I had so much fun at the WSHLRC Cluster show yesterday! What a great day! In the first show, both Wicket and Butterfly got second place in their very large classes, under judge Allen Mesick.
In the second show, with judge Jenny Poprawski, I table wrote. In this show, Wicket only got 5th place out of 7, but the rabbits above him had awesome bone and massive heads so it was totally understandable. In Butterfly's class, BJD, she got 1st place out of 6 and then went on to score BOSV!!!!! She gets her first leg at only 15 weeks old! I kind of in shock when it happened, because since I was table writing I didn't see it coming!
What is BOSV (feel free to skip this part if you already know)?
After a rabbit has won its class, it stays on the table to compete for Best of Variety and Best of Breed, with all the other rabbits of that breed that got first in their classes.
Varieties are judges within the solid or broken pattern. Since there are 8 classes, there will be 8 class winners. 4 of these class winners will be solid and the other 4 will be broken. The judge chooses one out of the solids to be Best Solid, which Best of Variety, and then the runner-up to the Best Solid is the Best Opposite Sex Variety. Two of the same sex cannot win BOV and BOSV. If the BOV is a buck, the BOSV is a doe. This was the case with Butterfly in the broken category.
THEN, (wait, there's more!), the BOVs and BOSVs (there are now 4, two for each categories - broken and solid), compete for BOB and BOSB. Best of Breed is the best rabbit on the table, within that breed. Best Opposite Sex Breed is the runner-up to BOB, and is of the opposite sex.
Butterfly didn't make it that far, which is perfectly fine with me! She did so well for her second show!
Ok, back to the show news....sadly we were unable to participate in the third and final show, because my cousin's 17th birthday party was that afternoon and it was over an hour away.
Over lunch, around noon, there was a rabbit auction to raise funds for the WSHLRC. They hold one at this show every year. A lot of amazing rabbits were donated by lots of amazing breeders.
From the auction I got a fantastic new buck!!! SURPRISE!!!! He's opal! He can produce colors like chinchilla, other opals, squirrel, maybe even blue....I'm going to have some amazing colors in the agouti program I am finally starting up! He has great short bone which my herd needs, and a nice body! His head isn't very good but he's in a crazy molt right now it probably looks worse because of that. His name is Bramblehedge's Typhoon, but around here he's going to be fondly called Ty:
Ty is proven and registered, and he has two legs. He is almost exactly a year old (in August), and he is related to L&R's McMolly, who is a famous rabbit that won a Convention show in recent years!
What I find pretty interesting too is that he shares a lot of the same rabbits in his pedigree as Hazelnut does. I sold her so these guys can't make babies together, but Zuzu has her lines and so Ty, Zuzu and Wicket are all somewhat related! It's good to breed rabbits together that are partially related because then you can "fix in" good traits and get more reliability in your offspring.
Also something I noticed is that he shares one or two rabbits in his line with my first breeding doe, Gracie. They are also distantly related!
Super fun day! I hope you guys all enjoyed the news, see you in my next blog!