Fauve de Bourgogne

The FFC gives the origin as France, Burgundy, and its standard presentation heads the breed France – Bourgogne / Yonne – La Celle-Saint-Cyr, the village where A. Renard fixed the type. He did not invent the colour: he selected the fawn farm rabbits already kept across the area into a consistent, repeatable animal.

Renard set out the original range in l’Acclimatation in 1919: from Dijon in the Côte-d’Or, into the Nièvre only as far as Clamecy, most commonly in the Yonne, barely past the Yonne–Aube line. The first standard was homologated on 22 April 1914 by the Société Française de Cuniculiculture; the 1928 date repeated on pet sites traces to no primary source. The breed later spread through France and into Italy, Belgium and Switzerland.

The standard asks for a fawn-red — fauve roux — very uniform, intense, pure and warm in tone, over the whole upper body including head, ears and limbs, with paler eye rings, chin, belly and underparts. Cover colour should descend as deep into the coat as possible without necessarily reaching the hair base; the coat is dense and fairly lustrous, without excessive length.

The body is cobby and massive: short strong nape, slightly arched topline, full rounded croup, very thick loin, well-rounded hips, rump and thighs, powerful musculature over fairly strong bone. The head is broad and set close to the body on a short neck. Ears are robust and well furred, carried erect and close-set at the base, and measure 11–13 cm (4.3–5.1 in), ideally 11.5–12.5 cm.

• Serious faults: ears under 11 cm or over 13 cm.
• Body faults: carp or camel back, sloping or narrowed croup.
• Ear faults: deformed, over-thin or widely splayed.

The FFC sets 3.5–5.0 kg (7.7–11.0 lb) with an ideal of 4.0–4.5 kg (8.8–9.9 lb). Unusually for a meat breed that is one range and is not split by sex, so bucks and does are judged against the same figures.

Measured weights sit inside it. Adult does averaged 4.3 ± 0.43 kg (9.5 lb) in the 2021 characterisation, stable from about nine months; the same team saw no adult weight plateau in their males, so no adult buck weight is published. In the 2004 nine-breed comparison does weighed 4048 g (8.9 lb) at mating, mid-range among the medium breeds.

• First mating from 3.6 kg (7.9 lb), reached at a median of 149 days — about 84% of adult weight.

Two studies measured reproduction under different systems and disagree because the systems differ. Under an intensive 42-day rhythm, 48 rabbits from five amateur farms gave 4.3 ± 2.7 kits born alive — 3.8, 3.9 and 5.9 at the first three kindlings — and 3.4 ± 2.4 weaned at 35 days at 720 ± 170 g, with low fertility of 44.4%, 57.6% and 38.5% by parity.

On experimental farms, across 152 litters, the breed gave 6.44 total born, 5.17 born alive and 5.30 weaned per litter, with a 53.7% kindling rate against 68.5% for the control line and 18.2% mortality to weaning. That evaluation called the Fauve de Bourgogne and the Argenté de Champagne the most productive of the medium-sized breeds it tested.

Growth is the stronger side: 53.3 g at birth (range 26.2–72.5 g) and 71 g in the two studies, 720 g and 763 g at weaning at 35 days, and 1649 ± 192 g (3.6 lb) at 65 days, gaining 30.0–33.0 g a day from 35 to 65 days with 82.2%, 77.5% and 100% survival by parity — all without antibiotic supplementation. Reproduction is low under an intensive rhythm, that team concluded, but growth and survival make the breed useful for crossing with prolific lines.

Carcass data are thin. A Polish comparison found the highest hot and chilled dressing-out in purebred Burgundy Fawn and in Burgundy Fawn × Flemish Giant crosses, but its numeric tables are missing from the published article. In a 2026 trial, Burgundy Fawn crosses of organic-farm origin, fattened under common experimental conditions to a fixed 2800 g (6.2 lb), needed 122.1 days against 88.0 for commercial hybrids and converted feed at 5.02; their reference carcass was 81.4% of the chilled carcass, with a heavier loin (26.9%) and more perirenal fat (2.47%). That 81.4% is a share of the chilled carcass, not a live-weight dressing percentage, and no live-weight figure is published for this breed.

The FFC standard presentation reprints the April 1923 description from Vie à la Campagne: calm and quiet in appearance — aspect calme et tranquille — broad, strong and cobby, 4 kg, early-maturing and very practical for meat. That is the registry’s only temperament statement, and it is a century old. Modern research adds only that the breed is renowned among amateur keepers as robust, so treat calm as a historic description of the population and judge each animal on handling, pain, fear and previous experience.

Do not run the breed on a 42-day remating rhythm: performance under it was judged low, and kit survival to weaning fell to 39.2% at the third parity in a small sample, after 83.3% and 72.1%. Mate does on weight rather than age, and weigh kits at birth — they ranged from 26.2 g to 72.5 g, so fostering pays.

Plan fattening realistically: about 70 days, and roughly 17 weeks of age to reach 2.8 kg in the crossbred trial, at feed conversion near 5.0. The compensation is robustness — those results came without antibiotics, and the breed is used as a coloured, slow-growing sire in organic production.

• Mate on 3.6 kg, not on a date.
• Budget about 70 days of fattening and feed conversion near 5.0.
• Record antibiotic-free survival to weaning.

Sore hocks — ulcerative pododermatitis — is inflammation of the skin on the sole of the foot, not of the hock joint itself. The MSD Veterinary Manual lists pressure from wire flooring, trauma, dirty housing, obesity, poor mobility and genetic factors among the causes, and says plainly that heavy breeds are more likely to develop it from the pressure on their feet. At a standard 3.5–5.0 kg (7.7–11.0 lb), this is one of those breeds.

Two Swiss studies measured the risk on litter and plastic slats rather than wire. Across 1090 breeding does on 17 commercial farms, 25% carried ulcerative lesions likely to be painful on at least one hind leg, ranging from 4% to 49% by farm; age, body weight and claw length were the most important risk factors. Following 201 does on three farms through a year gave the same answer, with barn humidity, body weight, number of kindlings, age and claw length all positively associated.

That matters on a page whose growth figures were reached without antibiotics: MSD treats established sores with cleaning, antibiotics and bandaging, while prevention is a housing job — soft bedding and a solid resting surface that takes the pressure off the sole. Lesions do heal; 60.00% of ulcerated spots in the Swiss year recovered within four weeks and 14.17% within eight, but 3.33% needed more than twelve. Weigh breeding animals, keep claws short and turn a doe over at every handling.

The Entente Européenne list holds two separate, consecutive entries: Original rötlicher Burgunder, in English Fauve de Bourgogne, and immediately after it Burgunder, in English Burgundy Rabbit. They are different breeds; the Fauve de Bourgogne sits in the medium-sized block.

That matters when you buy. The plain German Burgunder, and the Polish, Czech and Slovak names on the same root, do not automatically mean the French breed. Poland’s National Animal Breeding Centre records króliki burgundzkie under official evaluation — 3 herds and 28 breeding does in both 2023 and 2024 — but reports 7.9 and 6.5 kits born per litter in them, far above every published Fauve de Bourgogne figure. Those animals are most likely the Entente Européenne’s Burgunder, so their results are not used here. Check the pedigree and the French standard, not the name in the advertisement.

In France the FFC calls the breed extrêmement répandue — extremely widespread. That is the registry’s own qualitative wording; the animal and breeder counts circulating online are not registry figures. The only club it recognises is the Club Français des Éleveurs de Lapins Fauve de Bourgogne, registered on 9 January 2012 from the merger of the AELFB and UFELFB. Outside continental Europe the picture thins: the breed is not on the ARBA list of recognised breeds, and the British Rabbit Council names it nowhere in the text of its breed listing, so BRC status is recorded here as unknown rather than guessed.

Worth recording here: doe weight at mating against the 3.6 kg threshold; adult weight and ear length against the FFC minima and maxima, since both are faulted; born alive and total born in separate columns, because the two datasets report different ones; parity on every line; and survival to weaning without antibiotics.