Monday, October 22, 2018

Tucker Wins His First Leg!

The day after the Tulsa State Fair competition happens the Tulsa RBA (rabbit breeders association) holds a Sunday Open competition.  It is optional and you don't have to enter all or any of the rabbits you enter at the fair if you don't want to.  It was also on a Sunday so I had planned to pack my rabbits up at the end of the day Saturday and head home and not worry about the next day or the two and a half hour drive back to the fair grounds.

Being brand new to showing rabbits, I learned a few things at this event the hard way.  First Tulsa State Fair tries to keep things more secure so that animals theft can't happen.  Part of this is making it a coop show.  All rabbits have to be checked in and on the table in a provided and connected coop by a certain time.  Then whether the competition is over or not they are on display for the public and must remain until the end of the contracted days.  In this case it meant both Saturday and Sunday and a trip back to the fair for me whether I had planned on it or not.

It also meant I needed a few things I hadn't brought with me like extra food and water and something to help secure doors for the night while I wasn't there.  Trust me every rabbit breeder at the fair was doing something to either prevent fingers from getting into the cage entirely or to prevent people from opening the cage doors.  It also meant needing to clean cages the next morning.  After some quick thinking and my dear husband running errands for me, we got things settled for the night.

My daughter decided she didn't want to come back on Sunday so that left me with the opportunity to show all of our rabbits in the Open category of Sunday competition.  After all I was going to be there anyway right and they were going to be doing comment cards, which as a new breeder I really wanted as I hoped it would help me learn a bit more.  Turns out it was a lot of fun.

Our red NZ (New Zealand) buck Carrots took Best of Variety.

Our red NZ doe Scarlett took Best Opposite of Variety.

And our broken red NZ buck Tucker took First in Class and won his first Leg.  For those who don't know what that is: it is 1/3 of what you need in order to apply to have your registered rabbit grand Champion certificate.  Tucker needs to win two more legs and be registered with ARBA before he would be eligible.  A long ways to go yet but it is a good start and a super fun surprise.

It has also reminded me that I need to be asking more questions beforehand and making sure I take extra things to the show.  That I am prepared for everything.  Okay maybe not prepared for everything but at least prepared for a little bit more then that just the next few hours at a time.  But prepping for a show sounds like a whole different blog post to me.


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