Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

I have a question for people who know a thing or two about breeding rabbits.

I have a nice dwarf female, she is a good mother. My friend got a nice dwarf male so I decided to try and get a litter of him. He has already proven himself as a breeder so nothing wrong there.

Basically here is what happened. I put them in a pen together and she became very aggressive, I ended up having to rescue him. I waited a day and put her in his cage, I thought she would be more receptive since the cage would smell even more like his territory than the pen. She was still aggressive but a little less. By this time however he wanted nothing to do with her. They started to get along and I left them together for three days but I never saw mating. I put her back into her pen that has two adult daughters. She obsessively kept humping the other two for the next day, so I figured she was not bred. I put her back with the male but right away she was aggressive again. I tried another larger pen so he could get away if he had to.

Then I put her back where she immediately started humping the other females again. This went on for five days, the daughters growl at her to go away now, so I figure she is not bred. Back into the male's cage she goes. Again aggressive and she kept rubbing the entire cage to put her sent on it. Then she turned pit bull aggressive towards the male and I had to take her out before he was seriously hurt. He is terrified of her now so no breeding is going to happen anyway. WHAT THE HECK??? Anyone ever see this before? Usually if a female rejects a male they just make a noise and move away but they don't go psycho.
Pure breeds are so weird.

1/ If the buck trusts you, hold the doe in a receptive position and let him do his thing. There are instructions in rabbit texts and probably on YouTube as to how to restrain the doe for mating.

2/ Breed rabbits at midnight - that's when they mate in the wild.

Try table breeding. We never leave our does qith the bucks unsupervised. Does and Bucks can be very aggressive and seriously injure each other.

I was hoping that maybe the crankyness was a sign that she is bred. I will wait to see if she has babies and if not I will try it like you people suggested. Turns out the problem is that the female is nuts... lol. I put the male and another of my females together and it was total bunny love all afternoon, actually more like bunny porn! Lol. They even cuddled after. Proof of the other female's nuttyness, the whole time she was biting the pen door to get through the wire so that she could attack the male and other female. This isn't a small cage, these are full size chicken pens, she had lots of room to go do her own thing yet she acted like a crazed pit bull trying to get through the door. A little too territorial I think!

And you wish to pass on to your herd "crazy" behavior characteristics?

Rabbit is delicious, just sayin'

Dave Stuart wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 07, 2018 11:56 am

And you wish to pass on to your herd "crazy" behavior characteristics?

I'm raising killer bunnies! She is an excellent pet rabbit, very good with people, that's why I wanted to breed her. Plus she wasn't always like this, it just started this spring, but if she is not pregnant then I'm not breeding her anymore.

Dave Stuart wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:02 pm

1/ If the buck trusts you, hold the doe in a receptive position and let him do his thing. There are instructions in rabbit texts and probably on YouTube as to how to restrain the doe for mating.

2/ Breed rabbits at midnight - that's when they mate in the wild.

This (#1) is also known as force mating, from what I've noticed over the years is that if the male is successful he'll roll backwards onto his back once the deed is done, it'll be quick