Flemish not-giant

Hey, my Flemish giant is not so giant... She's 6 months old or so, and doesn't seem to be as big as I've seen. I had a grey Flemish giant a little while back, and she was 6ish months old. And was pretty much full grown.
Here she is next to a 2 cup container. I didn't have anything else to scale her with.

@bunnylady

@dutchbunny03

Her body type is correct for her breed. There are several factors that could have caused her not-so-giantess. How big were her parents? Was she the runt of her litter? How many kits were in her litter? What was she fed for the first 6 months?

The minimum size for a Flemish senior doe is 14 pounds; that isn't a whole lot bigger than, say, a New Zealand. Folks who breed for show know that even show rabbits don't necessarily produce show-quality offspring, and one of the reasons a rabbit might not be show-worthy is that it fails to fall within the size parameters for its breed.

There are a bunch of possible reasons that a rabbit might wind up undersized, from environmental things like poor feeding or parasites to her genetics. If the breeder's goal in doing this breeding was just making more rabbits, they may not even know what the breed standard is, let alone be working toward it. And though "Giant" is part of the name and obviously what most people notice about this breed, it is clearly understood that on a show table, balance and proportion are more important than size. As long as the rabbit makes minimum weight, how it's put together is what they grade it on, so a breeder may have really good rabbits that barely make the weight that would understandably produce some that miss the mark size-wise. Of course, if she's more than a pound or so undersized, it's possible that something more may be going on - maybe an outcross.

I was thinking that she may be a crossbreed. I got a buck from the same breeder, and he is white with Californian coloring... And he's not much bigger than ginger here :\

Yeah, and as you know, Cali markings shouldn't show up on a Flemish - it's not a gene they should be carrying. Lots of people do out crosses for one reason or another, and it can be a very helpful thing to do, but it can also result in animals that are a far cry from the breed standard. It can take a lot of time and effort to get your stock back to the standard if you step far enough away from it.

Outcrossing can be good, such as the outcross of a New Zealand/Cali. That particular out cross makes an excellant meat rabbit. But most of the time, outcrosses just produce lower-quality rabbits.