Backyard Breeders
- May 29, 2018
- 5 min read
Backyard Breeders
Facebook started giving me doubts, as people kept commenting with negative thoughts regarding backyard breeders. It got me thinking, what qualifies as a backyard breeder? Licensed breeders still use their backyards, so it’s not as simple as what area of the property the animals are kept. So I looked through Facebook comments and internet sites, searching for opinions on what a backyard breeder really was.
One person’s opinion was that most of those on Gumtree selling young rabbits were backyard breeders, and that a lot of the claims for purebred rabbits there weren’t purebred at all. RSPCA describes backyard breeding as the irresponsible breeding of animals. It claims that backyard breeders breed for the wrong reasons, without homes lined up for the babies, and that fleas, worms and inadequate nutrition are all common in backyard bred animals.
“What distinguishes backyard breeders from responsible breeders are the standards that the breeder meets and whether there is a known demand for (puppies) before they are bred.”
Being new at the idea of rabbit breeding, we often find ourselves wondering if we are considered backyard breeders. Personally, I was always worried that I didn’t constitute as a ‘proper’ breeder, because I didn’t have the time or money to attend shows and exhibitions with my rabbits. Reading opinions such as those on Facebook, that backyard breeders are those you see on Gumtree (we have a large Gumtree presence), made me question our quality of breeding. Yet reading more about the opinions of people, especially those of larger bodies such as the RSPCA, made me realise we didn’t match the backyard breeder criteria.
Yes, we use Gumtree to advertise… but we also have a website, a blog, a page and a group on Facebook. We use our backyard to breed our animals… but they get fresh veggies and free run time. Our bunnies get flea treated and wormed, they get fed and have play time and get cuddles. If they aren’t doing well, we bring them inside for warmth and attention. If something happens, we race to the emergency vet regardless of the hour.
We can spend hours of the day, regardless of our other commitments, feeding babies formula and cleaning cages and moving rabbits around to the hutch that best suits their needs. Quite often we spend a lot of our time trying to catch the naughty rabbit that decides they want extra free range time (our bunnies get to run around the entire backyard when supervised, but not all the time as its dangerous for them).
We know the ins and outs of rabbit genetics; the way non-extension genes turn chinchilla to frosty point and how Vienna marked can sometimes look like Dutch. We map each rabbit’s genetics, based on their appearance and the appearance of their siblings and offspring. We know the complete genotype of a couple of our babies, something that I doubt backyard breeders could map out. We know the names of the bacteria that cause the disease, and how certain infections can grow resistance to worming and other treatments. We knew all this before we started, we researched and studied and learnt. And while we are still learning some things, we did not go into this without a large background of knowledge to fall back on when needed.
We don’t just keep breeders. We also have a few buns at the moment that aren’t exactly pets, but are here with us to overcome behavioural issues. One is ancient but doesn’t act it, being grumpy and territorial at the best of times. Another is a boy that would make an amazing buck but is terrified of other rabbits and aggressive towards people. They won’t ever be bred, and while they don’t make great pets, we give them the same attention we give the rest of our bunnies and hope that with time and love they’ll learn to trust us more and more each day.
We currently have a rabbit with floppy bunny, and as I’m typing this post I’m also getting up every 45 minutes to an hour to feed her. And that commitment is day and night, 24/7, regardless of how little sleep us humans get. We are hoping she’ll pull through, but until she does she is getting constant care and love.
Would a backyard breeder do all that?
We recently got a doe and a buck from a ‘breeder’… We loved the genetics behind their colours and really wanted to include the colours in our own lines. Yet when we got there the breeders kept suggesting how many rabbits they had, and that they just wanted to sell these as overflow. There was 8 up for sale, which suggests that they have at least twice that behind the scenes. The rabbits were in small runs made from Kmart pens (which are already too small for a run), but only 6 of the sides were used compared to the usual 8 sides that the pens come in. As the breeder went to grab the buck, he was bolting around like crazy not wanting to be caught, and she mentioned a comment along the lines of “he has ALL this grass to himself, now he doesn’t want to go back in a cage”.
That struck me as odd, because there was barely any room at all for him, probably the size of a single-story hutch.
Now he’s with us, thankfully, he has a two-story hutch all to himself, on top of run time (though he’s aggressive, scared and has already taken a large chunk out of a finger). We were told that they were breeder stock not pets and therefore wouldn’t be suited to pet homes. Which in some ways makes sense, pet rabbits can have run of the house and be treated like a cat or dog, or another family member. Breeders generally (ours, anyway) stay in their hutches apart from play time where they run around the yard or a pen. They don’t enjoy cuddles like pets do but prefer to explore the backyard in their free time.
But saying that, all our breeders still come up to the door and ask for pets and attention, and take food out of our hand, and are generally friendly rabbits. I’m now wondering what sort of circumstances we bought these guys from and hope they are getting a better experience here with us (though with the current rain we’ve had it’s not even that much better, all our buns have been confined in their hutches for days because the rain won’t let up).
As for whether we are backyard breeders, I like to hope we have done everything in our power to be considered a responsible breeder. We try our absolute best to do right by our buns, and though we are still learning, we aren’t doing this for money. We are doing this for the bunnies, the joy of breeding them and raising them, finding love in their little personalities and matching them to their future owners. If we are backyard breeders, then perhaps the definition of a backyard breeder needs rewriting, because there’s a big difference between us and some of the breeders out there, even the more reputable ones.
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