IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS TO NOTE
A female rabbit is called a doe.
A male rabbit is called a buck.
If referring to the parents of a rabbit, the mother is called the dam, and the father is called the sire.
When you mate two rabbits together, this is called breeding.
When you check to see if the doe is pregnant, this is called testing or palpating.
When you put a box in the hutch and the doe begins to line it with hay,her fur,paper or anything, this is called nesting.
When the doe gives birth, this is called kindling.
The period of time between breeding and kindling is called the gestation period.
She gives birth to a bunch of baby bunnies called kits. This bunch of bunnies is called a litter.
When you separate the young rabbits from the mother, this is called weaning.
A box put in the doe's hutch when she is about to give birth is called a nest-box
Introduction
A small and medium breed doe is normally ready to mate when she is 5 or 6 months old, and a buck is ready at 6 months (in some cases are ready to breed at 5 months. The heavy breed doe is ready at 7 to 8 months and the buck is ready at 8 months.(in some cases are ready at 7 months)It's usually a good idea to select rabbits to breed whose ancestry has evidence of good productivity and good traits.
You may keep a ratio of one buck to 5 or 10 does if you wish. The buck may be bred up to 5 times a week effectively. Sometimes, you can use the buck twice in one day.Keep the following principles in mind when you want to breed your rabbits:Do not keep more than one rabbit in each cage when the rabbit is 3 months or older. Rabbits mature faster when alone.
Before breeding, check the bottom of the cage of both the doe and buck for evidence of diarrhea.Do not breed the rabbit having this condition until it has been adequately treated. Also check the genitals of both rabbits for any signs of disease or infection (for example, extreme redness, discharge, sores or scabbies).
When ready to breed the doe, take it to the buck's cage. Never bring the buck to the doe's cage. The reason for this is that the buck has less tendency to breed in the doe's cage. He'll be engrossed in sniffing around the cage.Some leave the doe with the buck overnight. Others put the doe in, watch it, and when they have mated, remove the doe. If you do the latter, put the doe back in with the buck 1 to 12 hours after the initial breeding. This will increase the likelihood of pregnancy and may increase the number of offsprings.
Keep a calendar and accurate records of the day you breed the doe. You should test her for pregnancy between the 10th and 14th day after the initial breeding. There are two ways to do this. The overall preferred method is to palpate the lower abdomen of the doe with your thumb and forefinger checking for small balls that are about the size of a grape or lime. The other method is not only more risky but also inaccurate. This method is to mate the doe with the buck again. This can cause problems because the doe has two uterine horns, each of which can carry babies. It is possible for one horn to be fertilized on the first mating and the second to be fertilized on the second mating. This will create a hormonal imbalance and cause the babies in both uteri to not form right, causing her to pass blobs instead of babies at the date of kindling. There is also a chance these "mummified" blobs could cause complications leading to the death of the doe.You should place a nest box in her cage on the 29th day after breeding. Thirty-one days after breeding, she should kindle her litter.
Who Can Be Bred To Whom?
Never breed brothers to sisters. Other combinations are fine: father-to-daughter, mother-to-son, cousins, etc. Until you gain some knowledge as to how genetics works with inbreeding, I would recommend you not to breed closely related pairs.
And mate the same breeds together unless you are trying to get meat rabbits with certain characteristics or you are doing genetic experiments or you don't care about the fate of the offspring.You cannot sell the offspring as pedigree if their ancestry is not of the same breed going back four generations.You may mate rabbits of the same breed having different colors. Keep in mind, though, that there are many combinations of possibilities when mixing colors.
Avoid breeding rabbits that have genetic defects such as tooth malocclusion (wolf teeth) or moon eye (cloudy cornea), Determine whether the sire or dam is responsible for passing the genetic defect and eliminate it for breeding purposes.
Evaluating A Rabbit's Reproductive Life
A rabbit may normally start breeding at the age of 5 months for the small to medium size breeds and 7 to 8 months for the heavy breeds. The gestation period (time between breeding and kindling) is between 29 to 31 days. After the doe has kindled, I normally re-breed her at 6 weeks and wean the litter at 4 - 5 weeks. This cycle continues until she is about 4 years old or until her production is unsatisfactory.
I review the herd records every 3 months to determine which rabbits are not producing up to par and eliminate them.
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