Bunny hopping question

[Luv-bunniz]

Right, probably an obvious answer, but I worry to much so I am going to ask anyway!
Is there a size minimum with rabbits in bunny hopping? I was hoping to start with my black rex doe, who is now a year old. I bought her with the mind of having her as a hopping Rabbit and for obvious reasons I haven't started or even thought about it until now, but she's so tiny still! My friend has a doe who is 9 months old and she is still a bit bigger then this doe, so I don't know whether to bother as she's so small. She's smaller then a 'normal' rex doe, that's for sure, and I know she's definitely 100% standard rex. I have a litter of 6, 5 week old Dutches here who I'm going to save 2 kits back from, but obviously if I wish to bunny hop with them it will be at least 10 months until I can start training, which I'd rather not wait for.

cheers in advance.

 

[Korr_and_Sophie]

There is not minimum size. Our club has a Polish rabbit and he does well. There is more concern for large and giant breeds. As long as the rabbit is over 3-4 months, they should be OK.

 

[bearbop]

what is bunny hoppingg

 

[Luv-bunniz]

Korr_and_Sophie wrote:

There is not minimum size. Our club has a Polish rabbit and he does well. There is more concern for large and giant breeds. As long as the rabbit is over 3-4 months, they should be OK.

Ahh OK thank you. Will get started on the lead training tomorrow..should be fun with her...not. LOL

 

[nicolevins]

Taylor, bunny hopping is like a 'sport' for bunnies

If you look at Korr_and_Sophie 's pic on the 2nd post you will see pictures or her buns hopping

 

[BlueCamasRabbitry]

3-4 months of age is a great time to begin harness training and simple ground work suchs as directions and even going over ground poles. Once they get to 5-6 months of age, you can start raising the bars.

You don’t want them hopping really high too young, because that can cause them to have more problems in their legs/joints because they are still growing.

There really is no “minimum” size for rabbit hoppers. The smaller rabbits, such as Polish, may have a harder time clearing the taller/longer jumps, but they can easily do a beginner and maybe an intermediate course.

Rabbit hopping is a sport much like dog agility/horse show jumping, except the jumps are sized for the rabbits. It’s a very fun sport.

I will add more later. Gotta go.
Emily

 

[~*sAbRiNa*~]

Does anyone know if there is bunny hopping in Southern Ontario or Western NY? I would love to get Sabrina started in it. I think that she would be great at it.

 

[Luv-bunniz]

BlueSkyAcresRabbitry wrote:

3-4 months of age is a great time to begin harness training and simple ground work suchs as directions and even going over ground poles. Once they get to 5-6 months of age, you can start raising the bars.

You don’t want them hopping really high too young, because that can cause them to have more problems in their legs/joints because they are still growing.

There really is no “minimum” size for rabbit hoppers. The smaller rabbits, such as Polish, may have a harder time clearing the taller/longer jumps, but they can easily do a beginner and maybe an intermediate course.

Rabbit hopping is a sport much like dog agility/horse show jumping, except the jumps are sized for the rabbits. It’s a very fun sport.

I will add more later. Gotta go.
Emily

Thank you!!
I have been doing some harness work up to now, the problem hasn't really been with the harness, it's the leash. If it gets in her way she's goes ape and attacks everything around her so I've been accustoming her to that today working up slowly, and now she's relatively good with it though if she does get bored she still tries to attack it, that's when I know to break and let her go have a nap.
Due to her size and lack of muscle density (as is typical with rex' over here) I haven't been considering training her until now as I've wanted her to not only grow but mature properly as well.
She can definitely jump pretty high when she wants to! There's a two foot gate across the room she's in (shower room) and she often clears that quite often if there's food on the other side! Just need to find a good treat that she can have fairly often now, at the moment I'm using baked banana as she isn't very prone to bloat but for obvious reasons I don't want to keep feeding it for training. She isn't a massive fan of baby foods or leafy greens either. Going to try carrot later and see how she takes to that, but obviously that too can't be fed very often.

Thanks again!