Meat Pen class weights.....on par with where they should be?

[wendymac]

The weigh-in is on August 4th. Do these look like where they should be at this stage? I'm a bit worried they won't be filled out enough (except for Chunky Monkey, who's a definite keeper).

 

[MiniLopHop]

wow, one is a whole pound bigger? that is impressive! I know nothing about meat pens, but when I need Becky to gain weight I add steal cut oats and alfalfa hay. Granted they are probably already on the alfalfa since they are so young. Good luck!

 

[majorv]

Actually, most of them aren't heavy enough at this point...you're less than 2 weeks away. The lady we got our Cals from for FFA told us that the babies should be gaining 1/2 lb per week (6-8 oz) at this point. You want them to be close to 5 lbs without going over, and as you know the 3 you select need to be as close as possible in looks, feel and weight. Try feeding them more, give them some rolled oats and don't let them run around as much, which takes off weight. I respect the breeder we got ours from. By following her advice we got Reserve. :biggrin:

 

[wendymac]

They get all the pellets they can eat, but we've also been giving them hay. I'm thinking we need to use the Xpen and shrink the stall down more, so they have less room to run around. I stopped giving oats because they were digging all the pellets out of the crocks to get to them all. We have a week and 6 days to add another pound on them.

Would you start separating them 5 to a cage now, based on weight? Like the ones that are right at 3 pounds in a cage, etc?

 

[woahlookitsme]

I would probably give more pellets than hay at this point. Pellets are made to put on weight quickly. They really need to gain weight quickly. I would confine them to a cage and start weighing every 3-4 days. My mom said she would separate around 3.5 lbs and up to a cage and then separate the rest. Continue free feeding though. Good luck though. My three reserves weighed 4.11,4.12,4.13 and the grand pen was also 0.01 lb difference between all three.

EDIT: Id say its safe to not worry about the ones that are still 2lbs. They cant gain enough in the amount of time you have and you could probably leave them to run around in the stall but the rest I would put up in cages

 

[wendymac]

They have almost 2 weeks to gain a pound. I figured the few that were only 2 pounds and the 4 pounder were out (who we've named Chunky Monkey...if it had been a boy, I was going to convince her to call him Sherman--for the tank. LOL). While they're only at 3+ pounds, they're solid! I'll have to get some posed pictures of some of them...she has some really nice ones to pick from. So far they're all running pretty much neck and neck. Our plan was to start evaluating them and weeding out the non-contenders (as far as type) and try to start matching them up.

Thanks for the help!!!

 

[majorv]

How are the rabbits looking? I saw your post on the ARBA facebook page. I agree with the others that the judge will look at unity first and foremost- all three being as close looking and feeling as possible. The judge who was at our FFA show narrowed his judging to 2 meat pens and he said he had a really hard time selecting 1st and 2nd. Both were very close in how they looked and felt, then he mentioned weight and said that both meat pens were the same(2 rabbits in each pen being the same weight and one being one ounce different...it was the high end of 4 lbs). I really think he did the mental 'eeny, meany, miney, mo' to decide how to place them. lol.

 

[wendymac]

LOL on the "eeny, meany"! The weights are low (they just turned 8 weeks old). We did learn to do the breeding math ourselves and not listen to what the 4-H leader said! If we would have had them closer to the 10 week mark, weight wouldn't even be an issue. Live and learn, which is why she's in 4-H.

The ones we picked weren't the heaviest. But they're almost exact replicas. After we got them narrowed down to 4 for each pen, we lined the "top 3" from each pen. And they look identical! And they are solid, nice depth, great hindquarters...just a good batch of rabbits, making the selection harder. We ended up tossing some back into the "sale" section due to being a tad lighter in coloring, to narrow it down more.

The 4-H leader also told me that trios sell better at the sale than all bucks. So I think we're going to do that route. She's picked 2 does and a buck to keep for her program, we have Twila and one of her does sold, and a buck (any buck, they just want a nice quality). The rest we can hopefully sell at the fair itself.

I just wasn't sure if we could go with the heaviest ones, because the difference between the lightest of the trio and the heaviest is right at 4 oz. And, honestly, even though they'r heavier I'm not a fan of the heaviest one's hindquarters.

Oh, and I also found out the Grand Champion pen last year was barely over 3 lbs. I just wish I know how Paul Kyle likes them...how many points he mentally adds for weight. *sigh*

 

[majorv]

Good luck! It sounds like you're ready. Are your backups very close to the 3 you're going to show?

 

[wendymac]

Yep. There are 4 in each pen that spitting images of each other and only 1 oz difference in weight. We're going to re-evaluate the 3 heavier ones and see how they look again. I'm pretty sure the 3.13 one had crappy hindquarters, but honestly can't remember (and should have written it down). And I'm going to have her go by feel with the 4, and see if she thinks they're still the same without using her eyes.

Here's one of the 3.06 ones. Like I said, they aren't very big, but they're pretty nice. At least I think so, but after looking at 21 of them over and over again I might be missing something. haha He's not posed, but you can get an idea.

 

[majorv]

He looks pretty nice to me.Do you know about how many pens you'll be competing against?

Let us know how it goes! I can't imagine having to go through 21. I thought 13 was bad enough! We were pretty new to meat pens and didn't feel confident about selecting, so our breeder graciously came over 2 nights before the showand showed us which onesshe thought we should use. The night before the show we had two of them running around the house to keep their weight under 5 lbs. Ahhh, the good ole days!

 

[wendymac]

There were 79 pens entered, but the head of the bunny barn said a lot of them aren't going to make weight. And before they used to let kids bring in rabbits that were different varieties, and they're not doing that this year. It's ARBA standards or go home. But there's a lot.

21 is about 10 too many! We, unfortunately, don't have a breeder to help us, so Kitty's pretty much on her own figuring it out. It's her project, so I'm trying to let her do it herself. But it is a bit overwhelming, for the both of us.

If these guys would have been born so they were closer to 10 weeks (like they should be) we'd be worrying about getting weight down, too. But losing 2 weeks of growing is a bit hard to make up. I'm going to be kicking myself in the butt for quite a while for not doing the math myself.

 

[wendymac]

Oh, and someone said to switch their water to gatorade, to encourage a lot of drinking and quick water weight gain. Wonder if Kool Aid would work the same? LOL

 

[missyscove]

If you ever offer something other than water, please also offer them water. Some rabbits will stop drinking even if it's just water from a different place.

 

[majorv]

I haven't heard about switching out gatorade for water to get them to drink more. I'm not sure I would try it at this point. I know gatorade can be used to hydrate an animal who isn't drinking water. We gave our FFA goats a little gatoradeat prospect shows sometimes.

Besides pellets, did you try giving them somerolled oats and black oil sunflower seeds? At this point, you have what you have though. :goodluck

 

[majorv]

double post