Question: We have had judges say rabbits need to be finished off. How do you finish a rabbit off? Also how do you get a rabbit’s fur pretty and white for show…what can you use to wash the fur?
Answer: The question relating to finish refers to coat condition, molt vs. prime. A finished coat is influenced by several factors, age, sex, time of year, feeding program, environment and genetics.
First, the rabbit needs to be the result of a genetic package which has quality fur in the ancestry. If the rabbit is the product of breedings from parents, grandparents etc. with poor coat quality, then the resulting offspring will inevitably have poor fur and will never finish in coat. Once you have the right genetics then time of year comes into play. Rabbits always finish in the coats easier in the spring than in the fall of the year. As the daylight increases, hormone levels increase and rabbits (both does and bucks) seem to finish their fur as a result of the increasing daylight and warmer temperatures.
Conversely, hot summer temperatures in the summer and decreasing daylight hours in the fall will inhibit finished coats, except for junior age rabbits which seem to finish better in the fall of the
year vs. 6-8 and senior age rabbits which have a difficult time finishing in the fall and especially when they come out of a hot/humid summer.
Feed can also impact fur quality. Feeding higher energy will create more body heat. Thus feeding higher energy feed in the summer will increase body heat and lower the chance of a rabbit finishing their coat.
Also feeding schedule and amount of feed can affect coat quality. The kind of facilities can affect how rabbits finish in coat - enclosed facilities vs outside hutches. Bottom line, there is not an easy answer without speaking to the individual to find out in more detail what their current program
involves.
On the getting nice white fur… first, you should not ever wash a rabbit, as this will take out all the oils and the coat will be ruined! If there are urine stains, then products such as white vinegar and peroxide can be used as spot treatments. Use with care, as both products can do harm if used improperly. The best prevention to this problem of urine stains is to keep rabbits on wire floors without floor mats or pieces of wood to sit on. House bucks separately from does and use solid dividers in pens rather than wire dividers.
Thanks,
Dave Mangione
Extension Agent for The Ohio State University
Purina Mills Rabbit Ambassador
