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Ryan Romine, 12, with Champion Ryan’s Blue Boy, a Netherland Dwarf rabbit of a color designated as Blue Otter.
Lessons from rabbits Raising rabbits has changed Ryan Romine’s life By R.D. Hohenfeldt Ryan Romine was always an active boy. Perhaps he was a little too active, so his grandmother, Judith Twente, of St. James, started looking for activities that might help calm him down and give him some focus. “I had read that animals have a calming influence on children, so I got on RollaNet to see if I could find a pet. Well, I saw that there was going to be a rabbit show at the Rolla fairgounds, so I took him to it,” she says. “And I found two rabbits that I fell in love with,” continues Ryan, a 12-year-old seventh grader. “I’m not so sure he wasn’t more interested in the 4-H girl who had the rabbits for sale than he was in the rabbits,” Judith says. Ryan grins, nods and laughs. “She was getting ready to go off to college and was selling her animals,” Judith says. “She had a pair of babies, so I bought them for him.” That pair happened to be Netherland Dwarf rabbits, little critters that grow only to be two or three pounds. Judith bought Ryan a rabbit hutch at The Family Center in Rolla to get him started, and Ryan began learning to care for his rabbits. “He was in 4-H, but the club didn’t have a rabbit project, so I got involved in rabbits,” Judith says. “We started going to rabbit shows and meeting very nice rabbit people.” Ryan says that’s how he has learned “When you watch the people at the show you learn,” Ryan says. In
the five years since Ryan took that first pair of rabbits home, he has
become one of the top youth breeders of Netherland Dwarf rabbits in the
nation. A check of the Dwarf Digest, the official journal of the American
Netherland Dwarf Rabbit Breeders Club, which regular lists the rankings of
the youth breeders shows that
he is the leader in the state of The male rabbit (called a buck in rabbit breeder parlance) in that first pair turned out to be a champion rabbit, based on his color, coat, eyes, ears, teeth, nose, paws and other aspects that judges look for at shows. As Ryan learned more about what makes a champion rabbit, he has learned which animals to keep and which to cull. “Rabbits I don’t want to keep for shows I sell at the Owensville auction,” he says. Rabbit shows are scheduled year-round and all over the nation. “We usually show just during cool or cold weather,” Judith says. “We start our personal showing season in late February and go until about June. Then we stop and will start back up in September for a couple of months.” Ryan
says he has been to shows in “There are about 500 shows we could go to, but we’ve limited ours to about 50,” Judith says. The
national show will be in Not only did he break one hand and the little finger on the other hand earlier this year, he lost his best buck through an accident. “A judge broke my best buck’s back. He picked him up wrong and I heard it snap,” Ryan says. The break didn’t kill the buck; Ryan and his grandmother put the animal in a box so it couldn’t move. The back has healed and the rabbit now moves about—slowly—in a cage. “Our rabbits are like family,” Judith says. “We couldn’t just put him to sleep.” In rabbit breeding, most of the adult breeders take an interest in children. “After that accident, another breeder gave Ryan a rabbit,” Judith says. Adds Ryan, “He said it wasn’t a very good rabbit, but it’s never been beaten.” Ryan has 27 rabbits that he feeds and waters daily. He cleans the cages weekly, and he’s learned that even rabbit manure has value. What he doesn’t keep for use as fertilizer for his grandmother’s plants, he sells to a St. James gardener who drops by regularly to pick up the bags of rabbit droppings mixed with wood shavings from the trays under each cage. Ryan does business as Ryan’s Rabbits, and he sells animals for breeding stock and for pets. Netherland Dwarfs are so small that they aren’t good meat rabbits. He’ll sell animals for $65 each to $300 each, depending on their quality and record of championships. “I sold three for $85 each last month,” he says. Ryan is recognized as a Charter Breeder by the American Netherland Dwarf Rabbit Club. He is recognized as a “prince” by the Missouri Rabbit Producers Association, which has a royalty contest for youth that involves an extensive testing procedure. Ryan is a member of both those organizations as well as the American Rabbit Breeders Association. Although
he’s only 12, Ryan has been instrumental in helping others get involved
in rabbit breeding, including his cousins who recently moved to St. James
from Ryan and grandmother Judith recommend rabbit raising as an activity for anyone of any age. You can be involved in lots of shows, few shows or no shows. You can be a breeder or just raise the animals as pets or to create great compost for your garden. “It’s been very good for him,” Judith says of rabbit breeding. “It has really changed his life.” He has learned much about the animals themselves. He has learned the responsibility of daily and weekly care of the animals and their cages. Breeding has also taught him about sales and money management. It has honed his people and networking skills, too. “I’ve got friends all over the country,” Ryan says. |
