Questions about cross breeding

[ckcs]

I had been curious about this for sometime and was reminded in a thread about crossing an Angora with a New Zealand. Let's say the Angora is the doe and the New Zealand was the buck. If you did breed the children back to the parents over several generations would they eventually be close to pure bred? My guess is they would be very close but I have my doubts. Now if you were to breed say a Flemish Giant Doe to small buck like a Lionhead would the babies even survive?

 

[Dood]

If you just dumped them in a colony and let them go they would look like neither. You would need to select which rabbits you wanted to breed to get either New Zealand's or Angoras and do so for several generations. Eventually you would get a rabbit that looked purebred and with these two breeds it wouldn't take very long since they have similar bone structure.

A large doe would have no problem giving birth to a small bucks kits. I would be more worried about a small doe carrying a giants offspring. My 5 pound blue otter lop had kits by a 13 pound flemmish cross at her prior home without any issues. There were 5 kits who were not particularly large at birth and the one they kept grew to 8 pounds.

 

[ckcs]

Thank you Dood for the response. Did your lop flemish cross keep the lop ears?

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

i've wondered what the bone structure of some crosses would be...

like breeding flemish and lionheads.... more of a lion sized "lionhead".

or breeding flemish and jersey wooly... rabbit version of a saint bernard :lol:

or flemish and netherland... flemish size but netherland body shape.

THERE ARE TOO MANY! :lol: :mrgreen:

 

[skysthelimit]

Angoras and NZW have similar body types, so it would be close.

I'm not sure I would even try the others, JW and NEthies have a hard enough time passing kits from their own breeds.

Far be it from me to say any of G-d's creatures are ugly, but yuck.

 

[Peach]

I've seen some sort of breed take either RIS or BIS with some rabbit that wasn't "pure" per say a few shows ago... It just resembled the breed so well and the judges aren't looking at pedigrees. Thus, outcross can work BUT what is comes down to: will it ever breed true?

To try to improve a breed with carefully outcrossing can have it's benefits, but you need to def know what your goals and athe ideal type you want. It won't happen over night.

Such as when I've had meat mutts crossed with a normal eared rabbit and my mini lops.....they had either normal ears or weaker cartilage. None were fully lopped.

 

[Dood]

Did your lop flemish cross keep the lop ears?

it wasn't mine, the people wanted another giant rabbit so they gave the doe to me and kept a kit. It had perfectly upright ears and was a 'boring' brown, they wanted blue otter :twilightzone: Just some backyard breeders who had no clue what they were doing. When I heard about it I was mortified that they had done the cross and thankful the doe was ok as I am sure she would have had a very slow and painful death if a kit got stuck - they weren't the type to visit the vet for 'just a rabbit'

Will it ever breed true?

This is the problem, even if a meat mutt matches the Standard perfectly, it doesn't mean it's offspring will.

With my 'oops' litter with the lone magpie (long story short-sisters mini lop must of bred her) I will not sell the kits as purebred eventhough 5 of the 6 are chinchilla coloured and have a great frame because I really don't know. I can guess since 3 are not growing quite as fast but it would be unethical to do so. I still plan to show them as they are from my extremely well bred doe but then it's off to freezer camp.

 

[skysthelimit]

Will it ever breed true?

This is the problem, even if a meat mutt matches the Standard perfectly, it doesn't mean it's offspring will.

With my 'oops' litter with the lone magpie (long story short-sisters mini lop must of bred her) I will not sell the kits as purebred eventhough 5 of the 6 are chinchilla coloured and have a great frame because I really don't know. I can guess since 3 are not growing quite as fast but it would be unethical to do so. I still plan to show them as they are from my extremely well bred doe but then it's off to freezer camp.

There are some breeds that bred to each other don't even breed true, hollands for one.

 

[ckcs]

I remember a neighbor of my sister in law had a rabbit. We were all together one evening and started talking about the rabbit. She said it was a Lionhead. We went over to see it. It must have been 8lbs. Although it had some featuring of Lionheads, I have to only assume it was mixed with a bigger breed.