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CANBY - Even rabbits need their toenails trimmed.

County fair judges want the nails of rabbits to be neatly trimmed, Nathan Cooper said Thursday at the Yellow Medicine County Fair in Canby. "You need to clip their toenails when it starts to get red. There is a red part and white part, you clip it where the two meet," Cooper said.

Cooper of Canby has brought rabbits as a 4-H project to the fair for at least two years. He brought seven rabbits, two adults and five babies, to the fair, which started Thursday and continues through Sunday.

Cooper tried breeding two of his rabbits this year. And they breed well like rabbits. "It went really fast," Cooper said. A rabbit can be bred after it is six months old, Cooper said.

Cooper and his brother raise rabbits in their backyard.

"My brother started with one rabbit. He got another one and we kept getting more...," Cooper said. "We have a shed in the back with 13 or 14 cages."

Only some of the rabbits make it to the fair to be judged.

Not only do judges look for neat toenails, they like a "nice shiny coat," Cooper said. "You can't have a broken tail or you will be disqualified. With white rabbits, they want them clean."

"He won't place well," Cooper said of a rabbit on one end of a row. "He's molting so his fur won't be as nice," Cooper said.

"When a rabbit is molting you can use a frozen bottle of water so the rabbit's fur goes onto the bottle," Cooper said. "It helps them to molt faster."

"You can also brush the hair off if they are molting," Cooper said.

Younger rabbits "have really soft fur," Cooper said. And still another rabbit has "one ear up and one ear down because it's not that old yet," Cooper said. The rabbit is a minilop and Cooper expected the rabbit to have both ears down in less than a week.

Rabbits are tame animals, Cooper said. And even if they bite, "it's not even really like a bite, it's stings like pinch," he said.

Cooper was busy feeding and watering the rabbits Thursday.

"These little guys, I only feed them once a day," Cooper said.

The older rabbits get fed twice a day.

Rabbit care also requires Cooper to clean the daily deposits that fall through the cage onto a pile of wood shavings on the floor of the exhibit hall.

"That's so it absorbs," Cooper said of the wood shavings. "You scoop it out."

Cooper will return the rabbits to his backyard in Canby when the fair is over.

The rabbits live in a shed with heat lamps and a dirt floor that is cleaned regularly, Cooper said.

He doesn't think the neighbors mind or notice the backyard rabbits, but his friends notice.

"My friends think it's pretty cool I have rabbits in my backyard," Cooper said.