Lily's Rabbit Hole

Our Velvet Lions...

After many years of selective breeding and careful culling... plus much additional cage space being put into use... we finally have our own new breed of rabbit! 

Introducing the incredible Velvet Lion...

Combining the velvety soft fur of the Rex genetics, along with the Mane gene, we have 'the best of both worlds' coming together with these wonderful critters.  Short, cottony soft rex body fur with a beautiful mane of wool.  Jrs. also have flank wool from their Lionhead genetics.  Some genetic gurus even wondered if such an animal was possible?!  Well... here’s the proof that it certainly is! 

A small breed of rabbit, our Velvet Lions will now be available (on a very limited basis) to the public. 

Our little angelic Cherubs...
... small in size, big in heart, and velvety soft!

We are absolutely thrilled with how our little Cherubs are developing... well under three pounds with our F-2s thus far, we will continue to bring the size down and cull for the best fur traits... and, of course, aim for a killer mane!

(a little history of how our Velvet Lions came to be)…

It all started many years ago… from a simple ‘twist of fate’…

When we started working with the Mini Rex breed, we purchased all of our original stock from two wonderful youth breeders who lived locally.  Upon a visit to their rabbitry, Briana and Marisa showed us their newest litter of little baby bunnies. The ‘runt’ of the litter had us intrigued as she was just so small and, we were told, she was half Mini Rex. This was very exciting to us since we had dreams of creating our own unique breed of rabbit… a bunny the size of a tiny Netherland Dwarf with the velvety, soft fur of a Mini Rex.  Like a lightbulb that sometimes goes on in one’s head, we realized that a major step in reaching our goal for a Micro Rex (as we had come to label our dream rabbit) would be that much closer if we brought this little Doe home with us.  Needless to say, little Lily found a ride home in our van that day.

When Lily reached breeding age, we bred her to one of our small Mini Rex Bucks.  She blessed us with three kits, two with Rex fur and one with satiny soft ‘regular’ fur.  Her next pairing, with a different Mini Rex buck, gave us all Rex coated babies and we, once again, selected out the tiniest of the litter to keep for our Micro Rex breeding program. 

Over the next two years, we would breed Lily to small Mini Rex bucks and we would get mostly rex furred kits, with a few ‘regular’ furred kits at times.  It wasn’t until she kindled a litter, in October of 2006, that we recollected the other half of Lilys genetics were that of a Lionhead rabbit.  Although present, her mane hadn’t ever been anything much to speak of and she hadn’t yet passed the Mane gene on to a single one of her offspring… until that date. Two of her kits had Manes!  One was regular furred, but the other just didn’t ‘look right’… one look at those curly whiskers and we realized that what we had was a Rex furred kit with the Mane of a Lionhead… how unique!  Who would’ve thought that such a rabbit was even possible?!

Well… we welcomed this beautiful little gift that God had given us and decided to take things a step farther.  Elizabeth is still at the heart of our Velvet Lion program and it is her offspring who are pictured on the first page (above).  Finally able to cross her back to one of her Singlemane Buck sons upon maturity, we now have some wonderful Doublemane Velvet Lions and we will continue to select out and improve our line with each breeding. 

Our ultimate goal is aimed at having a small rabbit that weighs in at 2-3 lbs, ears no longer than 3" and a gorgeous mane with staying power... body type and stance to be determined as our rabbits progress naturally. (leaning toward a Brittania Petite type at this point)