Cornerstone Acres Farm
Sharing the cornerstones of good natural living and self-sufficiency.
*****EXCUSE THE MESS AS WE REVAMP OUR RABBIT PAGE******
With the introduction of a few more rabbit breeds and the addition of a few more individual rabbits we are slowly trying to update this page. Please be patient. We hope to get some updated and posed pictures along with some weights on our senior stock. We have more photo albums to get linked to the website as well.
NOTE: after seeing some information on "pedigree theft" on-line, we have decided to no longer offer our pedigrees for open viewing. However if you are interested in purchasing please inquire and we would be happy to share the information with you.
For Sale (will open in new window)
What do I feed my rabbits? (including natural feeding recipes - will open a new page)
Below you will find information on:
Our Bucks
Our Does
A note on genetics.....
What gender makes a better pet?
Colony Raising
COMING SOON:
French Angora breed info
Rex breed info
Have a question you need answered? Use the "contact us" button on the right of your screen and we will respond to your question privately and then we can also post your question and the answer here for other readers.
Our Does
Godiva - chocolate French Angora
Butterfly Kisses - Chocolate Agouti French Angora
Oreo - black and white Rex
Glimmer - Black Rex
Godiva
Ghost
Glimmer
Our bucks
Van Pelt - REW Rex
?? - Tri-color Rex
?? - Self chin Satin Angora
A note on genetics.....
I am by no means experienced in genotypes, phenotypes or anything along those lines. However I am trying to learn. You will see by each of our above animals you will find a genotype string in red. I will try fill in the "blanks" (underscores) as kits are born. This is all new to me, but I'm trying to have some fun playing with color combinations and learning how to determine what recessive genes are in there! If you see errors in my calculations or have suggestions, feel free to contact me.
I don't plan on getting to detailed information regarding the alleles, what they control, or other information on how they work together to create the different colors. Much more information than I have the time or wherewithal to put to "paper" here on the website. If you search the web for "Rabbit Genotypes" it will bring you a plethora of information to aide you.
Here are a couple of links I found interesting:
This one is a color calculator. When you put in the known genotype of your buck and doe it will give you the possible color combinations that they could produce.
Another one here tells what each of the basic five genes control (Agouti, Black/Chocolate, Color, Dilute and Extension) and also lists 144 coat colors and their genotypes.
What gender makes a better pet?
All of our rabbits are specifically raised and used as meat breeders. This however does not mean that we don't breed for temperament and personality as well. Our does are all pretty friendly with a couple being the exception when they have young kits in the nest. Our males are always friendly and inquisitive. The does have a tendency to be territorial of their spaces, while a buck is much more tolerant; this is one reason it is always best to bring the doe into the bucks cage and NOT the other way around. Most research I have done over the years seems so point to males being the better pets. From what my experience is I would have to agree with having bucks over does as pets. One thing to consider is how many rabbits you plan to have as pets and what their living situations will be. There are many ways to house rabbits, from individually in cages to colony type situations. What you choose to do depends on your space, whether you are going to breed and the genders of the rabbits you choose.
Colony raising
This is a new endeavor for us. Due to a big jump in the number of breeders (and thus the number of litters and kits) in the rabbitry we decided to go a different route with our growouts for the winter. Eventually it would be nice to even allow our breeders the luxury of colony living, but for now we just don't have the room for that...maybe a nice hoop house addition will allow us to move forward! But we were able to use 1/2 of our tack room to house a large portion of our growouts in a colony setting. The area is approximately 10' X 7-1/2' in size. Using a standard premise of about 1 square foot per pound of rabbit I estimate we can fit about 20 -25 rabbits in the pen. I am currently making the assumption that the rabbits will be about 3# when placed in the pen and will be about 6# when "exiting" the pen.
We finally got a summer doe colony up and running spring 2015. I absolutely LOVE it - and the rabbits I think do too. We have the one grow-out pen and two doe pens that house 4-5 does each. One pen is 10x12 and the other is 10x15.
We haven't quite decided how we will be handling kindling but we still have a few weeks to figure it out.
Here is a picture album on our Facebook page.
