When to Breed Back Rabbits After Kindling

Breeding is an important topic for meat rabbit raisers. It’s where it all starts!

It’s important to know when to start breeding your meat rabbit pairs (at what age), as well as how many years you can expect to get out of them.

Of course, the basic mechanics of the operation are important, too. If you haven't read this article on how to breed meat rabbits and the important things to know before you breed, please start there!

A topic that often gets overlooked in the early days is when to breed your meat rabbits back. We focus so heavily on getting them started that we don’t always think ahead to the next step.

Jump to:

• Breeding Schedules and Meat Rabbit Management
• The Next Step: Breeding Meat Rabbits Back
• Does with Lost Litters or Missed Breedings
• Intensive production and fastest rebreeding schedule
• Breeding at or near weaning (four to six weeks after birth)
• Bimonthly or Quarterly schedule by the calendar
• Summarizing Common Breeding Schedules:
• Allowing the Doe Time to Recoup, Regroup, and Grow New Kits
• Assess the doe’s condition before breeding her back
• My Preferred Ideal Rebreeding Schedule

Breeding Schedules and Meat Rabbit Management

It is in your best interest to establish and keep a regular breeding schedule for your meat rabbits.

As prey animals, rabbits are designed for high reproduction. Frequent and regular breeding is not cruelty. It is nature, and it is necessary for optimal rabbit health for breeding stock.

When rabbits are not bred on a regular schedule, problems develop. Unbred meat rabbits

• Become overweight
• Gain fat internally surrounding organs
• Pack fat around reproductive organs, causing low ovulation, egg release, and low fertilization
• According to some sources, inactivity and infrequent breeding can result in shriveling of the ovaries (Raising Rabbits for Meat by Eric and Callene Rapp)
• Reluctance or unwillingness of rabbits, especially does, not to breed (does won’t stand or lift for the buck, does unreceptive, no fall offs and unsuccessful matings)
• May result in lazy and disinterested bucks (largely a weight gain problem)

Breeding is what rabbits are designed to do. Breeding on a reasonable, steady schedule will keep does in good condition. Regular breeding for bucks will also keep them slimmer and more interested, though the focus of rebreeding relies mostly on the maintenance and health of the does.

That said, this is a reason not to keep too many herd bucks because if they are not regularly breeding, they can also become overweight and disinterested. However, breeding issues for bucks are much less of a problem than they are for does.

The Next Step: Breeding Meat Rabbits Back

So, your first litter is on the ground. Hopefully, things are going well, and the kits are thriving. That’s not always the case, of course, but regardless, you need to keep breeding to keep going and producing.

But when? When should you rebreed your meat rabbits after the last litter?

There are a few ways to manage subsequent breedings in your meat rabbit program.

Does with Lost Litters or Missed Breedings

First, let’s get this out of the way because it is something of a separate issue (but clearly relevant and related).

If you have a doe who lost a litter at birth or soon after, the best time to rebreed her is as soon as possible.

First, make sure her condition is good. The doe should be up to her usual adult weight, not skinny or underweight, and must be free of symptoms of bleeding, illness, or injury.

In my experience, does with lost or small litters are not typically due to issues of illness or injury. In the cases I have dealt with, it is more a result of kits born on a wire that cooled too much or froze to death or similar issues that come down to basically poor mothering. It’s most common among first or second-time does.

If the doe had a small litter and there are one or two kits she is caring for, you’ll need to make a judgment call. It may be worth fostering one or two kits off to another doe if you have one with a litter close in age (as in, within days of each other).

Assuming the doe appears otherwise healthy and free of problems, breed her back within a week of kindling.

Often, the problems that cause losses will be helped rather than harmed by rebreeding.

• If the doe was overweight and therefore had difficulty gestating, carrying, or delivering kits, the fast turnaround to rebreeding will help her maintain a lower weight
• If the issues centered around inexperienced or poor mothering abilities, rebreeding and delivering are your best to enhance those mothering instincts

Rabbits can breed within days of delivery (the day off in many cases). Give her a few days to regroup, but then don’t waste time. Your best chance of making her a good, productive doe is to get her breeding and producing on a regular basis.

Pregnancy and delivery issues aside, assuming you have had a normal kindling and the mother has raised her litter, you can choose from a few good scheduling options for breeding back. What follows are typical good practices among meat rabbit breeders.

Intensive production and fastest rebreeding schedule

One option is to rebreed on an intensive schedule that is highly production-focused. This would be the schedule more typically followed by commercial rabbitries or large production rabbit farms. However, it is an option for homestead breeders and smaller-scale meat rabbit raisers, too.

This would produce the highest number of kits per year.

Under an intensive rebreeding schedule, the doe would be bred at around two weeks postpartum (after birth or kindling of the last litter).

This would result in each doe having an average of eight to nine litters of kits per year.

Assuming an average litter size of 6 to 8 kits, this schedule would produce an average of 48 to 72 grow outs per year per doe.

Six to eight is a conservative litter size for many popular meat rabbit breeds, and litters may be as many as 10 to 12 or more. That would mean a production of 80 to 96 grow outs per doe per year.

To do this, you should plan to wean your litters at four weeks of age. Five would be the absolute latest.

The schedule would look like this:

• Kindling: Day 1
• Breeding: Day 14 (two weeks after kindling)
• Weaning of litter: Day 28 (four weeks old)
• Rest and final gestation period for the doe: Two weeks (Days 28 through 42)
• Doe kindles next litter approximately 32 days after breeding, which would be about 6 weeks after the first litter was born

Does will naturally begin to produce less milk as the litters of kits begin to eat solid foods and drink water, meaning they are demanding less milk. That will relieve some of the demands on the mother’s body. She is likely to start denying kits milk and weaning naturally towards the four-week mark.

The two weeks of “rest” is to let the doe focus all her resources on the next gestating litter while maintaining the ability to keep up her own body condition.

A couple of drawbacks to this intensive schedule are

• Shortened breeding longevity of the doe
• Does bred on this schedule would be expected to produce for about two years
• Higher demands on the doe’s body
• Less time for the doe to rebuild body condition if it begins to drop
• The need to absolutely wean kits at four weeks old, which increases the chance of weaning enteritis

Before you decide on this approach, read more about how and when to wean kits. This might help you decide if you want to commit to having to wean kits by four weeks of age (because you have already rebred the doe).

Personally, I feel this approach is something that should be reserved for more experienced breeders. At least in the beginning, focus on learning to manage your rabbitry and get really good at caring for and maintaining your rabbits, housing, cleaning, and record-keeping before you jump that hard into an intense breeding schedule.

Breeding at or near weaning (four to six weeks after birth)

A more middle-ground approach would be to rebreed the doe at the time the kits are weaned and removed from the nest, which in my mind (and my meat rabbit barn) is when the kits are five to six weeks old.

Four weeks postpartum would be a closer, higher production breeding time but will still not be too demanding on the does, so it would be fair to say this schedule would be rebreeding between four and six weeks after kindling.

This would result in an average of five to six litters per doe per year.

Using the same litter size averages we did in the first scenario, this would equal out to an average of 30 to 40 grow outs per doe per year for litters of six to eight or 50 to 60 grow outs per doe per year for litters of 10 to 12.

By this time, you will notice that the kits are pretty much weaned naturally. Weaning enteritis and digestive problems tend to be low because the kits have already gotten about all they are going to get from their mother anyway. Basically, by this time, the kits are more like roommates. In fact, you’re more likely to see kits fall behind because of issues relating to feed competition and space.

This schedule of rebreeding would be a good balance between production breeding and kit and doe health and maintenance.

An advantage of rebreeding on this schedule is that the doe will have adequate downtime between litters. She is producing little to no milk for the current litter (even if you rebreed her at four or five weeks and don’t take the kits out until six weeks). She will have practically the entire pregnancy period to gestate the litter in utero. Most of her resources will go into that litter.

However, there will not be very much time between litters when she is “open” (not bred). That means she will also not have too much time to gain weight or excess fat, and that will keep her in good reproductive health.

This schedule would look like this:

• Kindling: Day 1
• Breeding: Between day 28 to 42 (about 4 weeks after delivery of the previous litter)
• Rest and final gestation period for the doe: 2 to 4 weeks, depending on when bred
• Doe kindles the next litter at about 32 days, which is between 8 and 10 weeks after the previous litter was born

Bimonthly or Quarterly schedule by the calendar

This schedule is a little more relaxed than the one above. Truthfully, there is not a great amount of difference between the two and either should keep your does in good health and condition if the schedule is regularly maintained.

However, it does stretch the time between litters and breedings a bit more. That means that there is a somewhat increased chance of the doe gaining weight -- perhaps more weight than is ideal -- between litters. This is because she will have a period of several weeks when she is neither nursing nor growing developing kits.

For most does, breeding on this schedule will work out fine, but if you have does that easily pack on weight and experience recurring breeding or kindling difficulties, consider breeding them on a more frequent schedule, such as one of those above.

On the other hand, this schedule is easier on the breeder, especially if you think of yourself as a smaller scale breeder. It’s a bit of a happier medium for a lot of home producers and homesteaders, while still managing good doe health and not inviting too many issues resulting from does being open and unbred for a long period of time.

On this schedule, you would rebreed the doe at about eight weeks after the birth of the previous litter.

This would give you about four litters per doe per year.

Following our litter size estimates, this would average out to 24 to 32 grow outs per doe per year for litters of six to eight, or 40 to 48 grow outs per year for litters of 10 to 12.

Schedule:

• Kindling: Day 1
• Breeding: Day 56 (about 8 weeks after kindling)
• Rest period for the does, with no nursing or gestation: weaning through rebreeding from about 6 to 8 weeks postpartum
• Rest period while pregnant /gestation period for next litter: 4 weeks, from 8 to 12 weeks postpartum
• Doe kindles the next litter at about 32 days, approximately 12 ½ weeks after the birth of the previous litter

https://youtu.be/VtIQTY_Fc8A

Summarizing Common Breeding Schedules:

1. Breed doe at 2 weeks postpartum; wean kits at 4 weeks; doe kindles 2 weeks after weaning
2. Breed doe at 4 to 5 weeks postpartum; wean kits at 4 to 5 weeks; doe kindles about 4 weeks after weaning
3. Breed doe at 8 weeks postpartum; wean kits between 5 and 6 weeks; doe kindles about 12.5 weeks postpartum

Allowing the Doe Time to Recoup, Regroup, and Grow New Kits

There is no “right” or “wrong” between the three rebreeding schedules mentioned above. There are simply different breeding schedules.

Most of the time, a regular schedule within these ranges will work out well. Try not to go beyond the three-month schedule of breeding. That’s the point where you invite breeding and kindling difficulties into your rabbitry.

Do plan for all does to have a rest period between litters when she is at least not nursing a litter for part of the time. This should be a minimum of at least two weeks off nursing between litters. This is so that the doe is not overly taxed and can keep a balance of body condition and health. And resources for her kits!

Assess the doe’s condition before breeding her back

No matter what schedule of rebreeding you decide to go with for your meat rabbits, always pay attention to the health and body condition of the doe before you rebreed. If the doe seems lethargic or underweight or has other obvious health issues when it comes time to breed her back according to your dates and paper, hold off.

Take some time to rebuild the condition of the rabbit. Do not breed underweight or poorly conditioned rabbits!

As does age, it may be harder for them to maintain their weight while pregnant or nursing. It may take a bit more time for them to come back up to good condition between litters. You may notice the rabbits looking thin or with bones or ribs more noticeable.

If you see this, take a couple of weeks (or a month if necessary) to bring up her body weight before you breed. Some older does may need a bit of a boost or supplement on top of their regular feed. Consider increasing to a higher (18%) feed if that’s an option.

Another good way to quickly restore a doe’s weight and condition is to give her a tablespoon or two of black oil sunflower seed or calf manna (milk replacer) on top of her pellets.

It should not take more than a couple of weeks for a doe’s condition to be restored with good care, feeding, and supplementation. If it does, it is time to consider replacing that doe and culling her or taking her out of the breeding rotation.

My Preferred Ideal Rebreeding Schedule

My most preferred schedule of rebreeding is rebreeding at five to six weeks after kindling.

• Rebreeding at 2 weeks postpartum is a bit intensive for me.
• I also have no need to rebreed at that high of a production schedule.
• I have more than I can or need to handle rebreeding at 5 or more weeks, so it’s unnecessary for me and not something I have considered.
• I have tried rebreeding does at 4 weeks postpartum, and in my experience, it often is more struggle than it is worth.
• There is nothing wrong with it, but my observation is that does are not that willing yet at that time, and I have to fight more to get them to lift and breed willingly.
• This often results in having to make multiple attempts at breeding and bringing does to bucks every 12 hours for several days.
• I’ve found does to be much more willing and ready at 5 to 6 weeks after kindling, and at that time, breeding tends to be much quicker, easier, and more reliable.
• I have also caused difficulties with lifting and breeding by waiting too long and keeping does open and unbred for too long.
• When I’ve done this, I’ve found myself with fat does with little to no interest in breeding and having to expose them day after day until I see fall-offs.
• This can make record keeping and installing nest boxes a bit of a mess because you end up with a long period of possible breeding where she might have been bred on day 1 or day 7, and that puts an entire week in between dates when she might be expected to kindle. Not fun! (And the nest box often gets used as a litter box.)
• For this reason, I recommend not stretching the breeding schedule further than the four-times-per-year (quarterly breeding) window.