Talk:New Zealand rabbit

New Zealand vs. New Zealand Red
Someone familiar with the topic, please add paragraph about differences between New Zealand rabbit and New Zealand red rabbit. There are different colors of New Zealand Rabbit - including red, but if red New Zealand Rabbit is same as New Zealand Red rabbit, there should not be two separate pages for them. I believe this is a mixup by someone not familiar with the topic, there's even same picture of (red) rabbit used on both pages. 76.108.79.138 (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Red new Zealand and new Zealand red are the same thing ad should be merged. We should have a page called New Zealand rabbit then can list the differences between red, white and black. White and black were bred from reds. 194.217.44.136 (talk) 14:11, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merges
New Zealand Red rabbit and New Zealand White rabbit (along with our missing New Zealand Black rabbit) are, according to this article, simply color variations of the actual breed New Zealand rabbit, and are not breed themselves. We do not have or need separate articles on every coat variant of a breed. For some animal breeds (especially among cats) this would result in over 30 articles for a single breed. This is a road we do not want to go down. Articles have sections and lists for a reason. The Red article is a worthless stub, and most of the White article is good information that really pertains to the New Zealand rabbit in general (though some of it it, especially relating to albinism and lab rabbits, is particular to the white strain). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:46, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, what sources say they are the same breed? They are definitely treated as three separate transboundary breeds (1, 2, 3) by DAD-IS. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:53, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Just google it . They're treated as coat variants in source after source, and our article is wrong about how many there are. At least all of the following are now recognized as coat variants by one source/organization or another, with more being developed all the time: white, black, red, broken, brown, steel, chestnut, blue/grey/gray, etc. This appears to be exactly the same as the coat classifications in cats, dogs, guinea pigs/cavies, etc. We do not have articles on Manx calico cat or Abyssian agouti cat, or Icelandic cream sheepdog, etc., etc.  It's rare indeed for a color variant of anything to become a distinct breed (extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary sourcing). The Golden Retriever as distinct from the Labrador Retriever is a good example, and they're very different apart from the coloration, in ways that the rabbit strains are not. What's happened here is a confusion between show standards and actual breeds. If we were to take seriously the idea that a defined standard of points for a color variation equated to a different breed and that it was notable as such, we would need several thousand more domestic animal "breed" articles, and this would clearly be an absurd result.  These topics are not distinct enough to split, and they would not survive AfD. If I took these to AfD right now, AfD would merge them. In fully developed form, each article on the NZ red, NZ black, NZ white, etc. would be entirely identical except for notes on color and perhaps when the "breed" (color variant) was recognized by which fancier/breeder organizations. It's "breeder-cruft".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:47, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * , when I asked what sources say they are the same breed, it should have been clear that I was talking about reliable sources, as understood in Wikipedia. What possible value is there in Googling a topic like this? All you are likely to learn is what a lot of twaddle there is on the internet. You've expressed an opinion; the national livestock reporting bodies of a good number of countries appear to disagree with you. So, what reliable sources say they are the same breed? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:39, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I completely agree with Justlettersandnumbers. If you are going to make a claim, you must give reliable evidence on the topic. I've made contributions to the New Zealand Black Rabbit article, and I don't want to see it go. But regardless of that the internet isn't a reliable answer to everything. Sometimes you've just gotta open a book and find you answers. I'll take up the question and try to determine is it is just a coat variant or a entirely different species. Thank you to whoever responds. ASimpleCompanion (talk) 20:16, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Actually, they seem to all be the same breed. Of course it depends on who you think should define a breed, but ARBA recognizes only the New Zealand as a breed, no New Zealand Red or New Zealand White. The New Zealand Rabbit Club, linked to by ARBA, lists Broken, White, Red, and Black as the four recognized varieties of the New Zealand breed, and also has an announcement that blue has been recognized as a color of New Zealand as of 2016. However, the British Rabbit Council does list the New Zealand Red as being a different size than the New Zealand Black, Blue, or White. In its breed specifications, the New Zealand Blue and Black include "see New Zealand White" for everything except the color, which indicates that at the very least the New Zealand Black and New Zealand White articles should be merged. I was unable to find any other reliable sources on rabbit standards. (DAD-IS is just a database of breeds. It doesn't set the standard.)

I'm inclined to merge them all into one page. You can think of this as choosing the ARBA standards over the BRC (which is reasonable since the breed is of American origin), but I think this should be done either way to reduce redundant information, which is currently most of the information on the pages for black, red and New Zealand Rabbit. Having the information all in one place makes it easier to keep it up to date. For instance, the New Zealand Black page currently claims that blue New Zealands are not yet showable, though this is no longer true. The page on New Zealand Rabbit is even more out-of-date on that, and says blue is being considered as a new color. (Speaking of which, why does the New Zealand Black page say "Specimens may be colored white, red, black,broken or blue"? Aren't they black?) There's just not enough different information about each color to warrant a page for each.

If no one replies in the next month or so, and I remember about it, I'll go ahead and merge the articles. Iamnotabunny (talk) 06:25, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Done. I'm also going to merge New Zealand blue rabbit, which I only just noticed, since there's no good reason to keep it separate with the others merged. Iamnotabunny (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I'd forgotten about this. (Probably after rolling my eyes so much I got a headache.) When someone points to Google results chock full of actual RS, "Google isn't an RS" isn't a meaningful response. Just look at the actual RS returned in the results, people. [sigh] I get resistance from Justlettersandnumbers to virtually every single thing I do or say at any breeds-related page, a years-long pattern of WP:OWN and WP:HOUNDING behavior, so no surprise there; and the other respondent was having more specific "my article!" (rather than "my entire topic area!") issues, also not a valid rationale.  Sometimes it just takes someone who's not part of some tedious old personality dispute to step in and get the job done, for the same reasons the proposal was made in the first place but without triggering people into fight-just-because-it's-you-again mode.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:13, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Unreferenced sources
The article mentions three sources in parentheses rather than any Wikipedia citation format, and with no information beyond author's surname and page number(s) (and for one just the name):
 * (Bare 63-65) [twice]
 * (Verhallen 23-35)
 * (Rubins)

Unlike, I am not a bunny anything (fancier, breeder, fan...), so I must leave the task of finding these sources and filling in the citations to someone who is (hint, hint!).--Thnidu (talk) 23:37, 24 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I think I got them all now. Also, wow, those have been there since 2006! Iamnotabunny (talk) 01:15, 25 April 2019 (UTC)