Raising Cals with a laser focus on depth of body, proper highpoint and turn, width and depth of loin, and butter fur.
07/08/2024
Another great showing for JAR at one of the larger valley fairs- Stanislaus County Fair.
Congratulations to these girls for taking home the top prizes.
Leia Verhaegen had the Reserve Champion FFA Meat Pen and Supreme Champion Single Fryer and Melanie Linares had the Reserve Supreme Champion Single Fryer.
07/06/2024
Jar had a great day at the Santa Barbara County Fair today. Congratulations to
Isabella Ruiz on winning Grand Champion Meat Pen!
07/05/2024
Congratulations to Joseph Lugo for winning Grand Champion Meat Pen at the Kings Co Fair 2 years in a row! He got the best out of Jar genetics!
07/01/2024
We are finally caught up on orders and have extra fryers and meat pens. They are ready to go now. Fairs July 31 - Aug 7 can be picked up now and we will take orders for the rest of the season. We’ve already had a great year with a Grand or Reserve in 8 fairs. Price as usual is $30 per fryer. For fairs July 31-Aug 7 we are doing 4 fryers for $100! PM us as they will go fast!
05/30/2024
Merced County Spring Fair is one of the largest market shows in California and kids did super with Jar genetics!
Congratulations to the following showman!
Temprance Tuscano on winning FFA Grand Champion and Supreme Grand Champion meat pen.
Cervando Miranda on winning 4h Champion and Supreme Champion single fryer.
Scarlet Tuscano on winning 4h Champion Meat Pen.
And Melani Quijano on winning Reserve Champion ffa meat pen!
You all had wonderful leaders and teachers and worked hard for your wins!
05/24/2024
Congratulations to Aimee Eltringham on winning Reserve Supreme Champion meat pen at Calaveras County Fair with Jar genetics!
05/23/2024
Congratulations to Temprance Tuscano on winning Grand Champion FFA and Supreme Champion Single Fryer out of 67 entries at the 2024 Chowchilla Fair!
Great job getting your animals in top shape and thank you for choosing Jar stock!
05/01/2024
Congratulations to Grayling and Autumn Thomas for winning Grand and Reserve Grand Meat Pen at the Churchill County Junior Livestock show in Nevada, the first fair of the season for JAR!
04/21/2024
Thank you to everyone who purchased stock from us this weekend, we wish you the best of luck, and we will see you at the tables! Congratulations to all the winners this weekend! We will see you all in Louisville! Safe travels home!
04/20/2024
We still have handful of does left including a bred doe and bucks available…. We will be leaving soon! Please see lauralee
04/17/2024
We will have bucks, young does and bred does available at the National Cal Show in Greenville, OH this weekend. See Lauralee Erbe or Tammy Pree to check them out.
Pictured is JAR1032 which is available in the youth scholarship auction.
09/18/2023
We entered 42 Cals in Louisville. As usual a majority will be available. We will have all ages and both sexes including bred 6/8 and senior does. Pictured are a few likely going. Look us up there.
05/02/2023
The 2023 National Cal show was likely the largest ever. Breeders from across the country and Canada showed outstanding animals across all the breed and market classes. We were very fortunate to win the 3 buck classes, Best Fur, Best Display and Best Opposite S*x. We also won 3 classes and Best of Breed in the Cal Mafia Specialty show and a Best in Show and a Reserve in Show in the Rabbit Renegades all breed shows.
Congrats to all the other winners, especially Bob Donnell with his sweet 6/8 doe. Thanks to our excellent judges for the weekend- Dave Cardinal and Josh Humphries in the national show and Fayth Young and Bruce Ormsby in the specialty show. Finally, thank you and congratulations to The Cal Mafia club for hosting an outstanding national show. Now to get busy on the Louisville ARBA Convention!
03/23/2023
Congratulations to Dick Gehr for an outstanding edition of the Californian Guidebook. Thanks to Louis Potter and PM Grafix for designing our guidebook ad.
See everyone at the upcoming National Cal Show in Lebanon, IN.
We will have Cals available.
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In the spring of 2014 I decided to build a commercial barn to raise feeder rabbits for the San Diego Zoo. Shortly after I started construction Johnny Hopper donated a Cal buck to the Fight for Wade’s Mom auction. I thought the buck looked outstanding, so I remembered the old adage, it doesn’t cost anymore to feed good rabbits than it does culls. So I bid, and bid again and again, and $3000 later I won the buck!
After investing that much in a buck, I of course had to find worthy does. I contacted Mr Hopper and he agreed to start saving does for me. I had also been noticing pictures posted on 6Class page posted by Bob Donnell. He was posting animals that had the topline- excellent depth, and proper high point- that I always envisioned commercial rabbits to have but rarely ever saw.
I wanted to grow the herd quicker and also add White New Zealand’s so I reached out to Robert Crawford and Terry Grubb. A cross country trip was planned for August 2014 to visit all 4 of these legendary breeders.
Thanks for the assistance of my good friend Josh Humphries who was a huge help in the logistics of acquiring and transporting over 100 adult NZ’s and Cals in the middle of August in the southeast’s heat and humidity. All 4 breeders were extremely generous and I was able to purchase 120 animals total and spent hours with all 4 looking over their stock while picking their brains and their decades of experience and success. It was some of the most fun and rewarding times I’ve ever spent doing rabbits.
Also in the summer of 2014 I got word that Ashlee Jones was selling out of Cals due to her commitments to Vet School. I had judged Ashlee’s animals over the years and was well aware of the quality of her herd and her reputation- (winning all 6 classes at an ARBA convention). The package also included Donnell’s DD152 (BOB 2013 ARBA Conv) AND her litter bred to Hopper’s H45. Ashlee’s massive, heavy b***d does fit in perfectly with the herd I was trying to build. DD152 went on to have 14 litters, never losing a kit. Her daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters are peppered throughout the herd today.
In early 2015 the breeding barns with 250 holes were completed and I realized I was going to need a show barn to grow out some of the nice young rabbits I was producing. So we started building the first of two 90 hole show barns. I also realized this project was going to take way more help if I was going to show competitively. Jon Herbert was raising nice Cals in Missouri and we shared the same philosophy on what a proper commercial rabbit should look like and where we wanted to take the project. Alan Rafferty who was living on the ranch and was helping with the care of the rabbits at the time came on board and JAR Rabbitry was born. Alan later moved to his own farm and the team has remained Jon and myself since.
Jon and I planned another trip to Hopper’s, Crawford’s and Grubbs in the summer of 2015. Another nice load of foundation stock was brought back and we both had an excellent time visiting with all 3 breeders. Mr Crawford even gave Jon one of his grooming tables- a gift Jon will cherish forever.
Another stop at Bob Donnell’s place that winter and a few more rabbits added from Johnny here and there completed our foundation. No animals other than Hopper, Donnell and Jones have ever been brought into our Cal herd.
The 2015 Portland ARBA Convention was the first time we took Cals out on the national stage. We showed 10 and won the junior and 6/8 buck classes and sold the 1st place senior doe. Both of our 1st place bucks, Jar’s Warrior and Jar’s Commando went on to be key herd bucks for us.
Since Portland we have won 16 of 30 classes nationally, won Best of Breed 4 times and Best Opposite S*x twice. We won overall Cal sweepstakes in 2016 and 2017, despite showing at a very limited number of shows other than the convention and National Cal show.
Our success is directly and irrefutably due to the hard work and dedication to the breed and their programs by Johnny and Bob and also Ashlee, and their willingness to allow good stock to go to other breeders. We will never be able to thank them enough, but we hope they know that we feel we owe it all to them.
