If you are lucky enough to have a litter of two or more then you will need to decide which ones will be good to show. Not all of them will have “Show Quality”. When they are about six weeks, you can start to take them out and handle them, grooming them gently behind the neck, turning them upside down and checking for knots, missing tails, white toenails if the are coloured. This is a major fault and that baby cannot be considered for show. Continue to groom them about once a week.

Between seven and eight weeks, if they are a good size, put the whole litter and their mother onto a wire frame in their cage, or move them all to a cage that can have a wire floor. At eight weeks they should all have BRC rings on if they are potentially showable. You could start to advertise to sell, if you don’t want to keep them all, and any with faults that could go as Pets, or wool rabbits. This would include any of the above and Vienna marked or white hairs in the coloured coat. Check the breed standard to see if the rabbit and the colour meet the criteria, otherwise it will not not be showable.

By nine weeks you can separate them from their mother and split them individually or in pairs of the same sex. This will do for a while if space is an issue. Putting them individually gives less chance of chewing their coats. Give them toys and balls and hanging nibbles to chew. Apple twigs, hay in a toilet roll etc.

Now you should be grooming every other day, and should be able to spot the better coat, the chewer, the wetter, all these things will make showing very difficult. In fact, it is better to move those ones on to non exhibitors for breeding or clip them and keep yourself. If you are keeping white angoras you should keep the one that keeps itself clean as they should be spotless for the show bench, and whites are quite difficult to keep clean if they dont want to be.

So now you are down to one or two, if you have space, run them on because quite often the late developer will blossom while the big bold one will go over and start to knot quite quickly.

The optimum time to show is 16 weeks, they should be slightly smaller adults and have a good length in coat including Tips (guard hairs). If you still have two take both out and a judge will give you their opinion which may help you make your final decision.