Rabbit Showmanship Training
- blackbaypinto
- Feb 16, 2022
- 3 min read
There’s three major parts of rabbit showmanship, posing your rabbit, flipping your rabbit, and answering questions.
As soon as you enter the show area, you’ll want to greet the judge and pose your rabbit. Whenever you aren’t flipping it, keep the rabbit posed. To score more points, avoid stroking the rabbit or holding it still. If your rabbit sits still on its own, the judge will see that it’s well trained and award you more points. Posing is based on the body type, which, depending on breed, is cylindrical, commercial, compact, full arch, or semi arch. The ARBA website has more information on how to pose your rabbit, but overall, their front toes need to line up with their eyes and their back toes need to line up with the highest point on the saddle.
The judge will then ask you to either flip the rabbit or answer questions. Sometimes, you’ll get a choice of which to do first. If possible, I’d suggest flipping first.
Before flipping the rabbit, you will need to:
Check the ears for ear canker (ear mites).
Check for a legible tattoo in the left ear and read it.
Check for a tattoo in the right ear. If a rabbit is registered with the ARBA, they’ll have a separate tattoo in their right ear too. Make sure to tell this to the judge.
Check the eyes for the correct color for the breed standard. For example, a black Dutch should have brown eyes, not blue. Because showmanship is judged on the showman and not the rabbit, it doesn’t actually matter if the rabbit has a disqualification like this, but be sure to point it out if it has one.
Check the eyes for moon eye/wall eye.
After flipping the rabbit, you’ll need to:
Check the nose for snuffles.
Check the teeth for malocclusion.
Check the neck for a dewlap (found only on a doe).
Check the front paws for matting from wiping nose (sign of snuffles).
Check for 4 toes and toenails, plus a dewclaw on each front paw.
Check forelegs for straightness or broken bones (lightly grab paw and stretch out leg).
Check the abdomen for abscesses.
Check the hind paws for 4 toes and toenails.
Check the hind legs for straightness (same method as forelegs).
Sex the rabbit and tell the judge whether it’s a doe or buck.
On a buck, check for vent disease, split penis, missing testicles on a senior buck, or only one showing on a junior buck.
After flipping the rabbit back over, check the tail for straightness with the same method you used on the legs, and pose the rabbit again. Next, the judge will ask you questions. Questions vary in difficulty depending on your age division. Judges often include a few questions about your rabbit, like age and breed, and some about the rabbit’s breed. Other questions could be about nutrition, housing, etc.
Example Questions:
Q) Where did your breed originate?
A) answer varies
Q) What is a pedigree?
A) A chart tracking a rabbit’s lineage
Q) How many teeth do rabbits have?
A) 28
Q) What is your rabbit’s date of birth?
A) answer varies
Q) What is a breeding trio?
A) One buck and two does
Q) What is snuffles?
A) A contagious and incurable disease that causes nasal discharge similar to a severe cold.
Q) What is a baby rabbit called?
A) Kit
Q) What are the 5 body types?
A) Commercial, compact, cylindrical, semi arch, and full arch
Q) What are the fur types?
A) Rex, satin, wool, and normal (flyback and rollback)
Q) Breed questions, such as your rabbit’s body type, due type, 4 or 6 class, varieties, etc.
You can use many online tools and apps to study. I recommend Quizlet and Quizizz for practicing alone, but if you want to practice with friends you can use Quizlet Live, Kahoot, or Blooket. If you want to use my study sets I’ve created through quizlet, you can access them here:
Good luck!
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