Yesterday, we held a mock show with the Mini Rex. The show had a catch: I had to judge my rabbits by touch only, my eyes closed. I think that this type of evaluation is extremely important, yet incredibly under utilized.
By judging without sight, I placed a lot of emphasis on five very critical points, most of which are overlooked by most breeders, especially in this breed! I judged my rabbits on strength of shoulders, spring of rib, muscling over the loin, width of lower hindquarter, and width of overall body especially in relation to apparent length of body. As it turned out, most of my fur felt incredibly similar and didn't often influence my decisions on placement.
I thought that I knew my herd. I thought that I knew how I'd place them. By having my rabbitry partner help me put rabbits in front of me and writing notes as I evaluated, I generally had no idea who I was evaluating. If I could change one thing about the experiment, I'd have it so that my rabbits were better labeled for an outside party to gather predetermined classes of three to six rabbits and present them to me in random order so that I couldn't guess who was on my table. As we had it, I knew which rabbits were in each class and could often infer whom I was touching. I think that it offered an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain rabbits off pre-existing biases.
Setting this up required a fair amount of premeditation. I had to list which rabbits were to be included in the activity, writing down tattoos, age classes, sexes, and varieties for each rabbit. We had to figure out how to break up the classes, seeing as conventional variety classes wouldn't be helpful in our situation, considering that I wanted no less than three rabbits or more than six rabbits in each class. We remained true to classes broken into seniors and juniors aged ten weeks or more for the sake of development. We also differentiated bucks from does because most of my senior does wouldn't have stood a chance against better primed boys after having recently or currently raised a litter. Most of my brood does felt soft in condition for this reason.
We prepared each class by pulling included rabbits from their cages into nearby carriers so that my writer could readily hand me the next rabbit and reoffer me rabbits to compare animals for placings. As mentioned before, I wish that I didn't have a part in this simply so that I had less unintentional biases. I needed to know senior buck from senior doe from junior rabbit, but I didn't need any other information to judge my rabbits.
The person helping is essential. They won't require intense rabbit knowledge, but they will need to know how to identify your specific rabbits, how to handle the animals, know your judging scale, and develop a shorthand system to write down your comments as you judge. This person's competence is critical, and their attention span is intensely appreciated. If you're judging, you must be knowledgeable about what you're evaluating, but your helper is doing the hard work.
This task is very time consuming. Altogether, we spent about four hours putting this show together yesterday, from the time we started prepping to choose Best of Breed. We included about forty rabbits in this show. Granted, most of my rabbits are not tattooed, between juniors and nonshowable ambers, so I did write tattoo numbers with a sharpie as part of the prep work. Even so, the show took multiple hours.
I found this show to be incredibly informative and eye opening. No pun intended. As I mentioned before, I place emphasis on five very specific points.
The first thing I felt for when evaluating each rabbit was width of shoulder. I also picked up on a rabbit that felt like it had a later start or a long shoulder. And I found one rabbit that I commented had a low shoulder. So width was the biggest factor here.
I generally place a lot of emphasis on a good shoulder, even with sight evaluations. I don't tolerate anything that has an obvious disconnect between its neck and ears to its rise into the midsection. Both length and depth of shoulder contribute to this. But lack of width to shoulder can be easy to miss visually. Not so much using touch only.
Most often, the width of rib, the second major point I judged my rabbits with, contribute to its width of shoulder. After all, a shoulder blade rests on the rib cage. However, they're not one in the same. The shoulder width is at the front of the rib cage. A narrow shoulder often contributes toward a rabbit that rears its front end up when posing because it can't breathe. When I evaluated width of rib, I referred to the spring off of the ribs.
Sometimes, a rabbit will have a good width to the start of its rib, but its rib won't expand as you run your hand down the animal. This results in a narrower rabbit overall. Sometimes, a rabbit will have a narrowed shoulder, but the rib grows in width as your hand runs down the animal. This is the rib spring. The goal is to have a wide shoulder that widens to an even broader rib spring.
In these two points, shoulders and rib, I find most big breeders don't place a lot of emphasis. One of my rabbits from one of the best breeders in the country had some of my worst comments on a senior rabbit for width of shoulder and rib spring. Visually, that rabbit is great! It was a completely different story hands-on. You can't build a well structured rabbit without these two points. The rib cage allows the rabbit to breathe, and leads to an overall healthier specimen. When you don't have a proper, firm shoulder or you don't have a proper wide spring off of the ribs, you're building toward a long animal with the illusion of depth, not an actually properly balanced animal.
The third point I placed a lot of emphasis on was the quality of muscle over the loin. When I first heard this term, it was from a commercial judge on one of my Mini Rex. What it means is that you're looking for a firm transition as you're moving your hand from the spring of the ribs over the turn of the hip. In a commercial rabbit, this reflects directly to the quality of meat the rabbit carries. In a compact breed such as a Mini Rex, it simply means a better bred rabbit. When you have softer flesh or hollow loins, your hand won't have any muscle to keep you from feeling the rabbit's spine, hip, or knee. You want firm, wide flesh over the loin, slightly wider than the width of the rib.
This transitions to the fifth point better than the fourth point. When I mention overall width of the rabbit, it doesn't always relate to the width of the loin. A loin can be narrower than the width of the rabbit between the knees, though this is not ideal. You also want this width to balance with the height of the rabbit at the top of the loin, and the length of the rabbit. These points are a little more difficult to feel, but I did include these comments in my evaluation.
Lastly, I felt for the width of the rabbit at the base of the table. The lower hindquarters. A well bred rabbit shouldn't have any give at the table. Your hand should transition well from the loin, over the hips, and to the base of its legs at the table without any narrowing gives. This isn't often the case in this breed. A very narrow lower hindquarter and a pinched hindquarter can be easily felt in this type of evaluation, and should be avoided.
All five of these points are terribly difficult to breed out of a herd. Often times, all five of these points can be difficult to find even from a well known breeder. For most of these five points cannot easily be seen from pictures or sight heavy evaluations.
Fur, also, can be judged in this evaluation. Texture and density. But those are often touch-based evaluations anyway.
If you haven't tried anything like this evaluation, I highly implore that you give it a try. Begin with a rabbit you already know to understand the process, and learn what I'm talking about. Then try venturing out to see if you, too, can run a blind show. I can almost guarantee things won't turn out as you'd expect.
