Hi! I have a little 4 month old holland lop doe named Gracie. Gracie is my pet bunny and lives indoors in a cage. I still plan to breed her, but I don’t have a HL buck. She needs to be bred at 5 months old. She has a pedigree.
I talked to her breeder and she said breeding her to the New Zealand rabbits I have for meat wouldn’t be a good idea because the buck would be too big and there could be a possibility of birthing complications. But I have a batch of 5 week old New Zealand bunnies, so I would like to know if I could breed her to a young male who is newly minted?
If not, I’ll just have to buy another buck or see if the breeder is willing to stud one out.
I agree with
@ladysown - a doe doesn't
need to be bred at 5 months, at least not for her sake. In fact, 5 months old would be the
minimum age at which I would breed her. I've found that the small breeds (e.g. Hollands, Polish, Mini Rex) can do well at 5 months, but in general it is completely safe to let a doe grow for longer before breeding. Even as much as a year or so can be okay. After they start getting closer to 2 yrs old, I begin to be concerned about toughening and hardening of their pelvic bones and joints, but I have known 2- to 3-year-old does which had their first litters at that age, and they did fine.
While I would not encourage you to pair her with a New Zealand, it is not always the case that a bigger buck will make bigger kits. I have found that the number of kits in the litter generally has more to do with the size of the kits; a Satin kit from a litter of 12 can be smaller than a Holland kit from a litter of 2-3. How fast they grow seems to be a bigger difference than newborn size, with the Satins growing bigger than the Hollands within a week or so. (But I've had numerous Polish, Holland and Mini Rex foster Satin kits very well.) I've also found that the size and shape of the kits' heads can be a problem for kindling does, with the big blocky heads of the Hollands more problematic than the more typically rabbit-shaped heads of NZ kits.
I think you'd also find that your NZ bucks may not be up to the job at 9 weeks old. Young bucks may start
trying to breed at 10-12 weeks (the mini breeds even earlier), but often they're not exactly successful. They can be less than fertile, or be so inexperienced that they annoy or even hurt the doe, or if the doe is aggressively anxious to be bred, in her enthusiasm she can traumatize the clueless young buck to the point where he will be afraid of does.
If you've got a pedigreed Holland doe, it seems like a great idea to wait to find her a nice Holland buck. Hopefully the breeder can help you select a buck that would complement her and her pedigree. You can probably expect a stud fee, but it would most likely be less than buying a good-quality buck.
