Old doe, bad stock?

[dsneed1002]

I've heard the theory regarding horses that mares produce their best offspring when they are young and was wondering if anyone has an idea about this same idea in regard to rabbits. I have a doe that is about 5 years old now and her only recent litter (I'd pretty much been out of production for two years for personal reasons) produced a total of only 4 and at 8 weeks I have 2 with lazy ears and I have NEVER had lazy ears in my stock for the 6 years I have had them.
Thanks for anything you may know or have heard.

 

[UFCreel]

As long as she is good and healthy give her another try. As they age litter size may or may not decrease. I just had a two year old Red New Zealand go for 34 days before the still birth of one very large kit. All of her previous litters were 8 kits each. She will get bred again very shortly. As for lazy ears that could be genetics.

 

[DaytonHillRabbits]

I had just recently sold an older (4 years) doe who had stopped production... she had always been a great producer.. 10-12 kits (Holland doe!) but she hadn't taken but once in a solid year and I couldn't get her bred. So I arranged to sell her to a friend of mine who wanted to try her luck. Asked me to try her with my buck before I sent her on her way. Guess what? lol. 9 babies last week. Little wench. Seems the older they get the harder they are to get them to take, until you sell them. Grumble grumble.

 

[dsneed1002]

Thanks for your thoughts. It's always good to hear some other experiences. I think her next round will be with the same buck to see if I get similar results and then a different one after that. The lazy ears just baffle me because even with the previous litters from these two I never had a problem. But of course they still fry up the same.

 

[grumpy]

If they've been out of production... watch their weight and breed them.
Expect a short litter...... re-breed at 14 or 21 days..... she'll be good to go.
If they've not been hammered prior to this, they should produce decently
long enough to get some excellent replacement stock.

Grumpy.

 

[hotzcatz]

we get heavy ears around here if the litter shows up in the summer. They use their ears as air conditions and they run more blood up through their ears where it's thin and the blood can cool down. For a young bunny with weak ear muscles, the extra blood going through the ears to cool off makes the ears too heavy for the new weak muscles to lift. By the time summer is over, they've learned to carry the ears down. Also, as mentioned, genetics plays a role, too.

You may also want to check what kind of feed they've been eating as to how that relates to litter size. I've recently switched to organic feeds because of decreased litter sizes along with litters which didn't show up at all. Still gathering data on it, but I'm beginning to suspect the 'new' (within the past decade) method of spraying (with herbicide, I think) alfalfa to ripen it may have something to do with rabbit fertility.