Breeding rabbits...first attempt

Hello from Kansas! I am considering renaming this blog to Adventures in Rabbit Breeding or something like that. My favorite little boy has a birthday this week (can't believe he will be five) and we went to St. Joe to pick out his new boots for his gift. He loves them, wanted to wear them to bed, Mommy had to nip that one in the bud!! Well, we have been talking about getting a couple more does (rabbits) to breed and we knew that there was a couple that lived on the way home from St. Joe. We called to see if they had some rabbits we could buy and stopped by on the way home. We picked out two does, California/New Zealand White crosses. They are very pretty and we were glad to get a couple more.



We had purchase two small rabbits last summer two Californian and they are gorgeous. Their names are Meryl and Pearl. Our son named them and we thought they were apporpriate names. These rabbits are about perfect ages for breeding so we decided to do that when we got home. When you breed rabbits, you always bring the doe to the buck. So, we grabbed Pearl and put her in and shut the pin up. We quickly realised that Pearl was not a Pearl...no, she was a Meryl and we were just hoping that we got their genders mixed up. Well, we waited for a little while to see what happened and sure enough...we have Meryl and Mearl, no Pearl at all. We are pretty thankful that we happened to call that couple and get a couple of does. On a side note...it is VERY hard to sex rabbits when they are young. Actually they say it is hard to tell until they are around 5 months. We are learning what to look for but even people who look at them all the time can get them mixed up. We bought Meryl and Mearl from a guy who told us that one was a doe and the other a buck so even experts and make mistakes.

We are happy with all of our rabbits. Our cali bucks are BEAUTIFUL and healthy and we are glad that we got some good breeding stock!

Greeting from the Homestead!
k aberle