Welcome to Hardway

We are no longer breeding Harlequins, but have left up our site for information purposes.

Thank you for visiting our website. We are breeders of Harlequin rabbits in Oregon, breeding both groups (Magpie and Japanese) in all four colors. "We" are a team of two friends that also have exhibition poultry and decided to work together on the Harlequin rabbit breed as well. We are striving to build a herd of Harlequins with type, mothering abilities and growth and meat performance qualities in addition to markings. This is a long and tedious process, but we feel we are making steady progress and seeing more animals with the traits we are looking for in each nestbox.

Hardway Matricaria, Black Japanese Harlequin Doe

Sub-Projects

Documenting Harlequins with each of the Agouti mutations

Our interest in genetics and selective breeding has led us to the Harlequin breed. See our genetics page for more details on A/At/a Harlequins. To assist in our understanding of the genetics of the breed, museum flat skins are being retained of select culled animals (those from specific test crosses, those with known genotype from previous test crosses, those with totally unknown genotype). We hope this will some day increase general knowledge of the breed and encourage others to maintain an open mind when dealing with a gene as wonderfully fascinating as that little "ej".

Exciting News! Hardway Matricaria surprised us all with a test mate litter in 2015 that had no Agoutis, but lots of Tan kits! Because Matricaria has been such a huge part of our breeding program, we will be going back through and seeing how far down the chain we can trace this Tan gene. More test litters are due this spring and should provide more clues, so stay tuned.