How Fast Can Rabbits Breed?

It was as comical as it was predictable. When I was seven years old, my father, who owned a house on an old farm, purchased two rabbits at the flea market. He took them out to the pasture and released them into a patch of clover. A year later, the pasture was completely barren, and there were so many rabbits that the horses would visibly struggle to avoid stepping on them. The once-green field was a bare, dusty brown, with hundreds upon hundreds of little white critters freckling the dead landscape.

Rabbits are positively notorious for their breeding capacity-- that's no secret. And now, as a small-scale rabbit breeder myself, I take extra precautions to make sure I don't turn into my overwhelmed father, who would carry huge buckets of feed out to the field to be quickly devoured by an endless herd of little white bunnies. My rabbits will only breed when I let them breed-- but just how many kits would they have if left to their own devices?

The ultimate question, here, is how many kits a single doe can have, and there isn't a hard-and-fast answer to that question. Like people, female rabbits vary in their fertility, with some reliably becoming pregnant after just one mating, and others needing to mate a few times to conceive. Most rabbits will mate soon after giving birth, but others will not do so willingly.

The gestation stage for a rabbit is about 28 days, and she can and will get pregnant the day she gives birth if a human guardian does not separate her from her mate. Without any human intervention, and with free full-time access to fertile males, most female rabbits will give birth to about one litter every 28 days.

Litter size in rabbits varies, as well. Smaller breeds will have about three to four kits per litter, but others will have litters with as many as 14 kits. In my experience as a breeder. 7 is an average litter size for most female rabbits. If the female reproduces at this rate, she will average about 92 kits per year.

Another factor can double this rate. Although it is not healthy for the mother or kits, rabbits have a remarkable ability to be pregnant with two litters at one time. This is because the "horns" of a rabbit's womb are separated. Some females are more prone to this than others and will steadily become pregnant with a new litter every two weeks. When this is the case, she will give birth to as many as 184 kits per year, although their mortality rate may be high due to inadequate nourishment and a much higher risk of preterm birth.

When allowed to reproduce at these very high rates and to cohabitate with their offspring, rabbits will also mate with their own siblings and parents. This enables exponential population growth, so two rabbits can become well over 1,000 in just one year. "Breeding like rabbits" is not a joke, but a very well-observed natural phenomenon.

In the wild, rabbits' impressive fertility is a necessary survival mechanism. They evolved to be extremely prolific to make up for a very high death rate. Nature made the rabbit to be an abundant source of food for other animals and to survive despite very high death rates. In a captive environment, however, there are no predators to control their population, and they will quickly become far too populous for their own good unless responsible owners limit their capacity to breed.

This highlights the importance of responsibility among breeders and owners. We want our rabbits to be pets-- to live long lives of comfort and calm. In exchange for a predator-free life, rabbits must surrender their ability to breed so prolifically. If you own rabbits as pets, you have a responsibility to have them spayed or neutered. If you are a breeder, you have an equally important responsibility to allow reproduction only at a rate that is sustainable for your rabbits and your customers.