# Can a mother and son breed successfully?



## Tonya

I'm not wanting to breed them but I think it accidentally happened I didn't know the young males can breed at young age, I removed them at 4-5 months old & I think one breed with my momma I was petting her and I think I felt a baby bunny in her belly, so if this happened what should I prepare for (like health wise)? Btw their mini Rex breed. Thank you!


----------



## promiseacres

Yes, can definitely happen. Not always a bad thing unless they both carry major faults. Can be a good way to get great bunnies or not so good ones too.   Bunnies should be weaned at about 8 weeks, does and bucks separated by 12 to 16.


----------



## greybeard

Breeding son to dam happens frequently in cattle with few if any ill effects.
The upside is good traits are intensified, while the downside, is if any poor genetics were there to begin with, they too can be intensified. It's the same kind of genetic inbreeding/line breeding  that take place when breeding sire to daughter and it's often done purposefully to keep the best of the best.
You will of course, not see much (if any) heterosis in this kind of trait selection.


----------



## Bunnylady

If you are asking if it_ could_ happen, well, yes, absolutely it can. Young bucks may become fertile as young as 3 to 4 months of age. Rabbits don't have a concept of "family," so unintended breeding can happen as soon as the respective animals are fertile. As promiseacres and greybeard have said, whether such a pairing is a good idea depends on what is in your gene pool. Will you get rabbits with two heads or too stupid to find their own feed bowl? Probably not, but you may wind up with a loss of vigor if you do such intense line breeding too much.


----------



## DutchBunny03

A better age to seperate the bucks from the dam and/or sisters is around 2 months. Rabbits are breeding machines. They will breed at at a very young age.
The worst thing that can happen is maybe a small defect, or a slightly higher rate of kit mortality. Breeders intentionally breed dam and son all the time, as part of an inbreeding program.


----------



## firedragon1982

Mother to son is used in line breeding, used in rabbits frequently. The ARBA rabbit/cavy book has a nice visual chart about line breeding that helped me understand how it works a lot better.


----------



## Tonya

Thanks everyone for your advice it was false alarm she is not pregnant thank goodness lol


----------



## DutchBunny03

Yay!!! Unwanted litters can be annoying.


----------

