New breeding doe fighting my buck

[BestBunniesByBrinn]

I have a 1 1/2 lion head buck that is really small but he has been bred before and produced bunnies 3x with another doe. I recently purchased a lion head doe from a breeder who isn't going to breed rabbits anymore. She has had litters before with his lion head bucks. I put them to breed today in my bucks cage like you are suppose to and she was ok for like a minute BUT then she started attacking him. I know rabbits will nip and stuff while breeding but she was really trying to hurt him. This does is bigger than my buck so I removed her because I really didn't want him injured. I'm stumped at why she is fighting. I talked to the other breeder yesterday and he says she not pregnant so its not that. Any ideas on what I could do? :help

 

[Imbrium]

While rabbits are induced ovulators, they do still have periods of increased and decreased fertility (it has to do with follicules in their ovaries maturing, dying off and being replaced by newly maturing follicles); I believe their fertility peaks every 4-5 days. Some does will mate regardless, but others will refuse the buck (and fight him off) during the times when they're least fertile - in this case, it's just a matter of waiting a couple days and then trying again.

The other possibility is that she's having a false pregnancy - if something triggers them to ovulate, their body goes through all the changes it would for a real pregnancy and they are unable to get pregnant during a false pregnancy. If ovulation was triggered by anything other than successful copulation (which can be girl-on-girl humping, humping inanimate objects or even by hormones if they're housed near an intact male), then their body eventually realizes that the eggs were never fertilized and the false pregnancy completes - after this, they can become pregnant again.

Removing her was absolutely the right choice, by the way - it's definitely not safe to leave them together if she isn't receptive to him.

Also, I don't remember the details off-hand, but I've read that you can gauge how fertile the doe is at any given time by the appearance of her vulva.

 

[woahlookitsme]

Wait a couple of days and try again. If mine try to attack I will hold them down and see if they lift when the buck mounts. If they don't I try a couple of days later and they are usually more receptive

 

[RabbitGirl101]

It could be that she isn't ready to breed yet, however I know some of my doe's are just plain stubborn (cough cough Eevee, lol!) I don't usually do cage breedings, I do table breedings as it is easier to make sure that they only breed and that they don't start fighting. If my doe isnt lifting then i usually tap the sensitive spot on her bum, and that usually makes them lift for breeding. If my doe is just not ready she won't lift even when I ask her so thats when I put her back and wait a few days.

 

[BestBunniesByBrinn]

Thank you guys. I have never had this problem before so I was stumped at why she is doing this. I will def wait a few days and try again. :big wink:

 

[Imbrium]

Yeah, I imagine having a non-pregnant female starting a fight can potentially be surprising to even an experienced breeder since times of lower fertility don't necessarily correlate to refusing the buck. I'm inclined to suspect that whether or not they fight off the buck during times of reduced fertility has to do with whether their personality is more dominant or submissive, based on my own experiences with two girls at pretty much polar opposite extremes of that scale.

I've got two spayed females and just adopted a neutered male - since he was only neutered about a week ago, I knew there was a good chance he was still very hormonal. I know hormone-induced humping can be construed as dominance-related humping and could therefore start a fight between a hormonal male and a spayed female. I decided to test the waters by introducing him to Gaz, theorizing that because she's an extremely submissive bunny, she probably wouldn't take offense if he humped her. As I suspected might be the case, he was adamant about trying to mate with her.

Since she's spayed, her hormones obviously weren't making her want to mate (same as they wouldn't be in an intact doe who was pregnant or experiencing a time of lower fertility)... yet she obediently sat there and got humped (and since she wasn't objecting, I let it go on for a good 10-15 seconds each time before shoving him off with my foot). Heck, he even humped her on the wrong end after she went into his cardboard box and turned around to face the open side and she *still* didn't seem to care (though I interrupted it ASAP that time rather than waiting since bad things can happen when a boy humps the "bitey" end of a doe!).

If I'd tried a face-to-face intro between the new guy and Nala, I'm sure she would've started a fight - Nala is *extremely* dominant and the couple of times in the past when her bond with Gazzles got broken, I was able to determine that the problem originally started with Gaz randomly deciding to try to hump Nala.