# accidental sister/brother breeding



## texastami (Sep 13, 2002)

Well, our flemish/american cross brother and sister (who up until a two months ago cohabitated) got together by accident... we had them in separate cages but someone left the cages open at feeding time and wouldn't ya know that buck charged right in there with the sister and well.... the rest is history....

What should I look for?? Any problems?? Always heard NEVER do that... 

For the record.... I DO NOT plan to breed them again... nor do I plan to keep any kits.. these are strictly for meat purposes...


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

The clock is ticking for my accidental brother/sister breeding. I figure kits (if any) will be due the end of this month. If you are going to be butchering them when they get old enough there shouldn't be any problems.

I know some breeders have done brother/sister breedings with good results (not just rabbits, lots of other mammals), and some have had bad results, bad form or other "defects" becoming more prevalent. 

Just treat her like any other doe you bred on purpose.


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## akane (Jul 19, 2011)

1 cross like that is unlikely to cause problems. If your rabbits were already heavily inbred or you repeatedly do such crosses there is a chance for problems. Usually it's stuff that isn't real major like smaller litter sizes and kits that aren't fed as well. I do however have a half hairless kit from a brother x sister breeding and I can't find any other reason for it but genetic. Didn't get the lot butchered soon enough and I had planned to keep 1 doe who turned out to have gotten bred. The mother of this pair was rather inbred due to being an uncommon breed in this area.


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## MaggieJ (Feb 6, 2006)

Really no reason to worry, especially since you are raising them for meat. The chances of a serious problem are slight in any case. Inbreeding intensifies characteristics whether they be desirable or undesirable.


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

Extremely unlikely to cause any problems. If something nice pops out of the litter, don't hesitate to keep it as long as the litter is healthy and normal at butchering... Otherwise, slaughter as normal.


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## sandc (Apr 26, 2010)

cross-eyed rabbits taste the same as regular rabbits


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## XLT (Apr 7, 2005)

usually takes multiple generations for any real problems to show up, could be a good way to consolidate exceptional traits. It's sometimes purposely for that reason. Cull according to your usual practices and everything should be fine.


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## Honorine (Feb 27, 2006)

No big deal, do it all the time, rabbits can handle a lot of inbreeding. There was this study done where they crossed full siblings for 18 generations before starting to have problems. I think their going to be fine, and their only for meat anyway.


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## mekasmom (Jan 19, 2010)

texastami said:


> What should I look for?? Any problems?? Always heard NEVER do that...
> 
> For the record.... I DO NOT plan to breed them again... nor do I plan to keep any kits.. these are strictly for meat purposes...


It doesn't matter. Just eat the babies. And don't worry about it too much. It's a rabbit not a human. It's ok.


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## Caprice Acres (Mar 6, 2005)

Honorine, I would LOVE to see that study! I see people all the time that want totally unrelated pairs/trios when they start... I'd like to have soemthing to show them that it's OK to linebreed, lol. I still try to keep unrelated stock mainly because it's a harder sell to people who see inbreeding and automatically think it's bad... *sigh*.


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## Somerhill (Dec 13, 2005)

The reason we are so concerned about close breeding in humans is that we can't just eat the results if we are not happy with them. * >:^)*


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## Somerhill (Dec 13, 2005)

Seriiously, I recently read that the line of rabbits that are used for testing and experiments have been closely bred for generations without introducing new genetics in order to get very very consistant litters. Even so, they still have quite a bit of variety in the litters. Sorry - can't remember where I read it. :^(


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## KSALguy (Feb 14, 2006)

the biblical proclamation that "thou shalt not marry your brother/sister" does not apply in the animal world, all the breeds of every kind of livestock today were created by closely breeding familys to get the desired results, INbreeding does not CREATE genetic defects, you cannot create something from nothing, INbreeding UNCOVERS what you already have in your gene pool, if you have a nice clean pool then the worst thing that might happen in about 50 generations is a loss of fertility and smaller litters maybe, but other than that your good, now if you have a pool with all kinds of debri floating around, then you need to clean you pool, and the only way to do that is to breed closely, and eleminate the problems as they are found, dont blame the tools in the shed for inferior material to build with,


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## bowbuild (Aug 2, 2008)

As in my post on (American Chins) I am intentionally inbreeding...There has been no "wierd" side effects, but rather an im provement on the specific traits I am looking for.....bottom line don't sweat it!


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## akane (Jul 19, 2011)

Problem is you have no idea how clean that pool is until you get several generations down the line. Then oopsy maybe that cross 2 years ago wasn't such a good idea. We have a few genetic problems in other species of animal that people went nuts breeding to a certain line and years later suddenly found out there was a major defect that now pollutes a good portion of the animals in that breed. Look at how hard AQHA is working to remove impressive syndrome.


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## lasergrl (Nov 24, 2007)

I had a show bred new zealand pair. the entire 6 generation pedigree had one male on it. Seriously! They really liked him!

The medical test rabbits are even more inbred as already noted. reason being that if the genes are identical as possible that takes out a big variable in the studies.


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## texastami (Sep 13, 2002)

We have actually had the opportunity to see both the parents of this sister/brother and they were both from exceptional lines!! 

We are considering breeding these two again if everything turns out in the first litter ok, because we like the size and growth rate on them.... they are huge and VERY docile and even tempered compared to our NZs.... 

We'll see.... and thanks to everyone for your input!! I appreciate it very much!!


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## tailwagging (Jan 6, 2005)

KSALguy said:


> the biblical proclamation that "thou shalt not marry your brother/sister" does not apply in the animal world, all the breeds of every kind of livestock today were created by closely breeding familys to get the desired results, INbreeding does not CREATE genetic defects, you cannot create something from nothing, INbreeding UNCOVERS what you already have in your gene pool, if you have a nice clean pool then the worst thing that might happen in about 50 generations is a loss of fertility and smaller litters maybe, but other than that your good, now if you have a pool with all kinds of debri floating around, then you need to clean you pool, and the only way to do that is to breed closely, and eleminate the problems as they are found, dont blame the tools in the shed for inferior material to build with,



good post!
may I copy this???


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## KSALguy (Feb 14, 2006)

Yes you can use that. I just get irritated when people incorrectly place the blame of what ever "miss managment" problem they have on the tools in the shed not where blame is actually due. If you build a house with wrong measurements an cheap material its not the tape measure or hamers fault. INbreeding is a tool. Not the reason someone has bad stock.


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## tailwagging (Jan 6, 2005)

thank you


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