Dichrome Rabbitry and Foxia Farm

10/12/2026

I have seen multiple people posting things like “what is a piece of advice that you would tell new breeders to ignore”. While generally, those are filled with some really good comments, a lot of people are not open to the actual nuance required when considering every breed in existence.

Every time we see these sort of things, there are going to be exceptions. Someone bringing up the exceptions isn’t an attack on your opinion. It’s just an addition to your opinion. It’s more information. It’s nuance. An attack on your opinion would be someone outright saying your opinion isn’t true, period.

For example, I would absolutely agree with the fact that whenever possible you really only should just bring your very best rabbits to shows. Otherwise, you are wasting entry fees on rabbits that have no chance of winning. However, there are several exceptions that I can think of. Some people just want to get comments on the rabbits to see if they are heading in the right direction. Sometimes people want to put young juniors on the table for some experience before a much larger show, even if those juniors are not yet in their prime.

If you have a rare or a marked breed, the rabbit that most of the breed community would say is the best one very often does not win. Judges can interpret standards very differently from one another. So in order to have the best chance at winning, you often need to bring rabbits with different strengths. I have seen marked breed rabbits win breed or even higher one show and be last in class the next show, the very same day!

Another one is “don’t shop for parts rabbits, always get a complete rabbit to better your herd”. Again, very sound advice…for most breeds and varieties. Truly complete harlequins don’t exist. Even the rabbits who have won at convention are missing important parts (often type). And the ones that get very close? Those don’t leave the breeder’s barn unless they’re getting out of the breed! If you waited for that to happen, you’d never be able to improve your herd. And then you have to hope that close rabbit actually produces like itself! Which is quite a gamble.

Then you have some colors that make the all parts rabbits difficult. Any rabbit color that is not fully recessive nor fully dominant on its locus is difficult to improve just by breeding to a complete parts rabbit of another color. If you breed chinchillas, for example, they can carry shaded, Himalayan, or REW. Let’s say the best quality is in the Full Color (C) varieties. So you breed to chestnut to try to fix type and color. You get chestnut, and you have no idea if the resulting offspring carry chinchilla or not. You HAVE to keep some visibly chinchilla rabbits to keep the variety in your herd, even if they’re not the best quality. At a certain point, it becomes almost necessary to breed two chinchillas just to try to get some pure for chinchilla (cchdcchd) to breed back out to chestnut to ensure some rabbits are chinchilla carriers out of your outcrosses to other colors.

I breed sable silver martens. Seal is not a showable color. Seal is two copies of shaded (cchlcchl). Sable is one copy of shaded and one of either pointed white or REW, usually pointed white in silver martens. If I breed a sable to a black, some of those offspring will carry pointed white instead of sable. I can’t tell which is which until I test breed them. If I kept rabbits solely on their type and coat quality, I would very likely lose the shaded allele (cchl) from my herd. To improve my sables, I have had to work with parts animals. Breeding out to black then heavy linebreeding to bring out the faults and set in the strengths, sable to sable, using parts rabbits is how I got to where my sables are now.

And I STILL have things to fine tune. This buck has the better topline, but his brother has the better loin fill. And his cousin has the better molt pattern that I desperately need in my herd. I can’t just breed to a black to fix the molt pattern, because I need to see it ON a sable to select for it.

That’s not even including the other things we have to juggle. Maybe that all (physical) parts rabbit you spent a lot on is a terrible mother, or has a terrible temperament, or has terrible immunity, or has a terrible growth rate. Now you’re STILL dealing with parts rabbits to fix those issues. I’d argue those are VERY important parts to consider, not just standard of perfection traits.

We can understand that something may be true in most cases while also accepting that there are exceptions to almost everything. We can accept that those exceptions aren’t an attack on us, just a statement that the exceptions do exist.

10/11/2026

These pedigreed harlequins can still hop at convention. They have a ride to convention but are not entered. I know of a very reasonable off site care I absolutely trust, though. From a herd that consistently produces top 3 harlequins at convention and national speciality. May be able to come up with one more doe if going with one of the bucks.

10/10/2026

Hey folks! Sorry for not starting the genetics live. I’m currently stranded at the grocery store with my vehicle not working, trying to get a neighbor or someone out to help. Should have been a super quick grocery run. 🫠 It’s been a hellish couple weeks.

10/10/2026

People seem to wonder why I am so adamant that we need to pay attention not just to numbers on paper but so many more metrics when it comes to breed conservation. No matter the species, no matter the breed. I’ve been in rabbits a hot minute. Locally, I’ve seen an entire show herd of harlequins go due to a power failure during a massive heat wave. In the 90s I knew of a huge 200+ herd (not Harlies) that was lost in one day to an animal rights activist attack.

It only takes one bad incident to wipe out even a very large herd. I know we don’t want to think about that, but that HAS to be a part of breed conservation discussions.

If a breed has most of its population in just a few large herds/kennels/flocks/whatever, it’s distinctly vulnerable to single incidents. ANY breed. In any species.

If a breed has low enough genetic diversity that, even if it has large numbers, every individual is so closely related, it’s a distinctly vulnerable breed.

If a very large number of the population aren’t actually being bred, it significantly lowers the effective population size compared to the actual population size. 5000 individuals looks like a lot, unless only 500 of those are actually active in the breeding population (a common thing you see in some dog breeds, for example).

And the problem is that we often don’t have this kind of data. We use things like convention entries and registrations as a proxy, but these numbers may not be telling the correct story. They may be overemphasizing risk in some breeds and vastly underemphasizing risk in other breeds.

I use harlequins and silver martens as an example of these things because I have them. But I’m CERTAIN these conversations are needed in other breeds, too. Even if the data does come back with “the breed is fine and stable”, it’s very useful information to have. Because without that data, we can’t actually SAY the breed is fine and stable. And when all we have available to analyze in comparison to other breeds is convention numbers, it makes sense to start there. If a breed has similar or lower numbers of convention entries as breeds considered rare and at risk, we SHOULD be checking the other data to see if that breed is in better need of conservation efforts. WHATEVER those conservation efforts end up being.

And yes, maybe that data comes back showing no significant risk. Great! That’s wonderful news! But…what if it doesn’t? What if the population isn’t as stable as people think, and the ONLY warning we had was convention numbers? I don’t know about everyone else, but I’d like to actually have more data than that to be SURE the breeds I love aren’t at risk. When the most readily available data we have shows we’re on par with breeds deemed “at risk”, I have concerns. I want to make sure the breeds I love aren’t actually at a similar risk to those other breeds. I’ll be DELIGHTED if data comes back showing we’re at a stable, good effective population size with good genetic diversity and good spread of that diversity and population so that we’re not at risk of one bad event severely negatively impacting the breed.

But we have to ask those questions first.

These are all things that actual population geneticists care about and measure because they MATTER. Whether it’s breed conservation or species conservation, it MATTERS.

10/10/2026

This’ll be SO much closer for us to go to than South Carolina would be! After going to Reno this year, it’ll be very nice to not have to drive so far. 😆

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10/08/2026

I hate sables. 😆 I love them so much, but OMG, convention is right around the corner. Please just release the dead coat.

10/08/2026

There has been some very good conversations coming out of my posts about convention numbers. I still firmly hold onto the idea that we need to have more nuanced conversations about what makes a breed rare.

For the people who apparently don’t care to actually read, I’d be asking these questions even if harlequins right this second had Holland lop numbers. I use Harlequins and Silver Martens to highlight problems I see BECAUSE I’m involved enough in both breeds to easily see the actual numbers, the behind the scenes problems, etc. I don’t actually care whether Harlequins end up on the rare breed list (other than that it does potentially open up some resources IF they end up being in the same position, relatively, that the breeds on the rare breed list are after more data is compiled). I care that these nuances are explored because THEY MATTER. I’ve literally taught population genetics. I have a PhD in genomics. I know from a scientific aspect WHY these conversations matter. Whether we’re talking about Harlequins or Lilacs, Mini Rex or Blancs.

Does having a strong hotspot of a breed, but very low numbers elsewhere, disqualify a breed from being rare? If so, quite a few of the breeds currently considered rare should be disqualified from that descriptor.

Should having 100 or more entries at convention some years be a disqualifier for the status of rare? If so, again a good number of the breeds currently considered rare should be disqualified from that status.

Does having 100 or more entries at national speciality some years be a disqualifier for status as a rare breed? If so, does it matter that having a significant hotspot for a breed necessarily means that MOST national specialty shows will end up voted to be somewhere near the hotspot? Whereas a breed with similar total population numbers nationwide will likely have lower national speciality numbers just because the national speciality will likely always be too far for a higher proportion of the breeders than when the breed has a single major hotspot. Do we take the entry fee into consideration? If one breed club charges 10 per entry, and another charges 4 per entry, do we account for that? People are naturally going to enter more rabbits at a lower entry fee.

Do we look at entry numbers as a primary indicator, even when the breed is known for breeders showing the same rabbits over and over and over, whereas with other breeds it’s usually DIFFERENT rabbits every year or even less? Mini rex aren’t rare, but they’re a good example of a breed that doesn’t have a long show life. If they were rare, you’d still have very accurate numbers based on rabbits shown just because you’d be very seeing different rabbits every national speciality and convention. Versus a breed that a significant number of the entries are a repeat of the same animals that were entered the year before, or even 2-4 years before. That’s an artificial inflation of numbers both at national level and local shows!

If a breed has 1-3 breeders who typically show up with 30+ rabbits at convention, but it only has a few other breeders who typically only enter 1-3 entries, does that change things? You can still end up with technically good numbers of entries (and technically a good number of exhibitors), but if most of those entries are coming from one or two barns, we should be talking about that. If anything happens to those 1-3 breeders’ herds, the entire breed is at significant risk. Thankfully, I don’t think that’s true of harlequins, BUT I can think of breeds that is true for. And that’s not being talked about.

Do we take the data from the past 20 years? The past 10? The past 5? The past 3? Do we account for something happening to one of a very few large herds that make up a significant portion of the total breed population? I can think of a few breeds where if something wiped out 1-2 herds, the breed population and genetic diversity would be TANKED, even if the overall numbers looked okay before.

Where does that balance of large herds versus more spread out numbers lie? If a breed has 500 animals nationwide, but 200 of those are in one herd, 200 are in another herd, 100 is in another herd, 100 is in another herd, and the remaining 100 are in very small numbers (2-5), that can artificially look like a fairly robust 500 with “enough breeders”. When instead, the loss of a single large herd would nearly half the population. And, likely, the people with the 2-5 sized herds have animals very closely related to those few large herds. So is there really much in the way of actual genetic diversity?

Population size and EFFECTIVE population size are two different numbers for a reason. If the whole breed is closely related, it doesn’t matter as much if we have 5000 animals, because they may effectively only have the genetic diversity of 200 animals. In some breeds, effective population size is SIGNIFICANT lower than the actual number of animals.

In a breed that tends to have litters of 1-3, you have to have more reproducing individuals to get to any given number than you do in a breed that tends to have litters of 10+ (a very common occurrence in my harlequins). Four different litters to get to 12 offspring total in a dwarf breed are LIKELY to have at least one parent that is different, whereas a single litter of 12 in a harlequin is going to have the same two parents. This matters for genetic diversity. This matters when we’re talking about numbers.

Speaking of litter size mattering, in breeds with large litters, I’ve often noticed at shows you’ll see several juniors being shown. Then the person will later decide which (if any) of those will stay and which will be hard culled. The ones being culled never reproduce, but they’re counted among total numbers. Given the difficulty in getting some dwarf breed litters in the first place and the propensity for some breeds to have earlier maturity (such that by the time a junior is on the table, it’s likely already fairly mature and won’t change too significantly in any bad way, so is thereby more likely to stay in the breeding population), is it possible more of the rabbits that make it to the table in the first place remain in the breeding population? I don’t know for sure, but it’s something we should probably consider. Harlequins, we can tell the markings very soon, so I suspect that most of what makes it to the table does eventually make it to the breeding population. However, when we’re talking about other potentially rare breeds, that may not be the case at all! We may be artificially inflating those numbers by influxes of juniors that never actually get bred.

For that matter, that should be considered when we take surveys about numbers. Is a significant amount of the total population still grow out age juniors? If so, likely a large portion of those juniors will never make it to the breeding population. IF those numbers stay steady (e.g., every year you have about 1000 grow out age juniors and those turn into about 400 seniors every year), that implies the population itself is doing well. But are we tracking if those numbers remain steady? Or are we taking snapshots that may not accurately reflect the actual breeding populations?

And that’s just talking about rabbits! We need to be having these conversations for ALL domestic species, if we truly want to conserve breeds and not just pay lip service to breed conservation.

Obviously, it’s difficult to have this level of nuanced conversations for inclusion in rare breed shows, but I DO still think this level of nuance NEEDS to be had for the purposes of actual breed conservation. Are we putting all of our efforts into breeds that are actually doing pretty well but look rare only on paper, while breeds that look okay on paper actually are in trouble? We don’t know, because we aren’t having these conversations consistently enough.

10/07/2026

Rare and uncommon breeds with more entries in Convention than Harlequins, with how many more are entered than Harlies

American: 15 more entries
American Chinchilla: 36 more entries
American Sable: 11 more entries
Argente Brun: 82 more entries
Belgian Hare: 33 more entries
Beveren: 55 more entries
Blanc de Hotot: 1 more entry
Blue Holicer: 67 more entries
Checkered Giant: 8 more entries
Cinnamon: 24 more entries
Creme D’Argent: 24 more entries
Czech Frosty: 59 more entries
Lilac: 36 more entries
Palomino: 62 more entries
Rhinelander: 53 more entries
Satin Angora: 1 more entry
Silver: 154 more entries
Silver Marten: 94 more entries
Silver Fox: 142 more entries
Thrianta: 9 more entries

The ONLY breeds with less entries:
Giant Angora: 14 less entries
Giant Chinchilla: 13 less entries

But don’t worry! According to the Livestock Conservancy, Harlequins aren’t a rare breed. 🙄

When Blancs, Americans, and Beverens have more entries, that’s pretty telling.

And yes, I know that it’s not easy to find a one-size-fits all approach to determining numbers of breeds that can greatly vary in how they’re raised, shown, etc. That’s my point! Whether or not a breed makes the rare breed list should NOT be the end of the conversation for breed conservation purposes. And it far too often is.

This is not a one off just because it’s in Reno this year. It’s been in Reno before, and numbers have been higher. But even that isn’t the point. Consistently over the last 5 years, harlequins have had lower convention entries than many breeds on the rare breed list. I have harlequin convention entry data back to 2017 currently, and having compared as many years as I can to other breeds on the rare breed list, harlequins are anywhere from on par with rare breed breeds to significantly lower entries. 100 entries isn’t as good as we may think it is when MOST rare breeds are getting around 100 or more entries at convention.

10/07/2026

It’s time for my annual “rage” about Harlequins not being considered a rare breed. There are only TWO breeds with less total Convention entries (open and youth) than Harlequins: giant angora and giant chinchilla.

And no, it’s not because it’s in Reno this year. Other Reno conventions have had more entries. Some Midwest conventions have had small numbers. No matter what, we’ve been CONSISTENTLY lower entries than many of the breeds on the rare breed list. 100 entries isn’t that much compared to a lot of the rare breed list entries. It’s in par or less than most.

Beverens and Rhinelanders have over double the entries of Harlequins

Belgian Hares, Lilacs, and American Chinchillas have nearly double the entries of Harlequins

Americans have 15 more entries than Harlequins

When Blancs and Checkered Giants have more entries than a breed, maybe the breed should be considered rare.

And this is a pattern that keeps happening. This isn’t a one-off just because Convention is in the West this year. Constantly, “rare” breeds have had more entries than Harlequins. This matters because Convention numbers are in part used to determine rare breed status. But because the Livestock Conservancy thought the breed didn’t have enough recorded history (Despite literally using our breed’s history for including Rhinelander in the listing… Despite extensive history available on the club website and in our guidebook… ), the breed wasn’t included in the initial rare breed list. And now numbers are considered “recovering”, so they won’t include them. If our breed is considered “recovering”, then there should only be about 3-4 breeds left on the rare breed list, absolute maximum.

Never mind that our breed counts are muddied by the fact that we tend to show the same rabbits for YEARS (very long show life for this breed). The same doe won BOB at National Specialty 3 years in a row. So the total counts from one year to the next are muddied by the same rabbits being entered again and again, versus most breeds you don’t see a significant number of the same rabbits entered year after year. Even if we completely ignore that, our entries are still consistently lower than a SIGNIFICANT number of the breeds listed as rare breeds and eligible for entry in rare breed shows.

ETA: I know it comes from more than just convention numbers, but I know it can’t be coming primarily from registrations. Half or more of our stock is unshowable broods. And a lot of people don’t register them.

I honestly think we got caught in the “there’s not enough background” (despite very well recorded history on the club site and our guidebook) at the start, and then basically after that almost ALL breeds are considered “recovering” status based on numbers. And that “recovering” numbers, they won’t be included.

It’s just incredibly frustrating. I’m not sure the way it’s counted accurately reflects the existing rabbits when our breed tends to show well for YEARS. We had the same BOB doe for 3 different conventions, and that rabbit was still being successfully shown locally and regionally even after that. That’s very common in our breed. Each rabbit is so unique we can tell which rabbit is which just based off appearance, so it’s very easy to track from photos or even just looking at the entries in person. We breeders of the breed KNOW a significant number of the convention entries are the same rabbits every year. They’re the same rabbits at National Specialty, too.

Convention numbers don’t track what animals are actually existing in a breed like ours. They re-count the same rabbits several times. Conventions also tend to be in the Midwest, which is essentially where all the Harlequin breeders are. It artificially creates an appearance of stability that isn’t actually there. Even with convention being in Reno this year, the significant MAJORITY of the Harlies are still coming from the Midwest.

Comparatively, I have Silver Martens which ARE on the rare breed list. Their numbers are fairly consistent at convention from one region to the next.

In truly stable numbers, one would expect to see entries proportional to total convention entries. We have about half the total rabbit entries this year compared to last year. Actually might be a higher ratio compared to last year. I’d have to go check last year’s total rabbit entries. If it’s higher ratio, it’s even worse that’s so few harlies are entered this year. We should have about half the Harlies entered. We don’t. Even with we dedicated Midwest few hauling our rabbits clear across the country.

I recognize WHY they don’t make the rare breed list based on the criteria, but I also very much question if that criteria accurately reflects the populations of the oddity breeds like ours. The breeds that are concentrated extremely strongly in one region. The breeds where most of the diversity is found in the barns of just a very few breeders. If just a very few breeders had a barn fire or anything else major happen, the breed’s population would PLUMMET INSTANTLY. That doesn’t make a sustainable population compared even to many of the breeds ON the rare breed list. I question the criteria itself.

I don’t even necessarily call for inclusion in the rare breed list (though that would be lovely). But we need some way to highlight and recognize the weird breeds. We need some way to continue encouraging people to take interest in breeds like ours. I do everything I can to extol their virtues, but when entire organizations are championing the other rare (or “rare”) breeds, it feels like a drop in the ocean. When people don’t even know that Harlequin is a BREED, but they can recognize it instantly as a color or even think it’s a TAMUK… That’s an issue. When people IN the show rabbit world think wellbred Harlequins with multiple legs toward grand champion are mixed, it’s a problem.

I can’t say for certain, but it does make me wonder what other breeds are falling through the cracks for similar reasons, too? And does that hold true for other species?

10/07/2026

Comment found in the wild that I wish was not so painfully true. 🫠