2023 Royal Agricultural Fair Show

The rabbit show takes place in the Ring of Excellence


Once a year, the country comes to the city. That's the tagline that I remember for the Toronto Royal Agricultural Winter Fair as it was advertised when I was a kid. RAWF is a large indoor fair with tons of crowds attending, international horse competitions, all sorts of agricultural displays, vendors, farm animals, as well as food and animal competitions. 

Scope of this event, all held indoors at the gorgeous historical CNE Coliseum building, built in 1921

The Royal rabbit competition runs under the Dominion Rabbit and Cavy club rules, a Canadian rabbit breeders association older than ARBA. While the rabbit show itself might not be the biggest one in Ontario based on the number of entries, it is quite the event to experience given the grand venue and never ending crowds of onlookers. 

Helen being a wonderful demo bunny

Helen and her wool after the shave




This time I only brought 3 angoras. Two entered in the show and one to shave as an educational display for the public. This show also includes competition for raw angora wool and angora wool products. I brought 3 English Angora raw wool entries. Plucked wool from Uncle Buck, clipped wool from Zanzibar, and clipped wool from Helen, Zanzi's younger harlequin sister. Helen was also the one who came to have her haircut finished at the show. Entered in the show were Zero Hour (black doe), with her coat on it's last legs just begging to be taken off, and Helen's sister Hai Hai (Harlequin doe). Yup that's right! Under Dominion rules those are showable!

Electric Hai Hai back home after the show

Judging the angoras was ARBA judge, Mark Stewartson from ON. 

Placings for the colored Sr does were:
1. Electric Zero Hour
2. Julie's Blue doe
3. Mary's Tort doe
4. Electric Hai Hai
5. Mary's Tort doe
6. Julie's Black doe
7. Laura's Chocolate doe

You can watch the judging process here:



Electric Zero Hour after the show

Zero then went on to win Best of Colored Variety, with Mary's Tort buck taking Reserve of Colored Variety. The best of the colored then went on to battle with the best of the whites. Bermah MyMy, the REW doe handled by Mary took the Best of Breed win and Zero took Reserve of Breed. MyMy then went on to win Best Angora, Best of the Fancy Breeds (DRCBA splits all of the rabbits into Fancy and Utility Group designations), and then finally the biggest honour of the day, the Best in Show award! 

In the mean time, at the Angora Wool competition table Uncle Buck's wool took first place for plucked raw English Angora wool. Zanzibar took first place for clipped raw English Angora wool, with Helen coming in 2nd, and Julie's submission coming in 3rd. Uncle Buck then went on to win over all English, and over all raw wool, with 2nd place for overall raw wool going to Zanzibar, and 3rd to a French Angora submission by Leena. I hope for next year I will have some wool products to also enter into the competition. 


Judging at the wool competition table

Raw wool is submitted in boxes

Beautiful items all hand made from angora wool



For complete results and all standings in the rabbit competitions you can view the official results page here: RAWF Rabbit and Cavy Results. If you would like to see the results for all the other competitions, from butter tarts to cattle, see them here: All RAWF Results.