The Many Rewards of Rabbits

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Shoup, a junior in art education at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, and her younger sister, Rachel, 17, keep about 40 rabbits. They followed their brother into the 4-H rabbit project; he kept mixed breeds while the girls kept standard Rex, but Gretchen switched to Minis in 2000 and hasn't looked back. Most Mini Rex also have really good personalities, she says, explaining why she focuses on selling her rabbits as 4-H projects and pets. "They're too little to butcher," she says, "and they're easier for a little kid to carry around." Her own 4-year-old nephew, Preston, regularly helps with the chores at Radical Rex.

Karen Heintz, secretary of the National Mini Rex Rabbit Club, reports more Mini Rex were shown last year in competitions and more are owned by youths than any other breed of rabbit. She says they are a cross between the standard Rex and the Netherland Dwarf that resulted in a dwarf rabbit with the gentle personality of the Rex and a Rex coat, which she described as "carpet-like."

Heintz began raising and showing rabbits after her own daughter enrolled in the 4-H rabbit project in 1988. Eventually, her daughter grew up—and Heintz became a licensed ARBA judge. She was the first American invited to judge a Mini Rex rabbit competition in Japan, and now, she says, she flies somewhere in the world almost every weekend to judge a rabbit show.

Back home on her Pipestone, Minnesota, farm, all the manure from Heintz' rabbitry goes on her garden. "I swear by it," she says.

Shoup's family tends an 80-year-old, 20,000-square-foot vegetable and flower garden established by her greatgrandparents on the family's Michigan farm, and every bit of manure the rabbits produce goes on that plot, too.

Frank Zaloudek of Horn Rapids Rabbitry in West Richland, Washington, keeps Mini Rex, Belgian Hares and Flemish Giants—but he's fondest of the latter two. For Zaloudek, a retired research
scientist who took up rabbit keeping as a hobby 15 years ago, it was love at first sight with the gentle Flemish Giants, which often weigh in at 20 or more pounds. "I walked into the local Red Mountain Feed Store to buy cattle feed," he re calls, "and they had two Flemish Giant rabbits for sale. I thought they were so extraordinary I bought them on the spot. I love those guys."

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