Selfsufficientish.com

Generational crosses, eg. father to daughter, are usually done for breeding stock purposes to try and lock-in a desired trait. It's a way of stacking the odds in favour of the genes you want. Are you wanting the young to eat or to breed with?

I avoid in-breeding, prefering to buy in fresh bucks when neccesary. Bringing in rabbits from outside comes with its own set of worries/problems, disease being my biggest concern

If the progeny is for the pot though I might risk it

In the wild rabbits are less fussy about who they shag, but nature will deselect any unwanted traits

I''ve a friend with a suitable buck and then the resultant litters I was going to go back to the grandfather

Got a new California buck for my 3 Flemish does

He's out there doing the bisnis right now

Go on my son!

For the record "Bunny I could be a dirty spammer, please let one of the moderators know about this post" means the same thing in hungarian! :)

Oops, I'm not a dirty spammer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-4KuA-0f8c

Dirty!

It seems it was a "first time" birth issue as mother and 6-7 babies are now doing fine :)

vancheese wrote:It seems it was a "first time" birth issue as mother and 6-7 babies are now doing fine :)

great news!

Glad you didn't kill her

There could be a lot of reasons why your does were having trouble with their litters. Sometimes the nest box isn't right, they didn't get it in time, they don't like the nesting material or it's their first time and they don't know what to do yet. It could be some outside thing like noisy neighbor kids "visiting" with your bunnies when you're not watching. Also, frequently folks blame the does for killing the babies when it's rats or cats. However, it seems things are working now, so that's a good thing.

For the does here, they have rat-proofed cages and if they don't mess them up, they get to keep their nesting boxes all the time. They get nesting materials about four days before they are due to nest. The rabbits here also get handled a lot, even from the moment they are born so they are used to humans. We still lose a few babies here or there, but not usually a whole litter.

The problems seemed to have passed as all does now have given birth and kept the litters alive :)
Hurrah!

Great news

2/3 of mine have droped the last few days, 10 each

That sucks

Its all good

By dropped I mean given birth.

I thought you spoke jive

I'm now 3 for 3

Go Team Bunny!