same time just in case I need a foster mother. This is the beginning of step #2, and I SHOULD get some reds with wool.
Cupra and Aurum's kits are a little over a week old now. They are the second step in the project, being the result of breeding 2 crossbred does to a crossbred buck. odds are, about 25% of these kits will have wool. Cupra has one red, and one very rich copper colored kit. Hope they have wool!
There is a very nice red buck in the crossbred litter sired by Evan in April, and I'll be using him soon.
Oh - better start looking for an "X" for my tattoo kit in earnest. :^)
Oh, I've sold the New Zealand Reds, so that step is finished.
