What sex is this rabbit?

here is a 15 week old buck. notice the oval or circle that is the opening of the penis. note lack of any testicals. that is why it is so difficult for people to differentiate. both of these rabbits came out of my pen on this date.

Bunnylady said:

I'm wondering where this 13-week-old buck's testicles are. Even if they are playing "now you see 'em, now you don't," you should at least have some slack skin where the empty sacs are.

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That may be true, and some sign is probably there and I just didn't know what I was or should have been seeing. I don't think I've read anything about that--will have to do some research on it. I've mostly looked for "donuts" or "tacos" as one thing I read clarified it, but that's only after pressure.

Eric 2016 said:

on the young males you certainly do not see any sign of testicals. and I don't think the repeated stimulation would cause the penis to become more apparent, it's probably that you are becoming more familiar with what you should be seeing. once you get it down it will be extremely apparent. the best advice I can give is don't be afraid to apply pressure to make the reproductive organ stick out. in a male you'll see an oval tip that is the penis and in the female you'll see a "slit" that runs the entire length of the organ. I hear a lot of people say that you can't sex a young rabbit and that is absolutely false.

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Thank you. I have learned to apply pressure, and in this case the penis would emerge, but my confusion stemmed from also seeing a good sized slit in the right place. At least that's the best I can explain it. The repeats today seemed to diminish the slit each time.

My current guess on my younger 6 wk kits is 2/2. Will see if that continues to be the case! And in the meantime I still have my sweetheart Flopsy to snuggle--really great personality. But DH says I should call him just Flop now.

Split penis is a very common problem in rabbits. particularly in some breeds. Some bucks just have a little split at the very tip, and some may be split all the way down, with the entire thing opening up like a doe's vulva. I suspect that this may be the reason for some visits from the "sex-change fairy."

Just to the right of the buck's penis in this picture you can see a patch of bare skin, which is clearly slack and wrinkly. That is a scrotum; in a doe, you'd have to look harder to see a bare patch, and if you did find it, the skin would be tight and smooth. Bucks can pull their testicles back inside their bodies, even as adults, but young bucks seem to do it a lot. Like I said, the testicles might not be visible at the moment, but there are signs of their presence at this age.

Junior bucks are notorious for this stunt. At a show, a junior must either have both testicles visible or both undescended; one of each is a DQ. Since most breeds have a minimum size requirement for juniors, it's pretty unusual to have a junior buck at a show with no signs of testicles these days. I have seen many people bouncing or tickling a young buck, trying to get him to let them both down, to prove that he isn't a crypto and keep him from being DQ'd.

regardless, ID'ing the penis is much easier and efficient then looking for a patch of bare skin. that may or may not be there.

Eric 2016 said:

regardless, ID'ing the penis is much easier and efficient then looking for a patch of bare skin. that may or may not be there.

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True, but knowing what "normal" looks like isn't terribly helpful when what you are looking at isn't normal for some reason. In the case of a badly split buck or one of those "just what do you call that??" does (and I have seen quite a few of both, in the 30+ years that I have been breeding rabbits), the presence or absence of testicles pretty much clinches the matter. Testicles don't magically appear at 6 months of age. An 8 week old might or might not have visible testicles, but by 13 weeks, there definitely should be something there. My point is that there are other clues that one can look for, in those annoyingly common situations where the genitalia doesn't look exactly like the pictures.

Thank you for very informative and helpful comments. Does any of this tend to affect fertility? I'll have to get Flop out today and do some looking for testicles.

balloonflower said:

Thank you for very informative and helpful comments. Does any of this tend to affect fertility? I'll have to get Flop out today and do some looking for testicles.

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That would depend on just how bad the split is. If it's just at the tip, there is nothing to impede the buck's performance, so his usefulness as a buck is unaffected. If the split goes the full length and all the way down to the urethra, the buck might go through all the motions, but the sperm never makes it into the doe, so though the buck may be fertile, he's not going to sire offspring (unless you want to try AI, I suppose). Some bucks don't have an all-the-way-in split, more like a groove, and those are tricky both to spot and to breed. A lot of the time, a penis with a groove tends to curve and curl rather than stand up straight, so whether the buck can get the job done or not is uncertain, and he may be capable some times and not at others.

Incidentally, a split penis is a DQ, for obvious reasons.