One of our goals when we moved into Troup School District was to be able to expose the girls to many different activities so that they could figure out what they really enjoy doing. I participated in 4-H while I was in elementary. I raised chickens, rabbits, two dairy cows and then showed a few Angus calves for my brother. Now that we have a little more room we thought we would investigate Troup Young Farmers to see if the girls would be able to show an animal at the county show.
The girls are considered PeeWees, which means they can show anything but they won't qualify to sale their animals. With this in mind, we figured that rabbits maybe our best bet. So last night we went and visited one of the families that really is into raising rabbits. They were very kind to show us what all they do in order to raise a rabbit. We decided that we would let the girls have a breeder pen - meaning they each get one rabbit. If they had a meat pen of rabbits, it would mean they would have 4 rabbits each! Plus, we can get the rabbits from this local family and after the show if the girls just absolutely hate taking care of the rabbits we can "donate" the rabbits back to the family and not be stuck trying to figure out what to do with them!
But, if the girls love taking care of the rabbits, they can keep the same rabbit and show it until they are old enough to make the sale. At that point we would want to look a little more seriously into getting a good "show" animal. But that doesn't happen until Carli is in the 3rd grade, so we have time to figure that out.
Carli has decided that she wants a pure white rabbit (they have red creepy eyes) and she will name it snowball. Ava wants a black and white rabbit. They have plenty of time to decide as we don't have to get the rabbit until the end of January and the county show is in March. A two month commitment seems a little more feasible than a year long thing with animals such as cows and pigs. I guess we will find out!
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