Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Déjà Vu All Over Again
If you are married or are a parent, you may have been given this advice: start out as you intend to go. If you accept certain behaviors, don't be surprised if you see them again. If you have certain responses, don't be surprised if others expect those same responses in the future.
LIkewise, with rabbits, whatever you do to help your rabbits survive and thrive, don't be surprised that you have to continue doing those things to get your rabbits to survive and thrive in the future.
It's part of the simple - yet somehow complicated idea - that you should breed what you want more of.
If you have to coddle your kits to get them to live, you will just get more kits that have to be coddled, if you continue to breed them. Sure, it won't be 100% and you might have a chance to make a different choice down the road, but all-in-all, we get what we tolerate in our breeding programs.
If we tolerate long ears, don't be surprised to find that we are still struggling with those long ears years from now. The same goes for other faults as well.
To make things worse, I've seen over and over again that people buy rabbits just like the ones that they already have. They have parts they love and faults they tolerate - and they repeat the same things. I probably do, too. I just can't see my own blind spots.
A prominent breeder of another breed says that we should keep all different kinds of rabbits in our barn. That way, if we need a particular strength, we've got the ingredient right there. Need more depth? You've got some of those. Need shorter ears? You've got some of those.
But I think that if many of us could take a look at our barns - if we could be totally honest with ourselves - we have saved the same thing over and over gain. Hopefully, some of those things are great things. I don't think that breeder meant that you should keep some flat rabbits, some poorly fleshed rabbit, and so forth as part of the variety that you should have on hand. But we probably miss the same strengths and breed the same weakness generation after generation without giving it a thought.
So whether it's unthriftiness, poor flesh, thin coats, folding ears, narrow shoulders, flat bodies, sloping upper hindquarters, pinched lower hindquarters, ify teeth, light nails, narrow chests, light bone, or something else, we get more of the same when we choose to breed it.
Like a person lost in the forrest who sees the same stump over and over gain, we shouldn't be surprised if we see the same rabbits, for the most part, over and over again in our barns, generation after generation, unless we stop exempting certain faults, we stop going to extremes to get rabbits to survive (and then breed them), and we start breeding with a full set of worthy ingredients in our barns.
Get a fresh set of eyes. Ask someone who knows your breed to tell you any faults they see across your herd. And start anew in the way you intend to go.
Laurie ¶ 11:25 AM
LIkewise, with rabbits, whatever you do to help your rabbits survive and thrive, don't be surprised that you have to continue doing those things to get your rabbits to survive and thrive in the future.
It's part of the simple - yet somehow complicated idea - that you should breed what you want more of.
If you have to coddle your kits to get them to live, you will just get more kits that have to be coddled, if you continue to breed them. Sure, it won't be 100% and you might have a chance to make a different choice down the road, but all-in-all, we get what we tolerate in our breeding programs.
If we tolerate long ears, don't be surprised to find that we are still struggling with those long ears years from now. The same goes for other faults as well.
To make things worse, I've seen over and over again that people buy rabbits just like the ones that they already have. They have parts they love and faults they tolerate - and they repeat the same things. I probably do, too. I just can't see my own blind spots.
A prominent breeder of another breed says that we should keep all different kinds of rabbits in our barn. That way, if we need a particular strength, we've got the ingredient right there. Need more depth? You've got some of those. Need shorter ears? You've got some of those.
But I think that if many of us could take a look at our barns - if we could be totally honest with ourselves - we have saved the same thing over and over gain. Hopefully, some of those things are great things. I don't think that breeder meant that you should keep some flat rabbits, some poorly fleshed rabbit, and so forth as part of the variety that you should have on hand. But we probably miss the same strengths and breed the same weakness generation after generation without giving it a thought.
So whether it's unthriftiness, poor flesh, thin coats, folding ears, narrow shoulders, flat bodies, sloping upper hindquarters, pinched lower hindquarters, ify teeth, light nails, narrow chests, light bone, or something else, we get more of the same when we choose to breed it.
Like a person lost in the forrest who sees the same stump over and over gain, we shouldn't be surprised if we see the same rabbits, for the most part, over and over again in our barns, generation after generation, unless we stop exempting certain faults, we stop going to extremes to get rabbits to survive (and then breed them), and we start breeding with a full set of worthy ingredients in our barns.
Get a fresh set of eyes. Ask someone who knows your breed to tell you any faults they see across your herd. And start anew in the way you intend to go.
Laurie ¶ 11:25 AM
