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Breeder Instructions

Managing your herd, pedigrees, breeding records, sales, and cross-program imports on the Breeders dashboard.

Start here: your first 30 minutes

Brand new to HARES Breeders? Here's the fastest path from an empty dashboard to a printable pedigree:

  1. Fill in your rabbitry details in Settings — name, prefix, and contact info. This shows up on every pedigree certificate you print.
  2. Add your first animal, or import from Everbreed / Evans / CSV if you're switching from another tool.
  3. Snap a photo of the animal for the animal's detail page — it prints on the pedigree certificate. (optional)
  4. Once you have a buck and a doe entered, record a litter. Kits auto-spawn so you can triage them inline as they grow.
  5. Open any animal and click Print pedigree to see what you've got.

Looking for something specific? Use the table of contents on the left, or click HELP in the top-right of any page.

1.Plans & Herd Cap

Every HARES account gets a Free Breeder dashboard automatically — even secretary signups. It holds up to 10 active animals with the full feature set (pedigrees, photos, weights, sales, imports). Use it to kick the tires before paying for anything.

Three paid tiers raise the cap on active animals:

  • Breeder 20 — 20 active animals.
  • Breeder 50 — 50 active animals.
  • Breeder Unlimited — no cap.

The dashboard shows your usage (e.g. 14 / 20) at the top so you know where you stand. Mark older animals Sold, Deceased, Culled, or Ancestors to free a slot without losing pedigree history. Once marked, those animals become read-only — their pedigree, photos, and history all stay visible, but you can't edit them or use them as a sire / dam on a new litter (60-day grace window aside).

2.My Herd dashboard

Open the dashboard and go to My Herd. Across the top of every breeder page is a tab strip: My Herd · Litters · Breeding Calendar · Sales · Customers · Reservations · Reports · Imports · Submissions · Settings. The active page is underlined. On phones the strip wraps to a 2-column grid; on tablets and up it lays out as 5 columns × 2 rows. Layout is locked per breakpoint so tabs don't reshuffle as the active tab changes.

Columns

Each row in the herd table shows: photo · ear num · name · breed · variety · sex · DOB · cage # · weight. Breed and variety are their own separate columns now, so you can sort or hide them independently. The cage column reflects whatever you typed into the Cage # field on each animal (free text — "A-12", "Hutch 3", whatever your barn uses).

Show / hide columns. The ⚙ Columns button above the table opens a checklist — toggle any column on or off, including optional ones like Prefix, Tattooed, Sire, and Dam — tighten the table to just what you care about. Your choices save to your account, so the herd comes back the same way on every device.

Click-to-sort, up to three deep. Click any column header to sort by it; click again to flip ascending / descending; a third click clears it. Click a second (then a third) header to stack a multi-level sort — a small ① ② ③ badge marks each one's priority. Sorting by Variety, then Sex, then DOB, for instance, groups all your black senior bucks together instead of scattering them. (The Sort dropdown does the same for a single column if you'd rather pick from a list.)

Filtering

Five filter dimensions stack above the herd table. Once you've narrowed down to what you want — say, Active does of one breed sorted by DOB — bookmark the page and you'll come back to the same filtered view next time:

  • Status chips — Active / Ancestors / Sold / Deceased / Culled, plus All to see every status at once.
  • Species chips — Rabbit / Cavy / All.
  • Sex chips — Bucks / Does / All.
  • Breed dropdown — populated from the breeds in the view you're currently on (it follows the status + species tab you've picked), so the list stays tight.
  • Sort dropdown — by Ear num / Name / Breed / DOB / Cage #, ascending or descending. Same effect as clicking column headers, and like the filters above, the sort sticks with the bookmark.

Below the chips, a search box narrows the rows by ear num, name, breed, variety, or cage. On a big herd the list paginates, and search + sort run on the server — so they cover your whole herd, not just the page in front of you (past a few hundred animals, that's what keeps My Herd fast).

Categories (Active sub-tabs)

Under the Active filter, a second row of chips lets you slice your active herd by category: Showable / Breeder / Grow-out / Retired / Uncategorized, plus All. Each chip shows a count so you can see your breakdown at a glance.

Categories are optional — every animal starts as Uncategorized. Set them per-animal on the edit form (Category dropdown), or in bulk via the action bar described below. Use whatever definitions match your breeding practice; HARES doesn't enforce rules on what counts as Showable vs Breeder vs Grow-out vs Retired. One category per animal (no multi-tagging).

Grow-out is for the young stock you're still watching — not yet committed to show, breed, or cull. Drop a kit straight into Grow-out from a litter's kit table (the promote menu has a → Grow-out option), then click the Grow-out chip to review that whole group at once as they mature.

Bulk actions

On the Active and Ancestors filters, every row has a checkbox. The sticky bar at the bottom stays collapsed (out of the way) while nothing's checked, and expands the moment you tick a row:

  • Submit to a show (Active only) — packages the selection for a portal-submission flow.
  • Archive selected (Active → Ancestors) — moves the animals out of your active count without losing their records. Reversible.
  • Activate selected (Ancestors → Active) — flips them back. Reversible.
  • Set category (Active only) — Showable / Breeder / Grow-out / Retired / Clear. Mass-classify a fresh import in one click.
  • Set tattoo date — pick a date in the inline picker; HARES stamps it on every checked rabbit that doesn't already have a tattoo date. Tick the overwrite box to replace previously-set dates too. Lets you mark "I tattooed all these on Saturday" without walking each one.
  • Delete selected — permanent remove. Refuses any animal referenced as a sire/dam (would orphan the offspring's pedigree) or linked to a show entry — those need manual unlinking first.

Sold / Deceased / Culled are terminal — those animals become read-only and can't be reverted via the bulk bar. To correct one (e.g. you marked it Sold by mistake), edit the animal individually before the 60-day grace window closes.

Print & export

Top-right of My Herd, Print / Export ▾ opens a dropdown menu with these artifacts:

  • Cage Cards (PDF) — letter-size cage cards for the current filter, laid out how you set them up (covered in section 12).
  • Pedigrees (PDF) — one full pedigree certificate per animal, one per page.
  • Herd List (PDF) — printable summary table (one row per animal) for handing a vet, show secretary, or your own binder.
  • Export CSV (herd only) — round-trippable data export. Same column order as the import flow accepts, so you can export, edit in a spreadsheet, and re-import.
  • Export Everything (.zip) — full account dump as CSVs (rabbits, litters, sales, customers, reservations, accomplishments). See section 19.
  • Export Everything + Photos (.zip) — same plus original-resolution animal photos, sorted into folders by ear number.

3.Adding a rabbit

Click + Add Rabbit/Cavy on My Herd. Required fields: ear number (letters, numbers, and spaces), sex, species, breed. Everything else is optional but worth filling in:

Pick species first — the breed list switches to match (rabbit breeds vs cavy breeds), and the variety choices follow the breed you pick. Switching species reloads those pickers, so you can't accidentally save a cavy on a rabbit breed.

Duplicate ear nums are allowed. Real-world tattoos repeat — a buck #11 + doe #11 is normal in most herds, and some breeders reuse numbers across breeds or generations. If the ear num you typed matches another rabbit in your herd, the form re-renders with a yellow banner listing the match(es) + a "These are different rabbits — save anyway" checkbox. Tick it and save proceeds; otherwise change the ear num.

At the bottom of the new-rabbit form there are two save buttons: Create Rabbit (saves and lands you back on My Herd) and Create & add another (saves and re-opens a blank form). Use the second when entering a batch — saves a couple of clicks per animal.

  • Name — anything you call the animal.
  • DOB — drives age-tier classification on entries.
  • Variety/Group — split into two fields: showroom (what the rabbit's shown as on the judging table) and registration (its actual color on the pedigree). For most rabbits these match; a few breeds differ — common case is rabbits shown in a broader color group (e.g. "Broken") whose registered color is more specific (e.g. "Broken Black"). When in doubt, fill both with the same value.
  • Weight — pick lb / oz / lb+oz on the form. Each save adds a row to the weight history.
  • ARBA Reg # and ARBA GC # — optional. Always shown on the pedigree certificate (with a dash when blank).
  • Sire / Dam — picked from your existing herd. Sex-locked: the Sire dropdown only lists bucks; the Dam dropdown only lists does. Both rules also enforced at the model level so a bad import can't mis-link.
  • Bred By — original breeder of record (you or whoever bred the litter).
  • Tattooed — a yes/no status and an optional date (they sit side by side on the form). "No" surfaces a "Not yet tattooed" warning on the rabbit page so you don't lose track of placeholder ear nums, and there's an optional Tattooed herd column. If you tattoo as you go, flip on "New rabbits are already tattooed" in Settings and every rabbit you add starts marked tattooed.
  • Cage # — optional free-text label for which physical hutch the rabbit lives in. Surfaces as its own column on My Herd and as a corner badge on cage cards. Searchable from the herd table.

Status & disposition

Status defaults to Active. Other choices: Kit (newborn / under-evaluation — kept off the active count until you graduate them), Ancestors (kept for pedigree only — doesn't count against active cap), Sold, Deceased, Culled. Sold / Deceased / Culled are terminal — they lock the record (no further edits, can't be used as sire/dam on a new litter beyond a 60-day window).

On the animal's detail page, the most common status-transition actions are surfaced as large buttons in the header: Mark sold, Mark deceased, Mark culled (and Promote to active on kits). Each opens an inline form for the date + reason field so you don't have to load the full edit page just to record an outcome. Because these lock the record, they ask you to confirm first ("Mark this rabbit as culled? This locks the record.") so a mis-tap can't quietly freeze an animal.

Two optional reason fields are paired with the terminal statuses, with datalist-suggested values:

  • Cull Reason (when status = Culled) — free text. Suggestions: malocclusion, poor type, color fault, DQ, wry neck, no use to herd, pet quality, infertile, aggressive, sick.
  • Cause of Death (when status = Deceased) — free text. Suggestions: respiratory illness, GI stasis, heat stroke, predator, accident, natural causes, old age, unknown.

Both fields are always present on the form regardless of status — they're harmless when blank. Display on the animal page is conditional: cull reason only appears when status is Culled, cause of death only when Deceased.

Notes. The animal's detail page has a free-text Notes box you can add to, edit, or clear right there — no need to open the full edit form. It stays editable even after an animal is sold or otherwise locked, so you can keep jotting things down.

4.Color details (optional)

Color-genetics breeders track three extras most herds skip. The new-rabbit form has a collapsible Color details (optional) section just below ARBA Reg / GC #:

  • Eye color — Brown, Blue, Ruby Red, Marble, etc. Free text since notation varies by breed.
  • Toenail color — White, Dark, Mixed. Important for some breed standards.
  • Genotype — coded gene string (e.g. aa B_ C_ D_ E_).
  • Satin carrier (cavies) — tick this for a Satin-carrier animal and the pedigree prints "(Satin Carr.)" beside its variety.

These show on the animal's detail page only when at least one is filled in — no empty placeholders for fields you don't use.

5.Pedigrees

Open any animal and click View 3-Gen Tree for the on-screen pedigree, or Print PDF to download a certificate. The certificate is sex-color-coded (blue border for bucks, pink for does, dashed gray for unknown ancestors), with BUCK / DOE badges on every cell (Boar / Sow for cavies) so the distinction survives B&W printing.

What's on each cell

Each ancestor cell shows: name (or ear #), sex badge, ear #, DOB, breed / variety, weight, total leg count (HARES-recorded + any manual legs you've entered), ARBA Reg #, GC #. Dash placeholders for missing data so the slot stays visible on print.

Adding ancestors

Click + add sire or + add dam on any unknown cell. You'll land on a page with two sections:

  • Pick from your herd — searchable combobox of existing animals filtered to the matching sex. Active animals show by default (most pedigrees stitch into current animals); a toggle below the picker expands the list to include Ancestors / Sold / Deceased / Culled. Live search by ear / name / breed / variety. One click to link.
  • Or add new — quick-create form with the pedigree-essential fields. Status defaults to Ancestors so it doesn't burn against your active cap. Sex is forced to match the slot.

"+ add" only renders when the parent (the animal who'd own this slot) is known. Otherwise the cell shows "add the parent first" — fill in intermediate generations before drilling deeper.

Pedigree certificate number

On first PDF print, HARES auto-assigns each animal a Pedigree # in the format year-NNN (e.g. 2027-001 for the first animal you print this year). Stamped in the top-right of the certificate so a buyer can refer back to "Pedigree #2027-014" later. Persistent — every reprint carries the same number.

Photo on the certificate

Upload a photo on the animal's edit page and it shows up as a small thumbnail on the printed pedigree's subject summary line — adds polish to certificates you hand to buyers.

Public share link

Each animal page has a Share read-only pedigree section. Click Create share link to make a public URL on haresregistry.com that anyone can open without a HARES account — useful for sending buyers the pedigree before pickup. Rotate replaces the token (old URL stops working); Revoke kills the link entirely.

Once a share link exists, the printed pedigree certificate gets a verification QR in the bottom-right of the certification card. Scanning it lands the buyer on the live online pedigree — handy proof that the printed paper came from your rabbitry. Animals without an active share link print without a QR; nothing is auto-shared.

Branding & what prints

Under Settings you can set an accent color for your certificates and choose which optional lines print on each cell — the rabbitry prefix, date of birth, weight, legs, and Reg / GC #. The prefix is a choice here, so "Meadowbrook's Ruby" can print as the full name or just "Ruby," to match how you brand your pedigrees.

Bulk pedigree print

From My Herd, Print / Export ▾ → Pedigrees (PDF) generates one combined PDF with every animal in the current filter, one full certificate per page. Useful when you're printing a stack for a show or selling a whole litter.

6.Settings

The Settings tab (in the breeder tab strip) is where all your preferences live — there's a lot here. Much of it is covered in other sections: your default weight unit, herd columns, the cage-card and pedigree look, the "new rabbits are already tattooed" default, and your weekly reminders. The pieces that don't have their own section are below.

Rabbitry contact block (prints on pedigrees)

Every pedigree certificate carries a "Rabbitry" block — your contact info as the breeder. Fields:

  • Rabbitry name — e.g. "ABC Rabbitry."
  • Breeder name(s) — free text for couple / family names.
  • Address (line 1 + 2, city, state, ZIP).
  • Phone and Email.

Each field has a Hide on pedigree toggle. Lets you keep the value on file in HARES but omit it from the printed certificate (handy for the home address — store it for ARBA registration paperwork without publishing it on pedigrees you give to strangers).

ARBA # & club memberships

The same page holds your ARBA membership # and its expiration date, plus any breed-club memberships you want to track (club name + expiry). HARES can remind you before they lapse in your weekly email, so a membership doesn't quietly run out mid-season.

7.Litters & breeding records

The Litters page tracks every breeding. Fields:

  • Sire + Dam — searchable combobox, active rabbits by default with a toggle to include archived. Sire dropdown shows only bucks; dam dropdown only does. Recently-archived parents (sold / deceased / culled) appear in the dropdown if they were still in your hands within 60 days of the kindle date.
  • Date Bred — the day mating happened.
  • Date Kindled — when the kits were born. Leave blank for upcoming / pending litters.
  • Number born / alive — fill in as the litter progresses. The alive number drives the live-kit count surfaced on My Herd's age-of-litter card and Reports. Weaned now fills itself in — each kit counts as weaned when you promote or sell it, so you don't track that number by hand (you can still set it manually on a kit-less imported litter).

Each litter has a status that updates automatically: Planned (no breed date yet), Pending (bred but not kindled), Overdue (past expected kindle date), Kindled (date kindled set), or Missed (set by you — see below).

Plan a breeding (before you breed)

Want to pencil in a pairing before the doe is actually bred? On the Litters index, the Planned tab has a + Plan a Breeding button. Pick the dam + sire, then give it either:

  • a planned breed date — HARES projects the due date (about 31 days later), or
  • a target birth date — HARES works backwards and tells you when to breed.

As you type, the form previews the projected due date plus a set of grow-out check-in dates — 8 weeks, 12 weeks (3 mo), 16 weeks (4 mo), 20 weeks, and 6 months out — so you can plan around weaning, evaluation, and show timing. It saves as a Planned litter (no bred date yet), so it sits under the Planned tab without cluttering your active records.

Mark as bred

When the planned pairing actually happens, open the litter and click Mark as bred. It stamps the bred date (defaults to the planned date — change it if the day slipped) and moves the litter from Planned to Pending, where it picks up the breeding-calendar events and the due-date countdown — no re-entering the dam and sire.

Litters index — search, sort, bulk delete

Three controls on the index page narrow the table:

  • Status chips at the top — Planned / Pending / Overdue / Kindled / Missed / Active (N) / Archived (N) / All (N). Each chip carries its count so you can see distribution at a glance.
  • Search box — client-side filter by sire / dam / breed / notes. No reload.
  • Sort dropdown — by date bred, date kindled, dam, sire, or kit count (asc/desc).

Every row also has a checkbox; ticking any reveals a Delete selected bulk-action button (mirrors the My Herd pattern). Use with care — deleting a litter removes the breeding record permanently (sire/dam links and the kits themselves stay; only the join row goes). Deleting one litter returns you to whichever status chip you were viewing — no losing your place on the Archived tab just because you trimmed a stray.

Mark as missed

Not every breeding takes. If the doe never kindled and you want to close the litter without leaving it stuck in Overdue, open the litter and click Mark as missed. Status flips to Missed; it stops counting toward expected due-dates on the breeding calendar and stays out of the Active view by default. Reversible — open and click Reopen.

Bulk-record form

Recording a week's worth of pairings? Click + Bulk Record on the Litters index for a multi-row form: each row is one litter, with sire / dam / date-bred / notes inputs side by side. Saves all rows in one submit. Easier than walking the new-litter form once per pair.

Kits — auto-spawn + inline triage

When you fill in Date Kindled + Number alive, HARES auto-creates that many kit placeholder Rabbit records on the litter — each with a generated ear num and status Kit. The kit-row table shows up below the litter form with an inline triage column per row:

  • Mark deceased — date + cause of death right on the row.
  • Mark culled — date + cull reason.
  • Mark sold — opens a sale form with the kit pre-filled.
  • Promote to active — flips Kit → Active when the kit graduates from "under evaluation" to part of the working herd.
  • Edit — full edit form (tattoo, photo, color details, name). Saving returns to the litter, not the animal's show page, so you can chain edits across the kit table without losing context.

Want one extra placeholder beyond the auto-spawn count? + Add Kit on the litter creates one immediately — no form, just a fresh kit row you can edit in place. The litter's kit count auto-decrements as kits die / culled / sell, so the visible number tracks reality without you re-typing it.

Fostering

Sometimes a kit ends up nursing on a different doe. On a kit's row, the Foster ▾ picker lets you pick the litter it joins to be nursed — the candidates are your other active litters (not the kit's own, and not one belonging to its genetic dam). HARES takes the foster dam from that litter.

The kit then shows on both sides: a "Fostered to [dam]" note on its own litter, and a read-only "Fostered in" guest row on the foster dam's litter — so each litter page tells the true story of who's raising whom. Pedigree links (genetic sire/dam) are untouched; this is purely care-of-record.

Active vs Archived

Once kits are weaned and dispersed, a litter doesn't need active management — but you usually want the record to stick around for pedigree + breeding-history purposes. Two paths to Archived:

  • Manual — open the litter, click Archive. Reversible via Unarchive.
  • Auto-archive — when every kit on the litter has left the nest (sold, deceased, or culled — i.e. no Active or Kit-status rows remain), HARES archives the litter for you. Triggered by the kit-row triage actions above, so you don't need to remember to do it manually.

CSV imports (section 13) honor any "Archived" timestamp from the source program, so importing your full history doesn't dump 100+ old litters into your active working view. Imports also don't auto-spawn kit placeholders — bulk-loading historical litters keeps them dataish without generating thousands of Rabbit rows you'd then have to clean up.

8.Breeding Calendar

The Breeding Calendar page shows upcoming + recent events derived from your litters. Default window: 14 days back through 90 days forward (adjust at the top of the page).

Event timeline

For each litter, HARES emits chronological events using standard rabbit-reproduction timing (you can ignore events that don't match your practice):

  • Day 0 — bred
  • Day ~12 — palpate doe (optional, confirms pregnancy)
  • Day 28 — add nest box
  • Day 31 — expected kindle (range 28–35)
  • Day 1 of kit life — check kits, count, weigh
  • Day 7-10 — kits' eyes open
  • Day 21 — kits start eating solid food
  • Day 56 — wean (rabbits: 8 weeks — the minimum most breeders hold to; cavies wean at day 21). Prefer a different age? Set your own week for the whole herd in Settings.

Events are color-coded by kind (bred / palpate / nest box / kindle / wean). "Today" is highlighted; past dates dimmed. Each event links to the underlying litter so you can update num-born / wean status in one click.

9.Sales & buyer transfer

From an animal's detail page, click + Record Sale (or open Sales directly). Fields: buyer name / email / phone, date sold, price, notes.

Recording a sale automatically marks the animal's status as Sold — the slot frees up under your active cap, but the animal stays in your records for pedigree references (buyers can still trace lineage to a sold animal you bred).

Customer linkage (auto)

Every sale links to a Customer record. When you fill in the buyer fields on the form, HARES looks for an existing customer in your account by email (or by name if you didn't enter an email). If found, the sale links to that customer; if not, a new customer is created automatically with the buyer info from the form. Either way, the buyer's name, email, and phone are kept as a snapshot on the sale itself — so changing a customer's email later doesn't rewrite history.

See section 16 for the full Customers tab.

Reservation auto-fulfill

If the animal comes from a litter that has an OPEN reservation from the same customer (the reservation's target litter matches the animal's litter), HARES automatically marks the reservation Fulfilled when the sale is recorded. The flash notice on the sale tells you what happened so you can double-check. Reservations without a target litter aren't auto-fulfilled — flip those manually.

Email pedigree to the buyer

On a new sale, a checkbox below the form says Email pedigree link to buyer when I save. Defaults to checked. With a buyer email set, HARES generates a public share link for the animal's pedigree (if not already present) and emails it to the buyer with an optional message from you. The buyer keeps lifetime read-only access — no HARES account required.

Want to send the link manually later? The Share read-only pedigree section on the animal's detail page exposes the same URL with copy / rotate / revoke buttons.

Transfer to another HARES breeder

Selling to someone who's also on HARES? A transfer hands them the animal's whole record — not just a pedigree PDF. From the animal's detail page open Sell ▾Transfer to a HARES buyer, enter the buyer's email, and click Send transfer offer. The animal stays in your herd until the buyer accepts; they get an email and an Accept / Decline in their own Transfers tab.

When the buyer accepts, HARES copies the animal onto their account:

  • The full pedigree comes along — sire, dam, grandparents, the whole tree — so their pedigree view renders natively without re-typing ancestors. The ancestors land as Ancestors (pedigree-only), so a 15-animal tree only costs the buyer one active slot.
  • The show record comes along too — the BOB / BOS, placements, and show appearances the animal earned under you carry to the buyer's copy, and show on the animal page, the printed pedigree, and the Show History report card. They keep building on it at future shows.
  • Its ARBA legs come along as real, printable leg slips — every HARES-earned leg the animal holds is frozen onto the buyer's copy as their own saved slip, viewable and downloadable from the animal page, identical to the slip that was emailed at the show. They're the buyer's to keep — no more printing and handing over paper legs at pickup.
  • Optionally log it as a sale — tick the sale box on the offer to record a price + buyer at the same time, so it lands in your Sales and Customers like any other sale.

On your side the animal flips to Sold once the buyer accepts — it leaves your active count but stays in your records for pedigree references. (Selling to someone not on HARES? Skip the transfer and just record a sale, above.)

10.Photos

Each animal has a main photo plus an additional gallery. Upload from the animal's edit page. The main photo:

  • Becomes the herd-card thumbnail on My Herd.
  • Appears as a small thumbnail on the printed pedigree certificate.
  • Is what's shown on cage cards (if you generate those).

Additional photos build a gallery on the animal's detail page. Useful for sales listings or color-genetics documentation.

11.Weight history

Every weight you record on an animal's edit page is timestamped and graphed on the animal's detail page. Useful for tracking growth in juniors, monitoring senior weight, or documenting weigh-ins for shows. Weight unit (lb / oz / lb+oz) is picked per-entry — HARES stores everything as ounces internally so the chart compares cleanly across entries.

12.Cage cards

Print letter-size cage cards to clip onto your barn hutches, so you can see at a glance what's in each cage.

  • Whole herd — from My Herd → Print / Export ▾ → Cage Cards (PDF). Respects whatever filter (species / status) you have set, and any rows you've checked.
  • One animal — from any animal's detail page, click Cage Card.

The name is the headline, with the ear number in a smaller line beneath it, and everything auto-sizes to fill the card. (Turn the name off and the ear number becomes the headline — it always shows either way.)

Make them look how you want

Everything about the cards is set once under Settings → Cage cards, and every card you print uses it:

  • Fields to show — check what appears on each card: name, breed, showroom & registration variety, sex, date of birth, age, weight, sire, dam, bred-by, and a cage-# badge.
  • Tag orientation — up-and-down (portrait) or side-to-side (landscape).
  • Cards per page — 2, 4, 6, or 8.
  • QR code (optional) — add a code that scans to either the animal's public online pedigree (anyone can scan it — nice to hand a buyer) or its record in HARES (opens the animal's page — only useful on your own signed-in phone at the barn).
  • Rabbitry prefix — off by default, so a long prefixed name isn't crushed ("Meadowbrook's Ruby" prints as "Ruby"). Turn it on to print the full name.

The Cage # badge (top-right) shows the hutch number you set on the rabbit — handy for re-shelving reprinted cards into the right cage.

Cards are designed for cardstock — print on heavy paper, run a paper cutter through the dashed crosshair, slip into a plastic cage clip.

13.Imports from other programs

From Imports, click the + Import ▾ dropdown for available paths. The recommended migration flow combines them: CSV first for the breadth (every animal in your active herd), share-URL imports on top for the depth (3-4 generations of ancestors), then a Litters CSV if your source program exports one.

Don't see your rabbitry program?

Click the HELP button at the top of any page (or email [email protected]) and attach a sample PDF or CSV export from your program — I'll add an importer for it. Each vendor's format is different, so we add them one at a time as breeders show up needing them. Please allow 2-3 days for the new importer to be built and live.

From Everbreed Link

On Everbreed, open the rabbit → Pedigree tab → Shareable Link button → copy the URL. Paste it into HARES; it fetches the page and pulls the rabbit + every ancestor recorded on Everbreed (up to 4 generations / 15 rabbits per share link). Ancestors land pedigree-only — they don't count against your tier limit.

Bulk paste: the URL field is a textarea — drop in one URL per line, up to 25 at a time. Overlapping ancestors across URLs (e.g., the same buck appearing in 4 different rabbits' pedigrees) get deduped automatically. Line-breeding handled: when the same rabbit shows up at two pedigree positions inside one URL (paternal grandsire AND maternal grandsire of the subject, say), HARES collapses them to one record and gap-fills its parents from whichever position carried the breakdown.

Multi-URL imports run as a background job — each Everbreed page is 15 MB and takes 15-30 seconds to fetch, so even a 5-URL batch would time out a synchronous request. Drop the URLs, hit Import, and the page redirects to an import-status view that auto-refreshes every 20 seconds. Walk away, come back to the summary. Each URL's outcome lists which rabbits succeeded, which were matched against existing records, and any failures with their reason so you can see exactly which row broke. Retry button appears on stalled / failed URLs so you don't have to re-paste the whole batch.

Single URL: you'll see a preview of all 15 rabbits with checkboxes — opt out of any branch you don't want before committing.

From Evans (.PDF / .HTM)

Upload an Evans Register pedigree export — a PDF (modern Evans default) or a legacy HTM file. HARES parses the file and pre-fills the new-rabbit form for review. Verified against Evans Register V15 PDFs; if a field doesn't come through, edit on the form before saving. .xpedx files (Evans's archive format) aren't supported — re-export as PDF instead.

Bulk upload: the file picker accepts multiple files at once — drop in up to 25 PDFs and HARES creates them all (status Active), deduping by ear number. You'll get a summary table listing each file's outcome.

From Evans — whole herd (.XML)

Switching off Evans wholesale? Have Evans export your entire herd as an XML file, and this single import brings it all across at once — every animal with its pedigree, recorded wins, and litters, linked together — instead of one animal at a time. Upload it and the import runs in the background (a big herd takes a minute); you'll get a summary when it finishes. The upload page walks you through getting the XML out of Evans.

+ Import a CSV

Generic CSV upload — works with any breeder program that exports CSV (Everbreed, Hutch, etc.). HARES inspects your column headers, auto-maps standard fields (ear num, sire, dam, breed, variety, weight, DOB, ARBA numbers), and shows you the mapping before the import runs. Adjust if needed, then confirm. Sire / dam columns get linked by ear num after all rows land — and skipped silently if the named parent's sex doesn't match the slot (so wrong-sex ancestor data doesn't leak in).

Important: CSV imports only carry one generation of lineage (the Father / Mother columns). Grandparents and great-grandparents aren't in a CSV row, so for full pedigree depth you'll need to follow up with a share-link importer — it stitches into the animals the CSV already created and fills in the ancestor links. Everbreed is the only share-link importer available today; others get added as breeders supply samples.

Common formats handled automatically:

  • "Smith's Cinnamon (SC42)" in a Father / Mother column → the tattoo in parens (SC42) is used as the ear-num lookup
  • "3.6 lbs" in a Weight column → parsed to ounces
  • 04/09/2023 dates → parsed as MM/DD/YYYY (US format)
  • Untattooed rows → get an auto-generated 6-digit numeric ear number; rename later when you actually tattoo the rabbit

The CSV format HARES exports (My Herd → Export CSV) is the same shape, so you can round-trip: export, edit in a spreadsheet, re-import. Good for a backup or moving between accounts.

Everbreed Litters CSV

Bulk-import your litter history. Everbreed's Litters export gives a CSV row per litter with sire, dam, breed/kindle dates, kit counts, and an Archived timestamp. Sire / dam get matched to existing rabbits in your herd by tattoo (so import the herd first); historical litters land already-archived per the source's Archived column. Async background job — drop the file, walk away, come back to a summary table showing how many landed Active vs Archived vs Skipped.

After the import

  • Categorize: filter to Active on My Herd and use the Set category bulk action to mark animals as Showable, Breeder, or Retired (fourth Active sub-tab is Uncategorized — what everyone starts as).
  • Fix wrong birthdays: if dates landed wrong on an old import, open /imports → View → Fix birthdays from this import to correct them in place without re-uploading.
  • Wipe and retry: if you want to start over, filter My Herd to Active, select all, click Delete selected (animals referenced as a sire/dam are protected — unlink first), then re-upload.

14.Manual legs & awards

Wins from non-HARES shows can be recorded manually on each animal's detail page. The Accomplishments card has two sections:

  • ARBA Legs — counts toward the animal's pedigree leg total (alongside HARES-recorded legs from any HARES shows you've used).
  • Other Awards — non-leg recognitions: Best Display, club ribbons, sweepstakes plaques, etc. Tracked but not counted as legs.

Each entry takes: type (leg / award), title (e.g. "BOB" / "Best Display"), show name, date, judge, and optional notes — plus, for a leg, an ARBA class (Senior / Intermediate / Junior), the leg-slip barcode, and a photo of the slip. Inline edit + delete on each row.

A leg also has an "ARBA-sanctioned" checkbox. Only sanctioned legs count toward Grand Champion (a "Sanctioned" badge marks them); an unsanctioned win is still tracked, it just won't push the animal toward granding.

When an animal has enough legs to be eligible for ARBA Grand Champion, HARES flags it — a 🏆 Grandable badge on the animal's page, a matching chip on My Herd, and a nudge in your weekly email — so an animal that's ready to grand doesn't slip past you. Leg counts come from a single live source (your HARES results + any manual legs), so the badge, the pedigree total, and the Show History always agree, and nothing waits on a show writer to lock a breed. HARES-earned legs also carry an ARBA E-Leg barcode right on the animal page.

HARES-recorded wins (auto-linked)

Wins from shows run on HARES attach to your animals for you. When a show you entered is judged, HARES links each result back to the matching herd animal by ear number + breed, and the animal's page starts showing its Show Wins — legs, BOB / BOS, placements, and a list of every show appearance.

When the match is ambiguous (two animals share an ear num + breed, or you'd previously unlinked one), the animal page shows a nudge telling you how many show entries match this animal but aren't linked yet, with a Review link. Open it to link the right entry by hand, and those wins fold into the animal's lifetime record.

Show History report card

Every animal's detail page has a Show History report card (PDF): a one-page summary of the animal's whole show record — lifetime placement / award / leg totals, then a show-by-show timeline with the class, placement, judge, and awards earned at each. Handy proof to hand a buyer. It pulls in both the HARES-recorded wins and any manual accomplishments above, and — like the pedigree — it follows the animal through a transfer, so an animal you buy on HARES arrives carrying its full history.

15.Submitting to a show

Going to a show running on HARES Registry? Two paths:

  • Per-animal: from an animal's detail page, click Enter in a show, paste the show's portal link. The form pre-fills breed, variety, class, and ear num — no retyping. You can still edit any pre-filled field before submitting (handy when the animal's class has bumped since you last updated its DOB, or you want to enter a different variety).
  • Bulk: from My Herd's Active filter, check the animals you want to enter, click Submit to a show in the sticky bar. Pick the show + adjust sub-shows / class on the next screen before anything goes to the secretary.

The secretary still reviews like any other portal submission. See Portal Help for the review flow on the exhibitor side.

Variety sanity check

Each animal's showroom variety is what gets sent on the entry — the secretary's results use that string verbatim. If you've got an animal whose showroom variety isn't on the ARBA-recognized list for its breed (typo, mid-acceptance color, write-in from the new-rabbit form, or non-canonical string from a CSV import), the submission review screen shows a yellow callout listing the flagged animal(s) with a link straight to each animal's edit page.

It's a nudge, not a block — some breeders intentionally enter rare or mid-acceptance colors that ARBA hasn't listed yet, so you can still submit as-is. Fix what's actually a typo, ignore the rest.

Finding a show in the picker

The bulk Submit-to-show flow takes you to a picker listing every show across HARES that's currently accepting submissions. Three filters help you narrow it down:

  • Search — substring match across show name, club, and location. Catches "Bayou", "Texas State Convention", "Houston", etc.
  • State — dropdown of US states + Canadian provinces. Matches the location field on either the 2-letter code or the full state name.
  • Within — Next 30 / 60 / 90 days, or All upcoming. Defaults to 90.

Once you've narrowed the list — say, Texas shows in the next 60 days — bookmark the page. Your filter choices come back with the bookmark, so it's a one-click shortcut to "Texas shows this fall."

After you submit: the Submissions tab

Everything you've sent to a show lives under the Submissions tab, grouped by show. While a show is still accepting entries you can fix things one animal at a time — even after the secretary has approved them:

  • Withdraw an animal — pulls one animal out of the submission. It drops off the secretary's roster and the fee total automatically. Reversible with Undo until entries close.
  • Edit an animal — change its class, variety, or ear number (e.g. a cavy that gained weight from Junior into Intermediate). Editing an already-approved entry flips it back to pending and re-notifies the secretary, so the change can't slip through unseen.
  • Cancel whole submission — backs out everything at once (while it's still pending).

Once entries close the controls go away — at that point a withdrawal or change has to go through the show secretary directly. Changing the sub-show or the exhibitor name is also a secretary conversation (withdraw + re-submit), since those reshape the entry rather than tweak it.

16.Customers

Every sale you record links to a Customer — a contact record for the buyer that lives across multiple sales. The breeder dashboard's Customers tab is the rollup view: who bought from you, how often, what they spent.

How customers get created

When you fill in the Buyer fields on a new sale, HARES looks for an existing customer in your account by email (or by name if you didn't enter an email). If found, the sale links to that customer. If not, a new customer is created automatically using the buyer info from the sale form. Either way the buyer's name, email, and phone are kept as a snapshot on the sale itself — so changing the customer's email later doesn't rewrite history.

You can also add customers directly from the Customers tab — useful for buyers who reserved a future kit, friends you regularly trade with, or anyone whose contact info you want on file before money changes hands.

What you can see per customer

  • Contact info — email, phone, address.
  • Notes — anything you want to remember (preferences, pickup arrangements, referrals).
  • Sales history — every animal they've bought from you, with date and price.
  • Lifetime spend — sum of priced sales.

Merging duplicate customers

Made a typo and ended up with "Jane Smith" + "jane smith"? From either customer's page, click Merge… and pick the customer to keep. The other customer's sales and reservations get re-linked, then the duplicate is removed. Snapshot buyer info on each sale is preserved regardless.

Deleting a customer

Removing a customer (without merging) doesn't delete their sales — those keep their snapshot buyer info but lose the link back to the customer record. Their sales appear in the regular Sales list as ordinary buyer-name rows. If you actually want to combine two records lossless, use Merge instead of Delete.

17.Reservations & waiting list

A reservation is "this customer wants something specific from my upcoming kits — here's what they asked for." Use it to keep track of who's waiting on what, and link the reservation to a specific litter once you know which one will fill it.

Adding a reservation

From the Reservations tab, click + Add Reservation. You'll need:

  • Customer — must already exist on your customer list (add them first via the Customers tab if not).
  • What they want — one short sentence: "blue or chestnut doe out of Bella x Smokey, ready by July."
  • Target litter — optional; pick a planned / pending / kindled litter once you're confident which one will fill it. You can update this later.
  • Notes — internal (deposit status, pickup constraints, etc).

Lifecycle

Reservations have three statuses:

  • Open — actively waiting. The default.
  • Fulfilled — the customer got their animal. Records the fulfillment date.
  • Cancelled — they backed out, or you couldn't fulfill it.

Each row in the Reservations table has inline buttons to flip status without opening the edit form. The default filter is Open — your working list of who's still waiting. The other filter chips show fulfilled and cancelled history.

Auto-fulfill on sale. When you record a sale, HARES looks for open reservations where the customer matches AND the animal's litter matches the reservation's target litter — those get marked fulfilled automatically. The flash notice on the sale tells you what happened so you can double-check. Reservations without a target litter aren't auto-fulfilled (they could mean anything); flip those manually.

Where reservations show up

  • Reservations tab — full list with filter chips and inline status actions.
  • Customer page — every customer's open and historical reservations are listed under their sales history.
  • Litter page — when a litter has reservations targeting it, an "Open reservations" panel appears below the kits list so you can see at a glance who's waiting on this batch.

18.Reports & analytics

The Reports tab is a one-page rollup of everything the rest of the dashboard already tracks — herd composition, litter production per dam and sire, sales revenue by year and breed, top buyers, show wins. Read-only; nothing is computed or stored separately, the page just shows what your other tabs imply.

Sections

  • Herd at a glance — active animal count, live kits in unweaned litters, sex split, top breeds, all-time status breakdown. The live-kit line sums the Number alive field across every unarchived litter so you can see "X grown + Y growing" at a glance.
  • Production by doe — every dam with a litter on file, with litters / born / alive / weaned totals + average litter size.
  • Stud performance — every sire with a litter, plus number of distinct does serviced. Useful for buck-rotation planning.
  • Sales — lifetime revenue, sales by year, sales by breed, top buyers by lifetime spend.
  • Show wins — total legs across the herd, top 5 by legs, top 5 by show appearances.

The Production by doe and Stud performance tables each have an "Active herd only" checkbox — tick it to hide producers that have left the herd (sold, culled, retired, deceased) so the list is just who you're working with now. The two toggle independently.

Numbers update in real time — record a litter, refresh Reports, the doe's row updates immediately. No "regenerate" button to remember.

19.Exporting your data

Your data isn't trapped in HARES. Three ways to get it back out:

Export Everything (.zip)

From My Herd → Print / Export ▾ → Export Everything (.zip) downloads a zip file containing CSVs for every breeder-facing dataset:

  • rabbits.csv — your herd, with sire/dam linked by ear num (round-trips through Imports)
  • litters.csv — every litter
  • sales.csv — every recorded sale
  • customers.csv — your full customer contact list
  • reservations.csv — open and historical reservations
  • accomplishments.csv — manual legs + awards
  • README.txt — what's in the zip + re-import notes

Export Everything + Photos (.zip)

Same dropdown menu, second option. Same CSVs as above plus the original-resolution main and gallery photos you uploaded, sorted into one folder per animal (named by ear number). Larger file, takes 30–60s to generate for a herd of any size, but gives you a complete offline copy without per-animal clicking.

Export CSV (herd only)

Same dropdown menu, but just the rabbits.csv on its own. Useful when you only want the herd list — same format as the round-trippable file inside the zip.

PDF exports

The other entries in Print / Export ▾ are for printing — Cage Cards, Pedigrees, and Herd List. See section 5 (Pedigrees) and section 12 (Cage cards) for details.

20.Weekly reminder emails

Opt in from SettingsEmail preferences and HARES sends you a weekly digest of upcoming events. Sent Mondays at 7am; only goes out when there's something actionable in the next 14 days — no "you have 0 events" emails.

What's in the digest

  • Due to kindle — litters expected to kindle in the next 14 days.
  • Nest box — litters needing a nest box in the next 14 days (28 days after breeding by default).
  • Wean — kindled litters with a projected wean date in the next 14 days.
  • Reservations open 60+ days — gentle nudge to follow up with the customer.
  • Grand Champion — grandable — animals that have earned enough legs to grand, so you can start the paperwork.
  • Membership expiring — an ARBA or breed-club membership coming due (from Settings).

The email goes to the account owner only. Each section above has its own on/off switch in Email preferences, so you can keep the reminders you use and silence the ones you don't — or turn the whole digest off. Changes take effect immediately.

21.FAQ

If I sell an animal through HARES, does its record go with it?

Yes — the whole record follows the animal. When you transfer it to another HARES account (Sell & Transfer, or a straight transfer), the buyer's copy carries the pedigree, the show history, and the HARES-earned legs as real, saved leg slips that stay even if you later delete your own copy. The legs and awards you entered by hand under Manual legs & awards come along too — copied onto the buyer's copy, slip photos included. Your own copy keeps its full history as well; nothing is moved away from you.

It says my account is "in use elsewhere" — why?

To keep paid logins from being shared around, a paid account can be signed in on one device at a time, so opening it somewhere new signs the old spot out. Breeder Unlimited is the exception — it allows two devices at once (handy for a couple sharing the account). Note that closing a tab isn't the same as signing out: a device you just used still holds its spot for a few minutes, so if you're juggling three devices, sign out of the one you're done with.

My logo won't upload.

Logos must be a PNG or JPEG image, up to 5 MB — PDFs and PSDs are rejected. If yours is a PDF or PSD, open it in Preview (Mac) or any image editor and export a copy as PNG, then upload that.

Can I rearrange or hide the columns on My Herd?

Yes — click ⚙ Columns above the herd table. Check or uncheck a column to show or hide it, and drag the handle to reorder them (you can even move Name ahead of Ear #, or turn columns off entirely). Your layout saves to your account, so it looks the same on every device.

What's the difference between a Kit, a Grow-out, and an Ancestor?

They're three different things:

  • A Kit is a young animal still attached to a litter — it lives on the Litters page until you promote it into your active herd.
  • Grow-out is a category (a tag) you put on an active animal you're still evaluating before deciding whether it's a keeper, a breeder, or for sale.
  • Ancestors are pedigree-only animals — animals you keep on file just so they appear in pedigrees, without cluttering your active herd. They don't count against your herd cap.

My pedigree or report looks wrong when I print it.

If you're on Safari, print from Chrome instead — some Safari versions drop background colors and page breaks, which can leave blank pages or missing shading. HARES shows a "print from Chrome" tip when it notices you're on Safari; everything else prints fine.

What's the difference between the free plan and paid?

Every account includes a Free Breeder plan, which caps how many active animals you can keep; Breeder Unlimited removes the cap. See section 1, Plans & Herd Cap for how the cap counts — Ancestors, Sold, Deceased, and Culled animals don't count against it.