Cinnamon Rabbit

Beauty Of Animal | Cinnamon Rabbit| The Cinnamon rabbit was created actually by accident. During the Easter season of 1962 2 kids by the name of Belle and Fred Houseman of Missoula, Montana were given a young Chinchilla doe. Later they received a New Zealand buck. They crossbred these two for babies that their father, Ellis, believed should be used for meat, but young Belle begged her father to let her keep one of the crossbred bucks as a family pet. The children joined the 4-h group and used their crossbred meat rabbits as their project. They were then given an unwanted Checkered Giant and a crossed Californian doe which they mated with Belle’s pet buck and in this litter was a russet shaded rabbit. They again bred the Checkered was mated to the same buck and another rusty colored rabbit appeared, then one day their doe produced two russet colored rabbits.

Ellis Houseman told his kids that they needed to be keeping only purebred rabbits to show, but this time Fred, with tears in his eyes, begged his father to let him keep the pair of brownish rabbits from the last litter. Ellis agreed. They mated the pair together and 70 percent of the litter was this russet shaded color, which they began calling Cinnamon. Dad then began taking notice of these unusual shaded colored rabbits, and also noticed the sheen in the coats. Ellis showed these experimental rabbits to J. Cyril Lowett, Oregon Judge and ARBA board member. He felt they had possibilities and said there was not another breed like them in the U.S.

The Cinnamon rabbit was first presented at the 1969 ARBA Convention in Calgary, Canada. Right away the Cinnamons were approved for their first leg of the journey in becoming a new breed! Next year, 1970, was a bit more difficult because the convention was held in Syracuse, New York. The rabbits had to travel by air freight because the Housemans could not attend. Then, to complicate matters worse a virus killed his best rabbits. Some Cinnamons did make it to New York but they did not pass because they were not in the best of form or condition.

1971 proved to be another hard year for the Housemans. Right before the Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico a dog broke into the rabbitry killing three of their best presentation does. Even with this little setback the comments were good and the Cinnamons passed the second hurdle of reaching breed status. While returning from New Mexico, the Housemans hit a severe blizzard, losing a tire off their trailer, they had to abandon the trailer and bring the rabbits home in the trunk of their car.

Though the family had been through a lot their hard work paid off when their dream came true when the Cinnamon was recognized and accepted to the ARBA’s Book of Standards after the 1972 Convention in Tacoma, Washington

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