Rabbit Habbitry Mini Rex

Melissa and Jennifer started raising rabbits in 1989, but the Rabbit Habbitry wasn't started until 1991. Arild joined the group in 1999, when he married Jennifer. We started with some castors, broken castors, opals, blacks and brokens blacks before mini rex were even recognized. Unfortunately, most of these mini rex were too inbred to further the quality. It wasn't until 1991 that we bought our first show quality mini rex. Melissa was fascinated by the reds, while Jen liked the tris. However, the first tris bought were not show quality, and they were very quickly gotten rid of. However, the reds continued to do well, but in a short while, Jen wanted a variety of her own. She chose lynx. Breeding lynx to red produced now reds, lynxes, and the occasional castor. Melissa fell in love with the castors, and so more were bought. Jen, at around that time, wanted opals. She had originally (1989) had an opal, but he was much too big to show. A broken opal doe was bought. Shortly after, a broken lynx buck was bought. Those two animals, being bred back to the ones we already owned, became the foundation of what we have now. That broken lynx buck, bred to a red doe, produced reds, lynxes and opals. The opal doe, bred to lynxes, produced opals, castors, chins, and smoke pearl martens. Things progressed as such, until blues started showing up. Then some blacks were bought, and a chocolate buck. Things continued on further. It wasn't until 2000 when the rabbitry split in two. Jen, now married, had her own house and space for rabbits, so she took the varieties she was interested in. From then on, the two locations work closely with each other, usually sharing bucks and trading kits back and forth. Ethan, the newest owner, joined us in 2003...during Oregon League Convention weekend!