History of Rare Bits & Pieces

How Rare Bits & Pieces got started...

When I first got started in rabbits back in 1968, I simply had the old time rabbit hutches made of wood and wire. These hutches were placed under two fairly large Magnolia trees giving the rabbits ample shade during our hot and humid southeast Texas summers.

In 1969 my parents had a new home built in Mauriceville, Texas and because of home restrictions, you could not have a bunch of rabbit hutches scattered about the yard, nor could you use tin roofing material. My father and I got busy and built my first rabbit barn which was 20 x 50 feet and was styled after a log cabin. Behind the house were a pair of towering White Oak trees, so my first rabbitry name was Twin Oak Rabbitry. Not long afterwards a storm hit, taking out one oak and the other one took a sudden leaning position. I changed the name to Leaning Oak Rabbitry. Within two more years the leaning oak was also gone and another rabbit barn (30 x 50 ft.) was built to house a commercial herd of production New Zealand Whites. The new barn was again in the log cabin style.

During the summers I was spending a lot of time in Albuquerque, New Mexico with some friends who also raised rabbits. We would horse back ride through the desert and collect cactus (I wasn't a plant person then, so I did not know it was illegal to take cactus). I brought them home and landscaped around the two rabbit barns. Well the rabbitry name was changed again to Whitman's Frontier Rabbitry. The cactus soon died, couldn't stand our heavy clay soils, nor the 70 odd inches of rain we get per year. The rabbitry name stayed the same until I moved to Saudi Arabia in 1976 and got out of rabbits for awhile.

I think a lot of people who raise rabbits, also like to collect rabbit items to decorate with in their homes. I was no exception to this and had amassed a rather large collection of stuff since 1968. You name it and I collected it , the only rule being that it had to have something to do with rabbits. From stamps to coins, books to magazines, figurines to plates, original paintings to prints, you name it and you could find it in my collection.

While in Saudi Arabia, I did a lot of traveling in Europe and throughout the middle east. Germany is where the Easter Bunny really came into being is a hot bed for those who like to collect rabbits. My mother is from Germany and having relatives there, I went there a lot, always bringing back more rabbit collectables.

In early 1978, I went to Paris, France to the headquarters of the French National Rabbit Federation to locate breeders of the Blanc de Hotot rabbit. With names, addresses and phone numbers in hand, I returned to Saudi Arabia and began what would seem as a never ending task to import the Hotots to America. I had one shipment sent to a friend in New Mexico and another shipment to my mother in Texas.

During Thanksgiving of 1980 I held a party at my house and friends were looking at all the rabbit collectables as I would explain some of the rarer pieces and where I had found them. At some point I said yep, "that's a lot of Rare Bits and Pieces around here" so a new rabbitry name was born. Rare Bits & Pieces was registered with the ARBA on December 5, 1980 number V46.