Survey

Survey Submitted by Alan Miller

Alan Miller from Decatur, IN

How may years have you raised Dutch?

Over 15 years

What recognized varieties do you raise?

Black, Blue, Chocolate, Gray, Steel, Tortoise

What non-recognized varieties do you own?

Blue Gray

When using other breeds of rabbits in the development of these new colors, it will take many years to get animals that consistently show a good Dutch type. What about the colors we could have just crossing the varieties we already have? Lilac Dutch for example were very popular back in the days of the AOV class.

Look what happened to the lilac Dutch. The old time breeder saw that there was no need for another variety. So it more or less died out. Same will happen to the Chin Dutch.

If we start adding new colors of Dutch to the Standard will we get carried away with the entire thing? for example, the Netherland Dwarfs and Mini-Rex. Will this benefit our club or the Dutch breed?

Additional colors will do nothing to help make our Dutch better, the only thing that will do that is strict culling of your breeding herd. If you use rabbits with high cheeks you wind up with rabbits with high cheeks, use a narrow blaze, you will be fighting narrow blazes for a long time. Stops are the same, breed a rabbit with short stops increases your chance of getting short stops even worse is breeding a rabbit with long stops. Before too many crosses you will have no stops. The key is to breed the best Dutch you have to the second best to try to better what you had to start with. If you do this then there will be no reason for additional colors.

Will the Chinchilla Dutch complement the Gray and/or Steel varieties? This would still need to be proven.

Butcher them.

Would the Red Dutch complement any other colors?

Butcher them.

Instead of adding more classes of Dutch to be judged, would it be better to have an agouti class in place of the Gray?

Then you are taking the easy way out of breeding your grays for good ring color. If you don't have good ring color show it in the agouti class. Problem solved. You are no longer breeding grays you are raising agoutis.

At many shows the number of Steels shown is not very good. Will more colors hurt the Steel numbers even more? Plus will it add to having more varieties with poor showings?

Too many steel breeders are trying to make steels by breeding them into gray. If you are truly dedicated to raising steels, start out with as close to pure steels as you can get and continue to breed only steel to steel. The color will improve to a beautiful silver tipped coat. It may take several generations but it will happen.

Having more colors of Dutch may just add interest from people who haven't raised Dutch before.

Same trouble General Motors made; have many different models to please everybody. GMC trimmed their line to produce the models that were most required. They didn't try to have a model to please everyone. We as Dutch raisers should take pride in what we have turned our breed into. The improvement in type and confirmation has improved greatly since I started raising the Dutch in 1966. Please don't mess up what we have.