New Bunny Mommy

[Vasara]

Hello
I’m an experienced mommy to humans (with seven children) but I’m new to being a bunny mommy. I just got my first two rabbits last night. Both are a New Zealand and Rex mix. Blossom is 4 months old and Boomer is 3 1/2 years. I have a two level hutch outside with Blossom on top and Boomer on the bottom. My intention is to breed them. I have done tons of research and spoken with people who have bred rabbits. We live in Germany and my German is horrible so between the language barrier and forgetting some of what the original owners said because of my excitement, I’m now second guessing myself and wondering what I got myself into! I will be asking some questions in a different post, i just wanted to introduce us

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Well hello and welcome to BYH, from Florida love our NZ rabbits, goats and chickens, dogs and cat...lots of great information and people here......enjoy

 

[DutchBunny03]

They are both SO ADORABLE!!! The tricolored one is absolutely stunning!
What are you breeding for? Here's a great website (in English lol) with a ton of bunny stuff : https://www.raising-rabbits.com/
I'm assuming Boomer is the buck?

 

[Vasara]

They are both SO ADORABLE!!! The tricolored one is absolutely stunning!
What are you breeding for? Here's a great website (in English lol) with a ton of bunny stuff : https://www.raising-rabbits.com/
I'm assuming Boomer is the buck?

Yes, Boomer is my buck, he’s the tricolored one. He’s a big boy, probably around 12 pounds (haven’t gotten around to weighing them yet) and he’s crazy hyper too. I’ll be addressing this in a different post when I find the time. I plan to breed for meat and to sell some of the kits.
Thanks for the link, I’ll check that out

 

[DutchBunny03]

Its good that Boomer it the buck. Breeding does over 3 years, especially for the first time, can be very risky.

 

[Bunnylady]

Welcome to BYH!Glad you joined us!

I'm afraid that I may have spotted a problem with your potential breeders. The problem is, your doe appears to be a booted broken, and my understanding is that breeding broken to broken is technically illegal in Germany. I have no idea whether this gets enforced, but producing animals that experience "pain, suffering or harm" due to their genetic makeup is prohibited. One of the probable results (odds are 1 out of 4) of breeding two brokens together is an almost all-white animal that gets the broken gene from both parents (referred to as a "Charlie," due to the fancied resemblance of the tiny nose marking to a Charlie Chaplin mustache). Charlies have sluggish, poorly functioning digestive systems that are prone to GI stasis episodes, and a deformation called megacolon. Some Charlies seem hardly affected at all, but some are so bad, they die before even opening their eyes. Even slightly affected Charlies grow slower than their siblings, due to a problem with absorbing nutrients. A lot of breeders don't do broken-to-broken breeding, thereby avoiding producing Charlies.

(I know, you just got two, and here I am suggesting you need more, right? Rabbit people are the worst enablers . . . )

 

[Vasara]

What?! You just completely confused me. Blossom is broken? How can you tell? How do I find out for sure? Is my buck, Boomer, broken too? If I was to get another doe, how do I make sure she’s not broken too? I don’t want to breed them and possibly bring sickly or deformed bunnies into the world

 

[Vasara]

Its good that Boomer it the buck. Breeding does over 3 years, especially for the first time, can be very risky.

The original breeders said to wait u til May to breed Blossom, so she’ll be about 6 1/2 months then. Boomer should still have a few good years left in him though, right? From my research, bucks can breed until about 7 years old and does until 4

 

[Vasara]

Welcome to BYH!Glad you joined us!

I'm afraid that I may have spotted a problem with your potential breeders. The problem is, your doe appears to be a booted broken, and my understanding is that breeding broken to broken is technically illegal in Germany. I have no idea whether this gets enforced, but producing animals that experience "pain, suffering or harm" due to their genetic makeup is prohibited. One of the probable results (odds are 1 out of 4) of breeding two brokens together is an almost all-white animal that gets the broken gene from both parents (referred to as a "Charlie," due to the fancied resemblance of the tiny nose marking to a Charlie Chaplin mustache). Charlies have sluggish, poorly functioning digestive systems that are prone to GI stasis episodes, and a deformation called megacolon. Some Charlies seem hardly affected at all, but some are so bad, they die before even opening their eyes. Even slightly affected Charlies grow slower than their siblings, due to a problem with absorbing nutrients. A lot of breeders don't do broken-to-broken breeding, thereby avoiding producing Charlies.

(I know, you just got two, and here I am suggesting you need more, right? Rabbit people are the worst enablers . . . )

I’m having trouble posting a new question. Could you possibly explain how I go about starting a new post?

 

[Bunnylady]

What?! You just completely confused me. Blossom is broken? How can you tell? How do I find out for sure? Is my buck, Boomer, broken too? If I was to get another doe, how do I make sure she’s not broken too? I don’t want to breed them and possibly bring sickly or deformed bunnies into the world

Broken is a pattern of white overlaid on a colored coat, that has a wide range of expression. The classic broken has color on the ears, color around the eyes, color on the nose, and color on the body in the form of spots or patches, like this Broken Black Mini Rex:

The harlequin rabbit has patches of black and orange on its coat. If you think of a tricolor as a broken harlequin, you can see that Boomer has a fairly typical broken pattern.

There are a lot of little modifying genes that determine just how the broken gene gets expressed. Some of the "marked" breeds like the English Spot and the Rhinelander are really picky about how their rabbits' markings look; the folks who breed them work hard to get just the right modifiers. The most extreme expression of this is found in the Blanc de Hotot and Dwarf Hotot, where the markings have been reduced to just a tiny band of color around the rabbit's eyes, and the rest of the rabbit is completely white (though non-showable animals of these breeds may have more color, most often on the ears).

At the other extreme is the "booted" broken. The booted broken usually has some white on its feet (white "boots"), maybe a little white mark on its face, and probably some white on its chest. In many breeds, booted brokens don't have enough white on them to be showable (at any rate,the American Rabbit Breeder's Association standards generally require the colored areas to be within certain percentages of the total area of the coat). There are other genes that can put just a little bit of white on the face and feet, and maybe the chest, too (like the Dutch genes), but when the white on the chest seems sort of splashed on, with colored areas in it, you can be pretty sure it's the broken gene causing it.

This guy is booted (also Mini Rex).

As to how you know if a rabbit is a broken - broken is a dominant gene, meaning that, if the rabbit has it, you will see it. The only color you can't see it on is white (since the broken gene causes areas that lack pigment on the coat, when you have a rabbit that has no pigment in its coat anyway, you can't see any difference). So with the exception of Blue-eyed White, Ruby-eyed White, or Ermine, you will know if a rabbit has the broken gene, just by looking at it.

I’m having trouble posting a new question. Could you possibly explain how I go about starting a new post?

Go to the sub-forum you want to post in (for example, Meat Rabbits). Near the top of the page, just to the left of your avatar, is a little bar that says "post new thread." Click on it, and the rest should be self-explanatory (assuming everything is working as it should; somewhere between my computer and this forum, I've been having some issues lately).