As with all mammals, rabbits can have sibling babies. Therefore, close attention should be paid to which rabbits from a litter are later kept together. Ideally, rabbits of the same sex should be kept together and if you have male and female rabbits together, it is recommended to neuter the male.

The Sexual maturity in the male rabbit occurs at very different times. Roughly, it can be classified by the breed of the respective rabbit. For smaller breeds it is assumed to be 3 to 4 months, for medium breeds 6-7 months and for the large breeds from about 9-10 months. Here you should bring your male rabbit to the vet at the beginning of this time to castrate him.

How to recognize the rabbit sex?

To recognize the sex of a rabbit is not so easy, here you should get the help of an expert person, so that the sex can be determined safely. An experienced rabbit breeder or an animal shelter employee are good contacts here. Of course, a veterinarian can also reliably determine the sex of your rabbit.

There are rare cases where even the veterinarian is wrong in determining the sex. Such a mistake can have very unpleasant and sometimes even fatal consequences. Because an uncontrolled inbreeding can lead to serious deformities in the rabbit babies.

The best way to determine the sex is to hold the rabbit by the rib cage and hold it to your chest. With the other hand you hold the butt and so a second person can see which sex it is. In order for the second person to see the sex, you must apply gentle pressure and run a finger over the genitalia, it will then normally poke out.

The genitals of male rabbits and females are almost identical, so it is really difficult for a layman to recognize them. Because males can retract the testicles and then it is difficult to tell the difference. Therefore, we recommend you to consult a competent person.

Rabbits ram each other, what to do?

Rabbits ramming each other is not uncommon and is used to establish hierarchy among themselves. Why we bring this up is that many newcomers to rabbit keeping misinterpret this ramming. Where you need to be careful, however, is when you are keeping two siblings together. Here you should be absolutely sure that the rabbits are of the same sex so that no inbreeding occurs.

Again, we can only recommend you to go to an experienced breeder or veterinarian.

Rabbit siblings babies - inbreeding

If an inbreeding should have taken place by mistake, then you must see how the animals develop. If an inbreeding should take place by mistake and happen once, then it is mostly so that the animals develop quite normally. Because inbreeding is never excluded even in wild hares and therefore sick animals do not have to be born immediately.

Where it becomes dangerous is when a line of animals permanently, i.e. over several generations with each other produced. Here, after several generations, animals can be expected to be born with deformities or weak health systems. However, a danger also exists in the case of a single inbreeding.

This is because defective genes are largely passed on to the children. This means that a rabbit that has a genetic defect is very likely to pass this genetic defect on to its offspring. However, this is also only the case with a recessively inherited genetic defect.

Rabbit breeds line breeding and inbreeding

In comparison to inbreeding, there is also line breeding, which is used by many breeders to preserve the typical characteristics of a rabbit breed or to make them particularly prominent. This is done by starting with a pair of rabbits that meet all the requirements of the breed. In the line breeding there is the so-called back mating, this takes place as follows.

From the first litter of the rabbit pair, the female rabbits are taken that seem most promising for breeding. These are then mated with the sire in order to obtain a line that primarily brings the strengths of the sire to bear. The same is done with the males from the first litter, these are mated with the mother to emphasize her strengths.

So that the breeder can further strengthen the characteristics of the parents, this line breeding can also be continued with the second, third and fourth generation as described above. It is also possible to cross the individual lines between the original dam and sire animal in order to emphasize special characteristics. With this line breeding almost all our rabbit breeds became what they are today.

It is essential for the breeders to take care that only healthy and immaculate animals are selected for this line breeding. The difference with inbreeding is that never Rabbit siblings Produce babies with each other.