History and Origin

The Gnomish Giant was named after our rabbitry and is currently under development. In 2014 we decided as a family to raise rabbits for meat to supplement our grocery bill as I had become disabled and had to sell our family business.  This gave me a new purpose in life as I am a person who needs a goal.  So I started to dream about what would our breed look like? We didn't know. So we began looking at what makes up each breed, how were they developed, What constituted a breed and so on.  There are many, many breeds.  Some are recognized by the rabbit clubs, so many are not. We decided we did not want to make show rabbits and wanted to make a Giant Meat breed.  Once we got our first three Rex does and a Silver Fox buck and told a few people they said "hey let us know when your first litter is born I want a breeding pair to start my own meat breeding". And so it began.  Our first litter was sold before it was born. 

Having been in sales my entire life we ended up finding homes for our bunnies as well as picking a few does to breed with, the entire first year and never actually ate any.  This helped us get set up with cages and get a few more breeders for our project. At first we had very small rabbits.  They seemed to only get to 3 and 4 pounds by 5 months which is terrible for meat growth.  You want them to be 5 pounds by 12 weeks at least and for a Giant rabbit this was not going to work.  Their top weights were 6 and 7 pounds which was low for rex and Silver fox. We experimented with some other breeds.  Californian, New Zealand's, Flemish Giants crosses but none of them were giving us the results we wanted.  And at this point we didn't know exactly what that was, other than we were working toward getting the growth rates we wanted.  All We did know is that we were producing some absolutely gorgeous rabbits by crossing our rex and Silver fox and that we were improving our growth rates.  We also noticed that our rabbits were very calm and friendly because we love them so much and spend a lot of time playing with them. Something that our customers love and return to us again and again because of. Finally in the year (2018) the vision of what the final breed will look like had formed in our minds and we began working toward having one to show you all. The hard part became getting the Large size to continue while keeping the rex fur and also adding the additional attributes we want to see. As the saying goes, you have to build the barn before you paint it.  So stay tuned and follow us on our journey.  Because who doesn't love a mystery? In order for a rabbit to be considered a giant they must be a minimum of 12 pounds and as of 2022 we are hitting 12-13#.  Our end goal for the breed is a minimum of 16 pounds with a compact body type, rex fur and tall erect ears. We will not use any giant breeds to accomplish this as we not only feel that is cheating but also because none of the giant breeds have the attributes that we want to see and would just set us back in our progress.  We do hope you will enjoy the end result as much as you have with the bunnies we have created on the way to our destination.  Currently our rabbits are reaching 10-13 pounds as adults which is double what they were only a few years ago and we are very proud of this.  Our customers are reporting cull weights of an average 6 tom7 pounds at 10 to 12 weeks. 

 Thank you all for stopping by to learn about us and our project. Below is the standard of perfection for the Gnomish Giant when the breed is complete. We are very near reaching our goal. 

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