URGENT! How Many Can a Doe Foster?

[BC Belgians]

:up: Zass, we are totally on the same page. Our farm also raised lamb and, to a lesser extend beef, and all the animals need to pull their own weight to make it work ... in a partnership, like you said. Even my cats contribute. The rabbits will, too, in time.

We have been raising animals for a long time, but a thing I never loose sight of is the quality of live we give our animals - especially if they are going to be someone's dinner. This doesn't mean we tolerate animals that are hard to handle or maintain. The poor-doers eventually go and so do the ones that are ill-tempered - which is especially important when we are talking about 2,000 lb. bulls or 300 lb. rams. Everyone gets the benefit of the doubt for a while, however, and some less desirable qualities are tolerated, because the particular individual excels elsewhere.

 

[akane]

I had a champagne d'argent who couldnt raise more than 5 and all fosters died, a creme d'argent who gave birth to 8 minimum, and a mini rex who raised everything I gave her even when she had 3 different ages of kits. It all depends. You have to decide what you want to breed for. Sometimes bad personalities are learned and not passed on. Other times you get lots of difficult rabbits. I carefully bred demon rabbit's line with only one left to live for the next generation and several generations of breeding to good tempered rabbits later the bucks were ok around humans but the does refused to breed with them so something was odd there and it took a few more generations to get sane does. The experiment showed it was not worth breeding the bad tempered rabbits.

 

[Zass]

Belgians are a bit different, like you've mentioned before Akane, they need to be a little spirited to pose and move properly at show. If they stretched out and loafed like a meat mutt, it wouldn't help their case much :lol:

With meat breeds there is less reason to tolerate nonsense. There are just too many good rabbits from good lines heading to the freezer every day to mess around with difficult does.

 

[akane]

I was speaking more of the commercial breeds and some compact breeds based on commercial breeds like mini rex. The energetic nature and sometimes fickle nature of a breed isn't really bad temper. People just tend to accept bad temperament, as in violence, because it's easier than isolating the good temperament aspects in an energetic rabbit. With the 2nd round of culling I mostly cut my netherlands with issues. Some are more nervous at times than commercial breeds and they still don't mate as easily but I'm not bleeding from teeth marks anymore. Also if I sell them as young juniors they tend to settle in before they hit that defensive stage and everything goes smoothly. It's that bit of nervousness still showing through still when they get to be adults.

 

[Phacelia]

Something occurred to me today, thinking back over the events of this past weekend:

When I went to pull fur from Cardamom's belly, it did not come out easily AT ALL. Would that be a sign that maybe the correct hormones hadn't activated? That could explain her confusion.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

When I went to pull fur from Cardamom's belly, it did not come out easily AT ALL. Would that be a sign that maybe the correct hormones hadn't activated? That could explain her confusion.

Good question. That is something I haven't seen addressed here on RT, but you may be onto something. :hmm:

Maybe a separate thread about this is in order, so we can document everyone's experiences. I haven't had enough coffee yet to figure out a good title... :thinking: hmm...

Study: delayed nesting behavior correlates with difficulty of manually pulling fur?

Nope, too long to fit...

Difficulty manually pulling fur= delayed nesting behavior? <-- that fits in the title box.