# to whom can a rabbit breed with



## topside1

to whom can a rabbit be breed with?? i have a litter that i want to keep a couple of does back to breed with when they come of age. their father is the buck in which i would use to breed them with.... so can a daughter and her father breed and produce healthy and gentically safe offspring? 

another breeding question is can a buck and a doe of two different mothers but the same father breed and produce normal offspring??
thanks in advance ashley


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## Tucker

Hi Top .. 

Well breeding father to daughter ,, mother w son ,, or the 'grands' is considered 'line' breeding ,, (I read too much and used to raise German Shepards  .. )

thats what experenced breeders do to strengthen characteristics (sp?) they want ,, :clap: 

brother to sister is 'frowned' upon by some ,, because even tho both may be great rabbits if there is anything 'bad' in their background it may pop up 
,,  ,, others will breed siblings to try to intensify traits ,,

half - relations may be less of a chance of the bad genes coming out ,, 

but you never know what you might breed ,, 

you can always fill the freezer :bouncy: .. with the offspring if any undesireable traits show up ,, :grit: 


:cute:


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## MaggieJ

Offspring to parent is generally consider okay. "Linebreeding" they call it.

Not so sure about breeding the buck and doe with the same father but different mothers. Are the mothers related to each other? If so, I don't think I would do it. And I certainly would not save any of the resulting young ones for future breeding.


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## topside1

thank you for the help MaggieJ and Tucker. i have been wondering about that for such a long time. the two does are not related so i will feel better about breeding in the future. both father to daughter and half siblings. thanks again ashley.


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## KSALguy

breeding brother sister only intensifies what ever genetic material is available, just like breeding back to one parent or the other intensifies the genetic material that that parrent had to offer, 
what this means is, you can bring out the Really good and continue with it, but also any bad will be able to be found and depending on what kind of bad there is you can eather Cull hard or seeing that there is "REALLY" bad genetic material and not wanting to pass it on in ANY form you can discontinue useing that line, that way you can find out what you actually have to work with and can do genetic tests to see. 

but the simple awnser is YES that is fine


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## rabbitgal

Inbreeding or linebreeding is a powerful and useful tool, but you do need to be willing to cull "ruthlessly". Please, check your animals over thoroughly for health problems and don't keep animals for breeding if anything looks wierd. Secondly, if your otherwise-healthy linebred animals are throwing problematic offspring, you may want to consider culling them too.

In my mind, linebreeding and strict culling go hand-in-hand and should not be separated. If they are, that's when you end up with a herd full of misfits.


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## Mountaineer

rabbitgal said:


> In my mind, linebreeding and strict culling go hand-in-hand and should not be separated. If they are, that's when you end up with a herd full of misfits.


Well Put!!!! The common sense of it all.


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## Honorine

A rabbit judge told me that someone had done a study on tight line breeding in rabbits, and had done 18 generations of sibling crosses before there was serious degeneration. I'd love to find a transcript of that study. From breeding dogs I do know that the first signs of inbreeding degeneration is smaller litters and loss of fertility signalling the need for outcrossing. In rabbits I've done full sibling, half sibling, sire daughter and dam son crosses with no visible ill effects, large litters, healthy babies. As Rabbitgal said, both the best and worst will be expressed when you inbreed/linebreed, its the best way to set desired traits as long as you have very good animals to start with.


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## topside1

Thank You All, 
the main reason i was wondering who to breed is i recently lost a doe and her nine kits and i would like to replace her with a daughter of the buck. i am not looking to achive strenthened genitic traits other than the size of the offspring. but trust me if any problem shows up i will defenitly not breed the pair again. the doe is only 4 weeks old so i have about 5 more months to hope nothing wrong will happen plus a month of gestation. thanks again ashley


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## KSALguy

it will take several if not MANY generations of inbreeding to see any real trouble if any, UNLESS you have a freak gene, which is doubtable, she will likely be a good doe for you to ad to your heard


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## Al. Countryboy

Do you think that heavy inbreeding will effect the size of meat rabbits? I know alot of the minature animals are inbred often to get smaller sized animals.


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## Honorine

Size is something that is bred for, for instance in Flemish Giants the whites and sandies are usually the largest and best, because their the most common colors that have been worked with the most. Then the fawns are getting to the point of being larger and 'better'. Blues, steels, black and light grays often aren't as large, in fact steel and light gray bucks can be quite small by Flemish standards. In most miniature breeds there is a 'dwarf' gene that regulates size and appearance, and yes you can breed smaller to smaller in an attempt to create smaller, but that doesn't always work, the large genes are still in there regardless of the size of the parents. There's some one out there trying to create 'micro mini rex' but they don't breed true. I have a 2 lb mini rex doe, sire to daughter breeding, and the grandam was the sires half sister. This does mother throws a smaller rabbit in every litter, even when crossed out, so the 'small' gene is in there. So perhaps in time you would start getting smaller meat rabbits with intense inbreeding, particularly if you kept and bred the smaller rabbits, or kept and breed lines that have shown themselves to produce the occasional smaller rabbit. Inbreeding might double up on those genes, meaning more rabbits inheriting that 'small' gene.


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## KSALguy

you can also select for the Larger rabbit genetics via inbreeding, it can work both ways, when done correctly,


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## rabbitgal

Yup, good point KSALguy. How do you think they got Flemish Giants in the first place?  Topside, I think the breeding that you proposed would work fine, just keep your eyes open for problems. If you have problems, you could also bring in a new buck.


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## topside1

thanks you all i just wish they were breedable so i can see and learn what will happen. thanks for all of your input. ashley


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## thefarmerswife

If I hadn't read the other posts I would have said a rabbit can bred with another rabbit. :hand:


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## YuccaFlatsRanch

Fortunately Rabbits make litters (some good, some bad, some great, some terrible) and they do it in 31 days. Easy to recover from a mistake and unlike with dogs, cats, horses, people, it is socially acceptable to eat the mistakes.


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