My doe rabbit won’t breed

[ButtonquailGirl14]

Ok, so...
Growling rabbits are just cranky. I've had rabbit growl when I walk past the cage. These rabbits were super chill the rest of the time. She could just be feeling defensive or even hormonal. Rabbits experience false pregnancies VERY easily. Could she be preggo? Sure! But that's hardly a definitive sign, she's just telling you she wants to be left alone.

What kind of rabbits are these? You got her from a pet store; I'm assuming she may be a dwarf (under 5lbs). If she is, breeding her could be very risky. Rabbits that are very small should usually be bred in their first year (preferably around 6 months) because they can actually develop fused hip bones and fail to deliver the kits. A larger rabbit may have trouble being bred later in life because the fat tissue in rabbits builds up around organs, not in muscles, and it can constrict their uterus and prevent a healthy pregnancy. Also, many new moms fail to care for their litters. It can take up to three litters before they get it right.

Second, why are you breeding? If you are breeding for a pet market, well, I can't really stop you. But keep in mind that rabbits are the third most abused and abandoned animals in the US. They are often seen as fodder for children to learn how to do chores and then get neglected badly. A certain percentage will go on to feed reptiles no matter how you try to make sure it doesn't happen (those snakes need to eat too). Which is not to say don't do it but that there are better ways to breed for the pet market. By choosing rabbits that have desirable qualities and breeding for show and health for example you both produce healthier babies with a purpose, a broader range of future homes, and sometimes some mis-marked pet rabbits that are still healthy and happy. Having worked in a pet store and now having bred rabbits for half a decade I can definitively say that many pet store rabbits have serious problems you don't want to breed into your bunnies.
If you are breeding for some silly reason like "so she can have a litter", or "to show my kids life" with no plans for the offspring, well, I have some rather impolite suggestions for you. If you don't want to breed, I strongly suggest you get your rabbits, especially the female, fixed. Female rabbits have a 90% incidence of fatal reproductive cancers by age 6 regardless of whether or not they've had a litter. A fixed rabbit can live a decade or more.

If after you have reviewed everything, compared your rabbits to their breed standard, decided and researched your market, etc and still want to go through with it... You can try a few things.

Instead of bringing the doe to the buck, bring them both to a large neutral area (like a room in your house). They may be willing to breed away from their cages. (If you're not already, always bring the doe to the buck).
You can try to "flush" your rabbits with food, giving them some extra greens, hay and pellets in the week leading up to breeding.
Pick a cool day and try it at dusk or dawn. Rabbits are most active at these times.
You can try leaving them together for a while. Sometimes my boys like to groom the ladies and nose around for a while before getting down and dirty. This carries some risk of injury to the rabbits so don't leave them totally unsupervised, but breeding in the first place carries that risk.
Make sure the doe is receptive by making sure her vulva is moist and pink when exposed.
Place the buck on the doe in the correct position manually a few times, or possibly lift the doe yourself.
Try breeding once a day for 3-4 days.
Move their cages near one another, or away from one another if they are already close.
Try a different doe or buck.
Check for injures/deformations to genitalia especially on the buck and double check gender. More than one professional/experienced breeder has been hit by the gender swap fairy in their lives.

 

[Chickens 4Ever]

It's OK. Just try to figure out when to give her a nest box. If you give it to soon, she may use it for a toilet. If too late, you will lose the litter. The worst that will happen if you give the box too early is that you will have to clean it. I think you can deal with that. The fact that she growled and bit you may well mean she is pregnant. I would go ahead and give her a box before long and beyond that leave her alone as much as possible.

She has a box already she sleeps in

 

[Chickens 4Ever]

Ok, so...
Growling rabbits are just cranky. I've had rabbit growl when I walk past the cage. These rabbits were super chill the rest of the time. She could just be feeling defensive or even hormonal. Rabbits experience false pregnancies VERY easily. Could she be preggo? Sure! But that's hardly a definitive sign, she's just telling you she wants to be left alone.

What kind of rabbits are these? You got her from a pet store; I'm assuming she may be a dwarf (under 5lbs). If she is, breeding her could be very risky. Rabbits that are very small should usually be bred in their first year (preferably around 6 months) because they can actually develop fused hip bones and fail to deliver the kits. A larger rabbit may have trouble being bred later in life because the fat tissue in rabbits builds up around organs, not in muscles, and it can constrict their uterus and prevent a healthy pregnancy. Also, many new moms fail to care for their litters. It can take up to three litters before they get it right.

Second, why are you breeding? If you are breeding for a pet market, well, I can't really stop you. But keep in mind that rabbits are the third most abused and abandoned animals in the US. They are often seen as fodder for children to learn how to do chores and then get neglected badly. A certain percentage will go on to feed reptiles no matter how you try to make sure it doesn't happen (those snakes need to eat too). Which is not to say don't do it but that there are better ways to breed for the pet market. By choosing rabbits that have desirable qualities and breeding for show and health for example you both produce healthier babies with a purpose, a broader range of future homes, and sometimes some mis-marked pet rabbits that are still healthy and happy. Having worked in a pet store and now having bred rabbits for half a decade I can definitively say that many pet store rabbits have serious problems you don't want to breed into your bunnies.
If you are breeding for some silly reason like "so she can have a litter", or "to show my kids life" with no plans for the offspring, well, I have some rather impolite suggestions for you. If you don't want to breed, I strongly suggest you get your rabbits, especially the female, fixed. Female rabbits have a 90% incidence of fatal reproductive cancers by age 6 regardless of whether or not they've had a litter. A fixed rabbit can live a decade or more.

If after you have reviewed everything, compared your rabbits to their breed standard, decided and researched your market, etc and still want to go through with it... You can try a few things.

Instead of bringing the doe to the buck, bring them both to a large neutral area (like a room in your house). They may be willing to breed away from their cages. (If you're not already, always bring the doe to the buck).
You can try to "flush" your rabbits with food, giving them some extra greens, hay and pellets in the week leading up to breeding.
Pick a cool day and try it at dusk or dawn. Rabbits are most active at these times.
You can try leaving them together for a while. Sometimes my boys like to groom the ladies and nose around for a while before getting down and dirty. This carries some risk of injury to the rabbits so don't leave them totally unsupervised, but breeding in the first place carries that risk.
Make sure the doe is receptive by making sure her vulva is moist and pink when exposed.
Place the buck on the doe in the correct position manually a few times, or possibly lift the doe yourself.
Try breeding once a day for 3-4 days.
Move their cages near one another, or away from one another if they are already close.
Try a different doe or buck.
Check for injures/deformations to genitalia especially on the buck and double check gender. More than one professional/experienced breeder has been hit by the gender swap fairy in their lives.

She is a holland lop and I showed her the first time and got champion and she hasn’t since then. I got my buck from a show breeder.

They are the only holland lops I got that are pure bred. And one lives outside and one lives inside. I bred them outside in a neutral territory yesterday and I gave them both vinegar water almost a week b4 I bred them.

Im breeding for show rabbits so I can get ribbons and etc. And hoping to start my own rabbitry when I move.

She hasn’t been in heat but I’ve seen MANY people breed rabbits without being in heat so I thought it would work and she has put her tail up for him also.

 

[Aerliss]

Have you had her vet checked recently, with blood works run? Consecutive failures may indicate a reproductive issue. Rabbits are notoriously good at reproducing, after all

At 2 there is a chance of reproductive cancers. A smaller chance than at 5, but its not rare. Although if she's pregnant now, and stressed by the whole situation a vet trip is likely not a good idea.

Others have given good advice on how to make the process easier on her and the buck, but I would definitely think twice about continuing with her, if she's not already pregnant. If you're planning to breed and show then you'd be better letting this girl grow old (I'd neuter her, unless you want to lose her quite young), and purchasing, direct from a show breeder, new stock that you know the background of. Younger buns are going to breed more easily, with lower chances of comolications. As others have said, if she's not had litters before, you may be in for some heartache... and vet bills.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Yeah, you're right OP. That's unlikely to be critical. "In heat" isn't really a thing in rabbits. Just like humans, sometimes they're just more receptive than others so it's just easier to get them to breed when they are receptive if you're having trouble. In fact their hormone systems are so similar to humans in their cycles that when we test things surrounding pregnancy it's usually on rabbits. Old human pregnancy testing used to be done on rabbits.

It does sound like you have a solid plan for breeding rabbits so kudos! It's nice she got a ribbon, but because she is so old I would not try to breed her, personally. There's still a chance it will be successful. Not all dwarf breeds actually inherit dwarfism and there's always a small chance that the hips wont fuse. But holland lops are a breed with dwarfism which is the critical factor in fused hip bones. Also be aware that you will have a high incidence of dead and deformed kits working in this breed because dwarfism is homozygous lethal.

I would just give her a few weeks and if she hasn't given birth by day 35 you can decide what to do from there based on how you feel about it. TBH, I am bad at palpating rabbits so this is what I do whenever I have a rabbit I'm uncertain about. You wont find any judgement here on if you keep breeding her or not... In our herd does either produce or go into the stew pot. Just keep in mind the risks as you move forward.

 

[Abriana]

The female should always go to the males territory. If he goes to hers, she’ll get defensive and won’t want to breed.
Make sure she is ready to breed
Put them together for ten minutes. Some does are ready right away, and others need time. If it doesn’t happen in ten minutes, remove the buck and wait until tmr to try again.

 

[Bunnylady]

She is a holland lop and I showed her the first time and got champion and she hasn’t since then. I got my buck from a show breeder.

What kind of show did you show her in? ARBA shows do not include "champion" as anything you could win at a show - the best you could possibly do would be Best of Breed (or, if you have an astonishingly good animal, Best in Show). And honestly, as popular and competitive as Holland Lops are, I find it pretty hard to believe that a newby owner/breeder could bring a rabbit to an ARBA show and win BOB - the competition is just so fierce. I hope you don't discourage easily, because it generally takes a lot of work and knowledge (and a certain amount of sheer luck) to get those sorts of awards in the really popular breeds. You need to learn how to look at a rabbit and be able to say, "this is where this rabbit is good, this is where it needs some improvement," and breed it to another rabbit that at least doesn't have the same weaknesses, and then hope that at least once in a while, you get a baby with all of its parents' strengths. Some folks are at it for years before they get there.

Old human pregnancy testing used to be done on rabbits.

According to Wikipedia, it also used to be done on frogs, and mice. And, believe it or not, a very popular hormone replacement for post-menopausal women is extracted from pregnant mare urine. There isn't a whole lot of similarity between horses and people, but there is enough similarity in the hormones that some folks assume that you can use human pregnancy tests to check for pregnancy in horses - which you can't.

Not all dwarf breeds actually inherit dwarfism and there's always a small chance that the hips wont fuse. But holland lops are a breed with dwarfism which is the critical factor in fused hip bones. Also be aware that you will have a high incidence of dead and deformed kits working in this breed because dwarfism is homozygous lethal.

Please, please, please, can we take this piece of misinformation out, shoot it, and bury it once and for all? Rabbits' hip bones don't fuse; that's a problem with Guinea Pigs (which are not even lagomorphs, but a type of rodent). I don't know why this piece of misinformation has more lives than a cat, but it doesn't happen, not is any size breed. I have no idea who first made the mistake of this cross-species confusion, but it isn't true, no matter how many times you may read it on the internet.

Now, as to the matter of dwarfism in rabbits . . . . It is true, the Holland Lop is a dwarf breed. Rabbits with the dwarfing gene are a little smaller, and have shorter ears, limbs, bodies and faces than rabbits without the dwarfing gene. Hollands Lops without the dwarfing gene will weigh half a pound to a pound more than Hollands that have it, and will almost always be over showable weight.

The dwarfing gene is what is known as a dominant gene - which simply means that, if a rabbit inherits even one copy of it, you will be able to tell that it has it, just by looking at the animal's appearance. Unfortunately, it is also a lethal gene - meaning that, if a bunny is so unfortunate as to inherit a copy of it from both parents, it will die. Sometimes these "double dwarfs" (often called "peanuts") die at birth, sometimes they live for a couple of days, but their digestive systems are not complete, so they don't survive for long.

A Holland Lop that is showable size has one copy of the dwarfing gene, and one of the normal growth gene. Breed two such animals together, and each baby has a 1-in-4 chance of getting the dwarfing gene from both parents, and dying as a result. That's NOT the same thing as saying "one out of four babies will be peanuts." In an average Holland litter of, say, 4 or 5 babies, you might not get any peanuts, or you may get one or two . . . actually, you could even get a litter of all peanuts, but I've never been that unlucky. A sample group as small as one litter, or even all the babies a pair may produce in their lifetimes, is just too small for the numbers to mean anything. Suffice it to say that you are bound to get some peanuts, if you do dwarf-to-dwarf breedings (as an example, I had 3 Netherland Dwarf does kindle litters in the last couple of months, for a total of 10 babies, of which only one was a peanut. 2 died at birth due to their mother's stupidity, but they weren't peanuts).

In addition to the risk of peanuts, there is the other thing I have touched on - the babies that don't inherit a copy of the dwarfing gene from either parent, and wind up with two copies of the normal growth gene. Some people call these "false dwarfs," or "brood does" (I know one person who refers to them as "Big Ugly Does"). They aren't showable, due to the fact that they are almost always oversized. False dwarf bucks are almost always sold as pets, though some breeders will hang on to false dwarf does that have reasonably good type. Being slightly larger, they generally average a few more babies per litter, they hardly ever have kindling problems, and they never have peanuts (which can be a real bonus to anyone who has a problem with the idea of having something born that can't survive).

And no, rabbits do not go into heat. Other than both being mammals, rabbits' reproductive systems really aren't much like a human's at all - for one thing, rabbits are induced ovulators. They do have hormonal fluctuations that are tied to the ripening of eggs, which make them more fertile at some times than others. Before attempting to breed the doe, check the color of her vulva. A cherry red color (or as near it as she gets; some does never get that red) indicates a hormonal peak and fresh eggs. Purple indicates that she has passed the peak; while she may breed, the eggs are aging, and she may not have as large a litter as she might if she was bred at her peak. A doe that shows light pink is probably not going to breed, or conceive a litter if she does.

 

[Chickens 4Ever]

Ill try to take a picture of her sides and see if y’all think she is pregnant or not cause it is over 10 days

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I don't think we'll be able to tell from her sides. Rabbits don't really "show" in my experience and they'd be so small it'd be hard to tell.

The frog bit surprises me. I wouldn't have expected that to work. I would have expected it to work best in mammals with no heat cycles, such as rabbits and mice. Which is all I really meant bunnylady, that they are similar to us in the way their hormones cycle.

And that's a useful bit about the hip bones. When I had my first forays into rabbitry this was spread very heavily among rabbit forums and lop forums. (I also had two dwarf rabbits, this was a decade ago. I ultimately didn't breed those rabbits.) I haven't looked into it since, since I don't breed dwarfs. I wasn't aware it was false. I think the reason it's often presented is because it shows up on many reputable-seeming websites and is THE top hit from a google search on "breeding dwarf rabbits";
https://www.nhnetherlands.com/breeding-your-dwarf.html
http://www.pethealthandcare.com/rabbit-breed/netherland-dwarf.html
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/15294/1/facts-about-dwarf-rabbits.html

Please feel free to contact these popular websites about it?

 

[Bunnylady]

I think the reason it's often presented is because it shows up on many reputable-seeming websites and is THE top hit from a google search on "breeding dwarf rabbits";

Shows you just how many confused people don't check their sources before they repeat what "someone" said, doesn't it? Just because some blogger is unknowingly participating in a game of "Chinese Whispers" doesn't mean they know what they are talking about. People who are actually knowledgeable about rabbit physiology (like, veterinarians who specialize in small animals) aren't saying it because they know otherwise.


http://www.animedvets.co.uk/keeping_guinea_pigs.htm

(Incidentally, I first became aware of this issue with guinea pigs about 40 years ago, when I was researching getting a cavy as a pet. Nice thing about the old-fashioned way of reading books to do research; the authors were more accountable for what they put into print)

As for google results - there are companies that (for a price, of course!) can skew google results so whatever you want to come up at the top of a google search (like, your business name) will. Just because something seems popular doesn't mean you should trust it. I'm sure a cliff top seems popular to some lemmings . . . .