Crossbreeding Rabbits

[Cassidy824]

Hello! I'm Cassidy, new here. I've been raising rabbits since last November and I thoroughly enjoy every bit of it. I've been getting a lot of crap for crossbreeding on other forums, so I decided to try another one. So before I say anything, all my breeding rabbits are 100% healthy, and all my buyers know what they're buying. When I first started I was crossbreeding rex and lionheads, I found out half the babies had a beautiful mane and were bought very quickly, and the other half went a little slower but were still cute as a button. Now that I'm getting more into the hobby, I want to learn a little more about crossbreeding. Right now I have two bucks (aside from my meat rabbit herd), a singlemane lionhead and a standard rex. I have several rex breeding does, a holland lop, and a doublemane chesnut-agouti lionhead. So, here are some questions I have. ALSO, feel free to leave your opinion or your personal experiances!
1. If I cross my single mane lionhead with my holland, will I get some bunnies with lopped ears and a mane?
2. I recently bought a young double mane buck, if I use him in the future will the babies have a greater chance of getting a mane?
3. (meat rabbit question) if I cross one of my new zealand reds with a new zealand white, is it still considered purebred?

I've done lots of research, but I've had trouble getting answers to these questions. Any help/advice/shared experience/pictures will be GREATLY appreciated!
I'll try to upload pictures of my herds soon.

 

[Bunnylady]

I don't do Lionheads, but I am pretty good with rabbit genetics. From what I understand, a single maned Lionhead has one gene for the lionhead coat, and one "normal" gene; a double maned Lionhead has 2 copies of the gene for the Lionhead coat. So, if you breed a single maned animal to one that has no mane, roughly half of the resulting offspring should have manes (that means that if you did the cross enough times to get 1000 babies, something around 500 would have manes. It doesn't mean that half of a litter will have manes, or even that half of a particular rabbit's offspring will be maned). If that is true, then all of a double maned offspring should have manes. Of course, a lot of single maned crossbreds wind up with just a wisp or two of longer hair when they are adults, which isn't what most people think of when they think "Lionhead."

The genetics of lopped ears are not so straightforward. Whether the ears go up or down depends partly on the strength of the ligaments supporting the ears, and partly on the width of the rabbit's head. Lops have wide skulls; the greater width is obvious from birth. When a lop is bred to a rabbit with a skull of average width, the resulting babies often have a fair amount of ear control, and the ears never go down completely. So unless you are working with a Lion Lop, a Holland crossed to a Lionhead probably will result in babies whose ears go up at least part of the time.

As to the NZW x NZR, there is only one New Zealand breed in the standard; all of the colors are considered varieties of that breed. So yes, the offspring should still be considered purebreds.

And oh, yeah - welcome to BYC!

 

[DairyGoatz]

I've been curious about this subject for a while. I have a gorgeous double mane lion head that I was going to cross with my Holland lop doe but I just found out my "buck" is actually a doe ... Good luck with your experiments I hope you get what you want.

 

[Cassidy824]

Thanks for the replies! I'll definitely be keeping one of my double maned bucks then. That way I'll be satisfied whether I get lop eared babies or not.
As for the new zealand question, a lot of people down here in GA don't understand that and think crossing colors is cross breeding LOL. Thanks for clearing that up!

 

[Bunnylady]

I'm not sure, but I think there was a time when the the white, black, and red where listed separately and evaluated separately (and let's face it, a lot of people still don't know that the New Zealand comes in any color other than white!). Because of the rather funky color genetics of the New Zealand, you may get poorly colored animals and/or some non-showable colors when you breed New Zealands of the different colors together.

 

[duxman]

hey buddy, straight to question 3. pure breed is determined by breeding two of the same (100%) breed, but also keep in mind, there are pure breeds with different colours, two different colours of the same breed will still give birth to pure breed. the genetics are 100% the same. i have now crossed giant flemish with african black wild, very rare. i recently crossed it with newzealand.


keep in touch, and i'd also suggest that you get a software called (Kintraks or ZooEasy) their are very helpful.
[email protected]

 

[Bunnylady]

@duxman Welcome to BYC!

Since this thread is almost 2 years old, and the OP hasn't been on the forum since about 2 months after this thread was originally posted, I suspect you are unlikely to get a response from them.

Thank you for trying to be helpful, though.

 

[Jipg108]

Quick question regarding crossing I have a friend who bought his kids a NZ doe n Holland lop buck . The plan was to have him fixed before breeding.which didn’t happen soon enough. Need less to say I now have 2 of their kits . So my question is this can I breed my doe with a Rex or would that be to big of a buck for her.

 

[RiverOtter]

Rabbits generally need to have a huge, major size difference to have it matter to newborn size. people breed NZ does to Flemish bucks all the time with no issue, and that's a bigger size difference than you have.