Blanc de Termonde

The Blanc de Termonde is a rare Belgian albino rabbit that took shape in the countryside around Dendermonde. In the late nineteenth century large numbers of slaughter rabbits were shipped to England and the fur trade paid well for single-colour white and blue pelts, which pushed working-class keepers across the region to breed single-colour animals from local land rabbits; the white Dendermonde rabbit, the blue Van Beveren and the Blauw van Sint-Niklaas all came out of that same trade. Its ancestry is genuinely disputed - fetched sources variously name the Flemish Giant, an extinct Witte van Tervuren, a white Van Beveren or Belgian White rabbits - and no creation date survives in a citable source. The European standard classes it as a medium breed of 4.0-5.5 kg with ruby eyes, an immaculate white coat, ears of 13.5-15 cm carried in a V, and a long stretched body with an ascending topline. Polish research herds, which have kept the breed since a first import in 1977, measured 2587 g at 90 days, a 59.7% dressing percentage and 22.6% meat protein, the highest of the breeds in that comparison, while noting that the carcasses were also the lightest of any breed tested.