Tips for First Time Breeder?

Okay so I ain’t going to sugar coat it. I’ve NEVER bred rabbits before, I considered for a few months going into the holland lop breed but I chickened out and my mother (YES! I am an adult. YES! I got my own home. YES! I still talk to my mommy for advice!) told me I should look into smaller breeds if I decided to go into the rabbit breeding hobby. So I found the Netherland dwarfs.

I was wondering about any tips for the trade? My online research (rusty at this point, don’t worry I’ll do more research closer to time) said that the doe should be 5-6 months old before breeding.

I pretty much get the logical steps I was just curious about any tips that you long term keepers have discovered throughout the years. Any tips about babies? I’ll be looking at breeding around February. I have a doe broken (she was born August, is February a good times to bred her?) and I’m getting a blue buck for her next week.

Thanks for reading my super long post. Sorry it’s so lengthy!

Hi, and welcome...
my advice would be,
breed for "temperament " ,and then "productivity".

There are already too many, "man eating" Netherland dwarfs, being sold as pets.

Smaller breeds can "sometimes" be bred a little earlier than that , however .. there is not a thing wrong with waiting until 5 or 6 months, and i personally think you should .

On the nuts-n-bolts side, you need to FEED to breed! I ought to make that my sig ... pellets may be complete when tested at the mill, but two major necessary vitamins (A & E) are not stable in pellet form and are usually too degraded by the time you open that bag of pellets to be of use. Supplement with a *little* bit of BOSS (black oil sunflower seed) and green stuff - I usually just pick a handful of grass on my way to the hutches, but if you want to get the best bang for your buck (like, if Misery is covered with snow and ice in January) parsley is considered even better than kale for bunny nutrition. The good news is that bunny manure is an *EXCELLENT* thing to give plants, so it becomes a symbiotic relationship where the bunnies give fertilizer to the cold frames or greenhouse, which in turn give bunnies nutritious food to make more fertilizer.

Thanks so much! I feed mine Sherwood premium pellets as of now. It’s the best I found (and I’ll admit they won me over with their excellent consumer service!) I will definitely look into your recommendations! Making them fat and healthy makes total sense when wanting them to produce! <br /><br /> -- Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:16 pm -- <br /><br />

michaels4gardens":2iewadwy said:

Hi, and welcome...
my advice would be,
breed for "temperament " ,and then "productivity".

There are already too many, "man eating" Netherland dwarfs, being sold as pets.

Smaller breeds can "sometimes" be bred a little earlier than that , however .. there is not a thing wrong with waiting until 5 or 6 months, and i personally think you should .

Click to expand...

Yes I did hear that Netherland Dwarfs can have, what we affectionately call, “the small dog syndrome” when it comes to our yorkies! The smaller they are the more they think they can get anyway with, haha. If I do end up with a man eater I’ll definitely not breed her (or him!). I don’t want to breed bad genes into the ND. I was definitely planning to wait until she’s a little older. I was thinking six months. Thank you so much!

Allie":3ocd5meb said:

Thanks so much! I feed mine Sherwood premium pellets as of now. It’s the best I found (and I’ll admit they won me over with their excellent consumer service!) I will definitely look into your recommendations! Making them fat and healthy makes total sense when wanting them to produce!

Click to expand...

Not familiar with the brand, but like I said, it's the vitamins themselves that are not shelf-stable. The BOSS is a stable form for vitamin E and the fresh greens have the vitamin A. NB: You don't want her fat! Seriously, fat bunnies tend to be lazy about breeding. You would think it would be the other way around, but I guess bunny logic is backwards or something.
:bunnyhop:

Don't forget the hay! This is the most important thing in a rabbit's diet and around here (Your only one state away from me) I can get a good bale of timothy or timothy mix for $5. If your going to have 5 or more does I would recommend buying in bulk for pellets. I used the Southern States 50lbs traditional for about $15 a bag I like the ingredients in this much better, but you could also do rural king brand 50lbs for $12 per bag. I did unlimited pellets the last week of pregnancy and all throughout nursing and then all of the babies got free feed pellets. For does I would go back to normal feed until I bred them again and they were in their last week of pregnancy. I would typically wait about 2 weeks after finishing nursing to rebreed. For water, I would keep gallon jugs on my back porch if it wasn't hot, if it was hot I would put them in the fridge. I also used Walmart brand waterbottles about $5 each the cheapest I have found anywhere. Oh, and invest in a cheap funnel it makes pouring water so much easier. Bucks should stay on a normal amount of feed because if they get fat then they don't want to breed. For nest boxes, I would definitely recommend going the extra mile to buy metal ones, just because I had wooden ones and they were a pain to clean. In the nest box, I would put straw then a cheap Walmart blanket $2.50 that I would cut up to make the size of the nest box that was if it was cold outside to give them a little extra warmth and with you starting in February I would use the blankets, in the hotter months I would just put a little hay on top so it's soft and in both situations, mom will pull fur. Sometimes in the summer, I would have to take some fur out because mom would pull too much and it would be too hot for the babies, but I would save the fur in a Ziploc back for moms that wouldn't pull enough in the cooler months. I didn't feed a whole lot of veggies because it would have gotten expensive, if we had leftovers in the house ( say we made a stew and had raw veggies leftover) I would give it to them. I would also get some old fashioned oats, this is to help if a doe has trouble producing enough milk for all of her kits. But with nethies they only have I think 4 so it may not be an issue but its something good to keep on hand. Dandelions from your yard ( ya know the yellow flowers that take over your yard in the spring and summer?) Don't feed the white ones, but the yellow ones can help with producing more milk too. I also only bred in the spring, summer, and fall it was just too hard to keep the babies warm enough in the dead of winter to keep them alive.

Honestly, the smaller rabbits tend to be harder to breed. Both netherland dwarfs and holland lops tend to have small litters, difficult births and more genetic issues (especially Peanuts) vs other breeds. A medium sized rabbit, like a havana or mini lop, would be easier to breed for your first time.

What are your plans for breeding? Are you planning on showing?

netherlands can be bred starting at 4 months. they are fully mature then.
Breed PLEASE for temperament before you breed for ANYTHING else.
Temperament, then health, then conformation, then colour.

There are LOADS of nasty nasty ND"s out there. So please.. temperament first!

I used to do rescue and the netherlands were always the worst. When I went to breed purebreds hubby nixed netherlands for their temperament issues. We did polish instead and they were amazing. I now have hollands and they are excellent.

Other tips. If you are breeding for the pet crowd think about how they feed their bunnies and feed yours accordingly.
Mine get

Pellets daily, and then alternatively grain mix or hay as a treat, in the green months I add in weeds and other fresh greens. I don't subscribe to the hay daily regime and definitely not ALL they want to eat. They get a small handful because hay ain't cheap and they will waste a whole ton of it. Feed less, they waste less. Coarser hay is better than fine thin hay.

Build nestboxes that are the proper size and height. If you are in a snowy area, be prepared to bring kits into a warm environment if you get small litters for at least the first three days, and then shelve them from nine days old to just shy of three weeks to prevent popping out of the box when being fed.

What other advice do you seek?

Breed her before she's nine months old if you want her to be able to easily conceive at an older age. At least, that's what I've been told.

Take the doe to the buck's space otherwise she may attack him for invading her space.

Don't be surprised if he makes some sort of noise (one of the ones here even yodels) and then falls over on his side. When he does that, you can figure she was bred.

Give her the nest box four days before she's due to kindle. That gives her time to get used to it and not enough time to decide it's a new bath room addition.