Rabbits questions...?

[messybun]

I'll watch for this behavior. Thank you.

Will brat behavior be passed to offspring if you don't cull them?

I never would have known about that eye color mixing. :O wow.

Thanks!

Already I was like 'wow, their fur is so silky and soft', that was the first thing I noticed bringing them home.

How do you keep them from tipping their water bowl over?

Brat genes don’t seem to be passed down, but I hate dealing with mean rabbits. I’ve used water bottles for most of my rabbits, the exception was a blind rabbit who couldn’t find his spout. We had homemade pottery crocks, they weigh a good amount and had a large enough base that they couldn’t flip food or water.
Silver foxes are super soft!
Oh, and having offspring early doesn’t always effect litter sizes later in life. And, if she does happen to be preggers and isn’t a good mom you can force her to nurse and top the babies off with goat milk. My best mom is the one I mentioned, she had to be taught to nurse her babies but she turned out to be a good mom after she got the hang of it. Be patient with your rabbits, there is a lot to learn but it will become second nature eventually.

 

[Nao57]

I recommend you create a journal or spreadsheet for each doe you have, in order to track all the info you swear you'll be able to remember without writing it down. You won't remember. Seriously. Write down: breeding date, which male bred to, kindle date, # born, # alive, # doa, # alive to weaning, date weaned, weights of kits at various ages. There's probably more I'm forgetting. But, you want some sort of record so you have hard #s to compare.

I kept three daughters from my first pair I bred. I used the same buck on all three. The first doe had 7 kits, 2 died before weaning. The second doe had 4 kits and 2 were doa, the others survived to weaning. The third doe had 7 kits and all survived to weaning. I will be breeding them all again once the weather cools down. The second doe has 1.5 strikes against her in my book, the .5 for the small litter and the 1 for aggression. None of my other rabbits have attempted to bite me, she has. I don't need to deal with a mean rabbit. The small litter I can argue was because it was her first or she wasn't at the right time in her cycle. Losing kits is normal for a first time mom, it happened with all my does except that third doe, so I don't count it as a strike against her. If it's after the second litter I would count it as a strike if it was her fault: she wasn't feeding them or stepped on them. I have lost litters due to the heat and that's not the mom's fault. If the second doe has a small litter again, or continues to be aggressive I will cull from my herd.

Come up with some guidelines or goals for your rabbitry and write them down. Then figure out how to work toward those goals. After a few months or a few litters, go over the numbers and see if there are changes you need to make to your rabbitry to move toward the goals, and also evaluate if the goals are still reasonable.

Thank you very much.

Its neat to learn from you and the others.

 

[Bunnylady]

I never would have known about that eye color mixing. :O wow.

I fear this may be one of those bits of internet misinformation; I would love to know the source, since I've been in rabbits for over 30 years and I've never heard it before, nor can I find a knowledgeable source that mentions it. The gene that causes BEW is located in a completely different place from the one that causes REW. There are issues associated with each color [for example, the Vienna gene (BEW) has been linked to a seizure disorder], but they are independent of the issues in the other. There is also a seizure disorder associated with Lionhead rabbits, that doesn't seem to be linked to any color or bloodline. There's also a digestive disorder associated with the Broken pattern, too, but it has nothing to do with whatever other color genes a rabbit has.

Will brat behavior be passed to offspring if you don't cull them?

It can be. The fact that a certain amount of personality is inheritable has been demonstrated in many species, and rabbits are no exception. There's no guarantee that all of the offspring of two friendly bunnies will be equally friendly, but people who select for good personalities in their breeding stock hardly ever produce a truly vicious rabbit. If you've never seen such a thing, I have, and I have to wonder if the writers of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" might have run into one as well.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Temperament matters and it breeds true. If you have a mean rabbit, don't breed it.

There's a pedigree program out there called 'Kintracks'. It's a free download and you can load several hundred animals into it before you need to pay for the program so you have a really long testing time to see if you like it. If you decide to get the code to unlock the full program, it's somewhere around $20 Australian which is less in US $ and probably even less in € .

Even if the rabbits you got aren't pedigreed now, their offspring several generations down the line can be. Other than making pedigrees, the Kintracks program lets you add pictures of each rabbit, tracks how inbred they'd be with certain matings, lets you make notes, track weights, expenses, income, All kinds of data.

I made an animal entry named for the rabbitry and when there's notes that affect the entire herd, something such as building a new hutch, etc., then I put it under that 'animal's' name so I'll have notes that covers the whole herd.

As for your bunnies now, keep them separated and assume she's pregnant. At day 28, give her a nest box. Even if it's just a cardboard box, and some nesting material (hay, dried grasses, etc.) see if she builds a nest in it. If she does, then she may be pregnant. She should have them around day 32.

As for cage size, one of mine is 2.5 feet deep by twelve feet long. There's doors all along the front so they can be opened to get the bunnies inside. That's the communal doe hutch, there's another 2.5' x 12' hutch that's segmented down into three spaces and that's where the bucks are. Both these big hutches are two stories and they're modular so when a part wears out it can be replaced without having to replace the whole thing.

But, everyone's bunny hutch will be different, it all depends on what type of bunnies you have and why you have them. Bunnies are pretty adaptable.

 

[Nao57]

So a new question came up, so I'll post it here.

I'm a bit confused about pregnancy ages and allowances.

People say don't get them pregnant until 5 months old or 6 months old on the does.

So what I want to clarify is,...does that matter if its on the front end or the back end? For example, A doe could be 5 months old, get pregnant, and then have the litter when she's about 6 months old. OR....she could be 6 months old and then get pregnant with the litter coming out on the 6 month mark?

Does this kind of small detail stuff matter? And the front end and back end stuff with them being at the age when the litter comes out is that wrong, or bad, or just fine?

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

So a new question came up, so I'll post it here.

I'm a bit confused about pregnancy ages and allowances.

People say don't get them pregnant until 5 months old or 6 months old on the does.

So what I want to clarify is,...does that matter if its on the front end or the back end? For example, A doe could be 5 months old, get pregnant, and then have the litter when she's about 6 months old. OR....she could be 6 months old and then get pregnant with the litter coming out on the 6 month mark?

Does this kind of small detail stuff matter? And the front end and back end stuff with them being at the age when the litter comes out is that wrong, or bad, or just fine?

I think it's going to depend on the doe. The age restriction/recommendation is so the doe doesn't get pregnant while she's still growing herself. If she gets pregnant too young, there's a chance she's going to not reach her full growth, and also a chance it will impact the current litter and future litters.