Herman the German and the Giant Three Foot Rabbits


A while back we and many people got one of those forwarded
emails that our friends send us, telling about a giant three
foot long (1 meter) long rabbit. It weighed nearly twenty-
seven pounds (twelve kilograms)!


Although the emails were complete with pictures, many
people, including us, thought it was just another hoax email
like the giant cat email that went the rounds a few years
ago. But to our surprise, we have discovered that the story
was true!


There are, of course, several "giant" rabbit breeds, such as
the Checkered Giant, Flemish Giant or Patagonian, French Lop
and Giant Chinchilla, but they normally grow to "only" about
fourteen pounds (six kilograms). Average rabbits weigh in at
about six to eight pounds (three or four kilograms) as
adults.


But rabbits bred for size seem to be growing larger with
every generation. In the emails, a German man, Hans Wagner,
is shown with a specimen of the German Giant breed. The
rabbit is named Herman, and his ears alone are as long as
the average rabbit's entire body (eight and one quarter
inches or twenty-one centimeters)! Herman stands seventeen
inches high when standing normally, and is over three feet
long.


Herman's owner says that Herman eats more than four and a
half pounds (two kilograms) of food per day, including a
bale of hay per week and lots of lettuce which is his
favorite food. Herman can eat an entire head of cauliflower
or cabbage at once, and he is still growing!


We have also seen pictures of Bodmin, a Flemish Giant raised
in Scotland, who weighs almost eighteen pounds (eight
kilograms), about as much as a ten month old baby. Bodmin
lives in a nature park, where he has to live apart from the
other rabbits so he won't crush them. He has his own custom
hutch and puts on shows for the park visitors all day.


But these guys don't win the Guinness Record, because
Guinness cancelled the large rabbit classification so that
people wouldn't overfeed their rabbits trying to win the
record. The rabbit that held the record last was a French
doe who weighed twenty-six pounds and seven ounces.


Simply Gorgeous Stuffed Plush Rabbits