Greetings from South Carolina!

[Lydia]

And now, for even more babies!


Baby # 11

Baby #12

Baby #13

Baby #14

Baby #15

Baby #16

And now, for the grand finale...


Ethel & Cinnamon's babies!


The Angel Babies
Ethel's little bundles of joy! Imagine our shock and surprise that 2 black bunnies would produce pure white puff balls with blue eyes! They are 2 1/2 weeks old.

Taking pictures can be so tiring when your only 2 weeks old!



The Wild Bunch
These pictures are of Cinnamon's 5 babies. 4 of them are practically identical, but one stands out in Charcoal Grey. It was near impossible to get them to sit still, so prepare for pictures in slight disarray. They are also 2 1/2 weeks old.

Hope you all enjoy the pictures!

 

[cwolfec]

Oh my heavens to betsey! Cuteness overload!!! I want to get my Cinnabun a bun-wife and I think a mini Rex would be perfect :biggrin: I've heard that Rex bunnies are "talkers?" Is that true in your experience?

 

[Lydia]

Hi Carrie! Yes, Mini Rex's are wonderful! I'm not totally sure what you mean by talkers, but they are definitely very sweet and expressive bunnies. Most of them enjoy being held, and will often stare up at you like they are trying to have a deep conversation.

How old is your Cinnabun? Our older babies (the 7 week olds) are weaned and litter box trained for the most part. There are a fair amount of girls among them. Perhaps Cinnabun would like a young bun-wife? All of our adult females are very doting and sweet, and their daughters take after them. I'm sure that one of the bunny girls would get along with Cinnabun famously. They all have beautiful looks to go along with those beautiful personalities, so they are sure to one day make beautiful babies.

 

[woahlookitsme]

Welcome to the forums! I just wanted to add something about maybe a cause for a dead litter. My friend once tried linebreeding her netherland dwarfs (father to daughter) those babies ended up dying early in their life and she thinks it was because of the cross. Inbred an linebreeding rabbits can be very dangerous and some genetic crosses can be just deadly. I know it wasnt on purpose but just to maybe give an idea on why? Also those blue eyed white bunnies are called just that but BEWs for short. And are not surprising once the vienna gene is understood. Good luck with finding homes for your babies!

 

[Lydia]

woahlookitsme wrote:

Welcome to the forums! I just wanted to add something about maybe a cause for a dead litter. My friend once tried linebreeding her netherland dwarfs (father to daughter) those babies ended up dying early in their life and she thinks it was because of the cross. Inbred an linebreeding rabbits can be very dangerous and some genetic crosses can be just deadly. I know it wasnt on purpose but just to maybe give an idea on why? Also those blue eyed white bunnies are called just that but BEWs for short. And are not surprising once the vienna gene is understood. Good luck with finding homes for your babies!

I'm sorry to be contrary, but your friend is wrong. First off, I can't believe your friend would be so cruel that she would purposely breed father and daughters together.
Not only is it creating the possibility for genetic problems down the road, it would be extremely traumatic for the female bunnies.

If she did not do a necropsy there is no way of knowing how those babies died. Our babies did not die of any weird genetic abnormalities. The running theory is that they died from Coccidia and Hypoglycemic Shock. We had 6 babies die, and towards the end some of them had seizures. One of them, Dixie, had seizures that were temporarily cured by fluids from the vet, medicine, and being bottle fed. She ultimately died because her little body got too weak. Danny, one of the babies that died, showed signs of being sick just over a week before his death. I hand fed him and his sister Constance along with Dixie, giving them their medicine with every feeding, and it still wasn't enough to overcome the slow starvation and hypoglycemic shock that ultimately killed them. I held 5 out of 6 of those babies as they died, and it was an extremely difficult and emotional event for me. I don't like talking about it, so that's one reason that I didn't go into even more extreme detail.

Furthermore, if it had been genetic, it is highly likely that more of the babies if not all of the babies would have died. The 8 week olds all have the same father, and yet 16 of those babies are chubby, happy, and very healthy. It definitely seems that whatever killed them was spread by close contact, yet in the one litter that Danny, Constance, and Dixie belonged to, only those 3 died out of 6 babies. They were all in close quarters, yet 3 lived after being removed from their mother after Dixie's death, and the 2 remaining sick babies were put in quarantine with their mother.

Never ever make assumptions about genetic attributes or mutations. Of course if 2 closely related animals or people have children together, any shared genetic flaws or mutations have a greater likely hood of showing up in those children. Yet, those greater odds sometimes never show up or prevail, and those offspring are perfectly normal.

Genetics is a tricky thing, and no one can ever fully know how an animal or person might turn out based only on what is known about the parents.

Thank you for the good wishes. I don't mean to sound hostile, I just simply feel that if someone is going to make a grand statement, they should have proof to back it up. I was raised that way, my husband was raised that way, and our future children will be raised that way. A statement without proof is a weak one.

Have a good evening!

 

[woahlookitsme]

Lydia wrote:
I'm sorry to be contrary, but your friend is wrong. First off, I can't believe your friend would be so cruel that she would purposely breed father and daughters together.
Not only is it creating the possibility for genetic problems down the road, it would be extremely traumatic for the female bunnies.

If she did not do a necropsy there is no way of knowing how those babies died. Our babies did not die of any weird genetic abnormalities. The running theory is that they died from Coccidia and Hypoglycemic Shock. We had 6 babies die, and towards the end some of them had seizures. One of them, Dixie, had seizures that were temporarily cured by fluids from the vet, medicine, and being bottle fed. She ultimately died because her little body got too weak. Danny, one of the babies that died, showed signs of being sick just over a week before his death. I hand fed him and his sister Constance along with Dixie, giving them their medicine with every feeding, and it still wasn't enough to overcome the slow starvation and hypoglycemic shock that ultimately killed them. I held 5 out of 6 of those babies as they died, and it was an extremely difficult and emotional event for me. I don't like talking about it, so that's one reason that I didn't go into even more extreme detail.

Furthermore, if it had been genetic, it is highly likely that more of the babies if not all of the babies would have died. The 8 week olds all have the same father, and yet 16 of those babies are chubby, happy, and very healthy. It definitely seems that whatever killed them was spread by close contact, yet in the one litter that Danny, Constance, and Dixie belonged to, only those 3 died out of 6 babies. They were all in close quarters, yet 3 lived after being removed from their mother after Dixie's death, and the 2 remaining sick babies were put in quarantine with their mother.

Never ever make assumptions about genetic attributes or mutations. Of course if 2 closely related animals or people have children together, any shared genetic flaws or mutations have a greater likely hood of showing up in those children. Yet, those greater odds sometimes never show up or prevail, and those offspring are perfectly normal.

Genetics is a tricky thing, and no one can ever fully know how an animal or person might turn out based only on what is known about the parents.

Thank you for the good wishes. I don't mean to sound hostile, I just simply feel that if someone is going to make a grand statement, they should have proof to back it up. I was raised that way, my husband was raised that way, and our future children will be raised that way. A statement without proof is a weak one.

Have a good evening!

No worries on being contrary I don't take many things personally but definitely use what I have experienced in breeding as proof. Of course every situation is different but I am not new to the breeding game. I still have alot to learn of course

It is not cruel at all to breed fathers to daughters and mothers to sons. Line breeding and inbreeding can be used in a breeding program for many reasons. Mainly we use it to get the good things out of different lines and just make them better or more pronounced. Of course sometimes the bad things can come out too and this is what we don't want. But we learn and don't do that cross again or figure out where we went wrong. I am actually about to breed a father to daughter in hopes of getting some nice show babies. I will let you know how they turn out I do think that in breeding rabbits with unknown history can be dangerous and this is where I was trying to point out that may be of cause. Although that breeding rabbits even with a known history can also be just as dangerous. None of her babies were mis formed or misshapen. They all just died weeks after birth of unknown reasons you are right we cant be sure. But she never inbred again and it has not happened in her herd. I did not know all the background to why the babies might have died but I was just giving a suggestion as to maybe why. Crossing rabbits even non related can be deadly, I know firsthand also, but yes you're right, we will probably never fully understand genetics.

Also Not necessarily that more or all of the babies should have died should lead you to believe it wasn't. I know that you think it's by contact and I can't say anything different because I wasn't there but Crossing this rabbit with that rabbit and having all the babies die (no matter what of) would make me wonder if it was the mom or the dad that may have caused this. Genetically speaking. That's just how I think. Breeders just call it a bad cross and try not to repeat that breeding. But maybe crossing that same buck with a different doe creates all healthy litters. Well I guess it wasn't the father then. Mutations do not always cause death.

 

[Mattiegabco1]

Wow your story was very interesting! I saw that you said all 5 mothers had 22 babies. With one of my mothers her very first batch of babies was 19 (let me remind you this was just one mother). Ofcourse some them died because the mother could not feed all of them. I just thought I would mention that. Anyways Welcome to the forum!

 

[Mattiegabco1]

Wow your story was very interesting! I saw that you said all 5 mothers had 22 babies. With one of my mothers her very first batch of babies was 19 (let me remind you this was just one mother). Ofcourse some them died because the mother could not feed all of them. I just thought I would mention that. Anyways Welcome to the forum!

 

[Lydia]

Hi Madison!
Sorry if there was a misunderstanding. The mother bunnies had 22 babies total, not each. Augusta had 5, Luna had 6, Nova had 3, Ramona had 6, and Dora had 2. Unfortunately Dora did not want to care for her babies, and we had to give them to Nova to raise. The babies were larger than usual, and it could be the trauma of giving birth to such large babies was too much for Dora and she had postpartum depression or something. The babies did will with Nova however.

Our bunnies are Mini Rex's, which is a dwarf breed. The most babies we have ever had in one litter was 7, and that was Ethel's first litter. She was extremely overwhelmed, but she still did a marvelous job raising them.

You have me curious, what breed was your bunny that had 19 babies? I never knew a bunny could have so many at once!

 

[Mattiegabco1]

Oh ok. The mother that had 19 babies is an American Chinchilla Rabbit. Also known as the "Heavy weight chinchilla rabbit". They are between 5-7 pounds. She mated with a domestic male. I never knew they could have so few babies.