When Are Rabbits Old Enough to Breed?

If you are interested in breeding rabbits, you will need to calculate the age at when your rabbits are old enough to breed. Rabbits mature at different rates depending on their size, breed, nutrition and environment. If you have questions about breeding rabbits, it's a good idea to consult the breeder who you got your rabbits from. He or she will know about the family history of maturation and parenting behavior of your breeding pair.

It is critical to know when your rabbits are old enough to breed, because a pregnancy in a very young female rabbit can result in the death of the mother or her offspring. Before the doe is fully developed, a pregnancy can cause her death because it drains her of nutrition and muscle mass. The babies may also be too large to fit through her birth canal, in which case she and the babies will all die without immediate veterinary care.

When determining if you rabbit is old enough to breed, you need to be aware of the rabbit's emotional and mental maturity as well as its physical maturity. A young doe may be physically capable of conceiving a pregnancy and giving birth, but she may not be able to care for her young properly until she is older. Breed your rabbit only when she behaves like an adult, consistently acting independently of her parents and siblings.

In general, female rabbits are physically old enough to breed sooner than males. A small-breed doe, such as a mini-rex or Netherland dwarf, can mate at 5 months of age. A medium-breed doe, such as a standard rex or English spot, is not ready until she has reached 6 months old. Does from large breeds, such as the New Zealand, are old enough to mate at 7 months of age, and giant breeds like the French lop should not mate until they are 8 months old or more.

Because bucks mature slightly later than does, they generally need about one month longer than their female counterparts. A male rabbit will have fully descended, functioning testicles at 6 months of age if he is a small breed. Medium-breed bucks are old enough to mate when they are 7 months old. Large-breed males can mate at 8 months of age, and giant males are fully mature at 8.5- 9 months.

There are several signs that can give you a clue that your rabbits are old enough to breed. They will begin to emit a strong, musky odor-- particularly the males. The male rabbits will have visible testicles that may be somewhat "dangly," particularly when they are interested in mating. A mature female rabbit will have a reddish or violet vent area during her fertile days (about 13 out of every 15 days).

If you have chosen a good breeding pair and both of your rabbits are old enough to mate, it's time to get started. Be sure that you have proper housing accommodations and plans regarding your future kits. Responsibiltiy is a key component of pet guardianship and breeding.

Has My Rabbit Abandoned Her Kits?

When my rabbit Eowyn, a mini-rex, gave birth to her first litter of kits, she seemed nervous and unsure of herself. The day after she gave birth, I found one of the kits dead, bruised, and clearly underfed. I immediately seized the other three. Two died on the way to the vet's office; the other died in the veterinarian's hands. As the doctor sadly informed me, my rabbit had abandoned, and then killed, her entire litter. I was devastated-- but relieved when, the next go-around, Eowyn raised a healthy litter of seven kits.

It isn't uncommon for a rabbit to abandon or kill her kits, especially her first time around. But it is far more common for rabbit guardians to erroneously assume that the mothers have abandoned their young. Before you start attempting to rescue baby bunnies from an apparently neglectful mother, take these critical steps to ensure that your assessment is correct.

1. Look for signs of injury. If one or more of your baby bunnies shows bite-marks, scratches, bruises or other noticeable injuries, it's likely that the mother has intentionally or negligently hurt them. In this case, get all of the kits-- not just those who are visibly injured-- to a vet promptly before she kills all of her young. (Be sure to wrap them warmly in a towel; young kits are prone to hypothermia.) If you notice only minor scratches, carefully monitor the kits for additional signs of injury before taking them from their mother.

2. Observe the rabbit's nesting behavior. If your doe didn't build a nest at all, it's almost certainly a sign that she will abandon her kits-- if she hasn't already. Eowyn built an inadequate nest before her first litter, which she abandoned. Although she did pull out her fur and distribute it in the area where she gave birth, the nest wasn't deep enough, wide enough or covered enough to accommodate the kits. When kindling is inadequate-- or when a rabbit fails to kindle at all-- it is a sign that she doesn't know what she is doing. A rabbit who does not build a nest at all will almost always abandon or injure her young. A well-built, well-tended nest is a sign that she is interested in her kits and dedicated to their care.

3. Check for well-fed bellies. Rabbits only feed their kits once or twice per day, so it's likely that you'll rarely or never see your doe nursing her offspring. Rabbits do not lie with their kits the way that mother dogs and cats will lie with their young. Instead, they stand over the kits for just a few moments, allowing each to drink a small amount of very concentrated milk. You can tell if a rabbit is feeding her young by picking up the kits and carefully examining their stomachs. If they have puffy, rather than sunken, bellies, they are getting enough milk.

4. Keep her calm. This step is especially important if you are dealing with your rabbit's first litter. Your doe is most likely to panic if she senses a problem-- for example, if you are continuously picking up the kits or otherwise disturbing the nest. While it is acceptable to examine the kits daily, you should use caution so as not to disturb the already-nervous mother. Of course, always keep adult male rabbits away from the kits. Some will tolerate their own young, but others will brutally kill their offspring or cause the female to kill them.

5. Get professional help. If you have any questions about the health or safety of the rabbit kits in your care, do not hesitate to contact a rabbit-experienced veterinarian for help and support. In the event that your rabbit has abandoned her kits, prompt intervention can save the litter. And, as Eowyn's story shows, one lost litter does not spell the end of your doe's potential as a parent. By providing proper care for your doe, you maximize her chances of success in later pregnancies.

What to do About a Sexually Frustrated Male Rabbit

My pet rabbit, Frodo, has turned into a terror in recent weeks. He gnaws on his cage bars for hours on end, struggling to break out. As soon as he is freed of his prison, he sets to work urinating on my floors and destroying my floor boards. I would be angry if I didn't understand the reason for his aggression-- his love interest, Eowyn, whose cage he has been struggling to disassemble for weeks.

Hell hath no fury like a sexually frustrated male rabbit. Currently, Frodo and his mate are taking a hiatus in between litters, and the frustration is driving the male absolutely bonkers. Aggression and destructive behaviors are extremely common among male rabbits who feel sexually frustrated, but there are-- fortunately-- ways to end their distress. Here are a few options.

1. Let them mate. If you're a breeder and your bucks have become too randy for their own good, it may not be a bad idea to let them mate. If it's an appropriate time to prepare for another litter, consider giving your pets the go-ahead to make some baby bunnies.

2. Get your rabbit a plush "friend." Male rabbits will often learn to take out sexual frustration on inanimate objects, including realistic-looking stuffed animals. Buy your pet rabbit a plush bunny toy with relatively realistic proportions. If he's needy enough, it can act as a substitute for the real thing.

3. Keep him away from females. My rabbit's frustrations are always the strongest when he's in relatively close proximity to his female companion. For this reason, I only generally allow them near each other-- caged or otherwise-- when it's an appropriate time for them to mate. If your rabbit is prone to sexual frustration, house him in a completely different room from any potential companions.

4. Give your rabbit a distraction. By providing your rabbit with more room, chew-toys, and areas to explore, you help to keep his mind off his sexual frustrations. A confined, bored rabbit is far more likely to resort to the kinds of destruction most often associated with sexual frustration.

5. Have him neutered. This is the most foolproof method for handling a male rabbit who is frequently sexually frustrated. Neutering entirely solves of the hormonal and physical problems caused by, leading to, and associated with sexual frustration in rabbits. The only down side: neutering is extremely costly for rabbits due to their sensitivity to anesthesia.

Proper care of a pet rabbit can mitigate many of the unpleasant behaviors associated with sexual frustration in males. By providing a stimulating, interactive, safe environment for your pet, you can help to minimize the hormone-associated behaviors you find most troubling.

Breeding REW Mini-Rex Rabbits

After caring for a rex rabbit for several months, I developed a love and fascination for the breed. I learned that a local pet store was seeking breeders for red-eyed white, or REW, rabbits. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to enter the fascinating world of rabbit breeding. Like any form of breeding, rabbit breeding is both a science and an art. It involves close, direct interaction with living, breathing animals-- and it requires a degree of research, space, financial investment and emotional attachment.

I consulted an experienced breeder at length before breeding mini-rex rabbits, and I purchased three pedigreed, red-eyed white mini-rex bunnies to begin my journey. Here are some expert tips from the experienced rabbit breeder about choosing a breeding pair of REW mini-rex rabbits.

If you want to breed red-eyed white, or albino, rabbits, you need to start by choosing two to three pedigreed rabbits. Most breeders recommend that you buy two red-eyed white does and one unrelated buck. Check the rabbits' pedigrees; make sure that they have only REW mini-rex rabbits in their ancestry for the past three generations.

Although experienced breeders can cross REW mini-rex rabbits with other colors, this is not recommended for first-timers. Two REW parents will always have albino kits. If you cross parents of different colors, your kits may turn out with unpredictable and undesirable patterns.

Select parents who are young-- preferably about 9 weeks old. This is the perfect age to begin bonding with a rabbit who you will have for a long time, but the kit is at this point old enough to leave his mother and siblings without complication. Note that it will be a few more months before the breeding pair will be old enough to mate.

Understand that you are adopting a pet, not just a "breeder." Your first breeding pair is likely to stay with you for several years. Choose rabbits who are loving, affectionate, human-friendly and not prone to aggressive behavior. They should be healthy and vivacious, not sulky or unfriendly.

Choose a breeding pair that exemplifies the traits associated with the breed. Mini-rex rabbits should be small and compact, with a plush, velvet-like fur coat. A REW or albino rabbit should have no pigment on its fur; its eyes should be pink to deep red in color. A show-quality mini-rx has has a square body of equal height, length and shoulder width.

Look at a parents of your soon-to-be breeding pair. The parents should have both weighed less than 4.5 pounds as adults, and they should also exemplify the breed standard. Neither of the parents should have a history of destructive, anxious or neurotic behavior. Make sure that the mother was a "good" rabbit mom; bad parenting behavior can be inherited in rabbits.

After selecting your first breeding pair of REW mini-rex rabbits, it's time to take your new pets home. Be sure that you have the proper time, space and money necessary to accommodate the pair. When all of the ideal conditions are met, it's time to start breeding them.

Breeding Rabbits: Housing Requirements and Tips

The decision to breed rabbits is not one to be taken lightly by casual rabbit-guardians. Like other animals, rabbits require adequate space, exercise, attention, food and shelter. If you do decide that you want to breed rabbits, it is imperative that you make sure you have a good amount of space for accommodating each of your breeders and any kits you may have.

Here are some things to consider regarding housing for your breeding rabbits.

1. Separate males and females. House-rabbits are great, but you should not have any free-roaming males around your females unless the males are neutered. Rabbits will breed indescriminately, even when the does are too young to safely carry a pregnancy. If your doe is already pregnant, she can conceive a second pregnancy if a buck mates with her. This can cause the second litter to be pre-term or the first to result in stillbirth. Additionally, if you don't provide separate housing for males and females, you can't be sure of the kits' pedigrees.

2. Separate males from other males. My rabbit Nimbus, who is neutered, gets along fine with my breeding male. This is because a neutered or prepubescent rabbit will always submit to an unaltered buck. Otherwise, however, you need to separate your males from one another. After puberty, unaltered males will become extremely aggressive toward one another. These heated battles can lead to ripped testicles, broken bones and death. Don't allow it.

3. Socialize your bunnies. Although you need to separate unaltered males from females and one another, your breeding rabbits need and deserve to be socialized regularly. Provide communal housing for your females. Take each of your rabbits out every day-- remembering that they are pets, not livestock-- and spend some time with them. Allow your breeding rabbits to become familiar with your voice, smell and appearance. Your rabbits need to trust you and one another; they are social creatures and do not deserve to live in isolation.

4. Remember play time. Rabbits are naturally playful, breeding rabbits included. At my house, I have a large, predator-proof, outdoor "play yard" that I made as a home for my neutered male. I allow my females to run around in it a few times per day, then I allow males to play in it one at a time. I also allow each of my rabbits to come into the house for a few minutes every day explore and to spend time with humans.

5. Provide enough space. Your rabbits' cage or hutch should be at least four times the length of the rabbit's body. If you are housing multiple rabbits in a single cage or hutch, you need to double, triple or quadruple this number to provide a sufficient amount of space. Your breeding rabbits' housing requirements are identical to those associated with non-breeding pet rabbits.

6. Protect them from the elements. If you live in a mild climate and your rabbits are able to get out of their cages several times a day, it can be okay to keep your pet breeding rabbits in an outdoor hutch. However, make sure to provide housing that protects your rabbits from heat, cold and wetness. Your rabbits should have an area, such as a blanket or a nest-box, that provides warmth on cool nights. Provide limitless water year-round, and bring them into a temperature-controlled environment if the temperature falls below 35 degrees or exceeds 90 degrees. These tempeatures can lead to hypothermia or heat stroke even in healthy rabbits with proper housing.

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.

Rabbit Color Patterns

Rabbit breeders use several official-sounding terms to refer to a rabbit's coat pattern. While an average rabbit enthusiast might describe his pet's color as "marbled" or "Siamese", these words are rarely considered acceptable in rabbit-breeding circles. If you are interested in breeding or showing rabbits-- or if you just want to know the correct description for your bunny-- learn these terms.

Self Coat Pattern

A rabbit's coat pattern is considered to be "self" if the color is consistent throughout the body, with no other colors or markings anywhere on the fur. A black self, for example, is solid black.

Pointed Coat Pattern

Some people refer to this pattern as "Siamese" because of its similarity to a Siamese cat. This trait is most commonly seen in the Himalayan rabbit breed (which inspired the Persian cat variation of the same name). Rabbits with pointed coat patterns have dark patches on the nose, ears and tail.

Marked Coat Pattern

Rabbits with marked patterns have a basic light-color fur with evenly distributed, symetrical spots of blotches throughout the body.

Brindle Coat Pattern

A rabbit has a brindle coat pattern if it contains two colors, which appear regularly throughout the body. A two-toned coat is not necessarily brindle; this definition only applies when the coloration is marble-like and regular in distribution.

Broken Coat Pattern

Rabbits with two or three coat colors, distributed unevenly and asymetrically, are considered to have broken coats. At least one of these colors is always white. Rabbits with three colors are sometimes called "harlequin" rabbits.

Shaded Coat Pattern

Rabbits with shaded coat patterns look beautiful and alluring. Their upper bodies are dark, particularly along the ears and back. The lower parts of the rabbit's body are a lighter shade of the same color.

Tan Color Pattern

This rabbit coat pattern does not mean that the rabbit is tan in coloration. A rabbit with a tan pattern may be almost any shade. Most of a tan pattern rabbit's coat is dark in coloration, but its chest, belly, jaw, nostrils and eye circles are comparatively light.

Ticked Pattern

Ticked patterns include the beautiful agouti rabbit coats. These have a solid color throughout teh body, but all of the rabbit's coarser guard hairs have different-toned tips.

How to Tell if Your Rabbit is in Heat

I've been breeding rabbits for two years and have welcomed many a happy, healthy litter of kits into the world. The process of breeding my bunnies-- or, rather, allowing them to breed themselves-- has become very routine for me. A few friends, including those who were interested in breeding rabbits themselves, have asked me how I can tell when my bunnies are ready to mate. Rabbits aren't nearly as demonstrative or communicative as cats or dogs, so a frequent question I hear is, "How can you tell when a female rabbit is in heat?"

This question, while completely reasonable, is actually flawed in itself. Unlike cats and dogs, rabbits do not "go into heat" or have estrus cycles. While many mammals are fertile only during specific windows of time, a rabbit ovulates (releases eggs) when a male mates with her. Just as male rabbits release sperm during coitus, females release eggs, which are then fertilized and begin the process of development.

This is part of the reason that rabbits are so notoriously prolific. A female will release a cluster of fertilized eggs at almost any point and can then sustain a viable pregnancy through them. If a female mates with a male during pregnancy, she can even ovulate at that point-- carrying a second pregnancy in second horn of her womb. A rabbit doesn't go into heat; she is ready to get pregnant at virtually any point.

However, it can be hard to determine when a female is actually interested in mating, which is just as important as physiological fertility. Mating can go very badly-- up to and including horrors like ripped testicles and body-wide gauges-- if the female isn't receptive to the male's advances. A female will have a few physical indications that she is ready to mate. She will be at least six to eight months old before her body is fully mature enough for the experience. When sexually interested, her vent area will be visibly swollen and dark red.

The primary sign of your rabbit's readiness to mate will come from her behavior. A resistant rabbit will squeal, fight, and run when approached by a male. However, a female who is ready to mate will lower her front-end to accommodate him. If your doe shows signs that she is resisting the advances of her suitor, separate the two immediately to prevent injury to either animal.

Although your rabbit will never go into heat, per se, she will at some point be ready to mate. If you orchestrate the encounter correctly, she will conceive and go on to have a healthy pregnancy. Talk to your veterianarian if you have any questions about your rabbit's reproductive health.