Rabbit Breeding Strategy: My Tips For Beginners Raising Rabbits

Breeding rabbits isn’t just about putting two rabbits together and hoping for the best. If you want strong, healthy litters with great type—and if you want to grow as a breeder with a solid reputation—you need a plan. A good breeding strategy helps improve your herd over time, ensuring you meet your goals while managing space, timing, and the overall health of your rabbits.

I hear a lot of breeders struggle with this, so in this post, I’ll walk you through my breeding strategy, using this year’s plans as an example. I’ll cover how I decide which rabbits to pair, when to breed, and how to avoid common mistakes. If you’re interested in rabbits from my upcoming litters, feel free to reach out!

Step 1: Define Your Breeding Goals

Before anything else, you need to define what you’re trying to improve. Too many breeders try to fix everything at once, which rarely works. Instead, focus on one or two traits per breeding season. Once you make progress in those areas, you can shift your focus for the next season.

Some common breeding goals include:

• Improving litter health – If your litters aren’t as strong as they could be, experiment with diet, genetics, or husbandry practices to see what needs adjusting.
• Enhancing flesh condition – Maybe your rabbits need more thickness or fullness in their flesh. This can be influenced by genetics and diet.
• Refining body structure – If you’re breeding for show, you might be working on specific structural traits like topline, shoulders, or hindquarters.
• Expanding or refining your herd – Are you trying to grow your rabbitry or downsize? I recently culled and refined my herd down to about 8–9 keepers, but I plan to expand back up to around 16 over time.

For this year, my main goal is shortening the shoulders. Ideally, I want my rabbits to resemble a “half basketball” when posed. Some of my current stock has longer shoulders than I’d like, so I’ll be selecting pairings that help refine this trait.

Step 2: Selecting the Right Pairings

One of the biggest misconceptions in rabbit breeding is the idea that you should pair a rabbit that is weak in one area with another that excels in that area—like matching a rabbit with weak shoulders to one with strong shoulders. But genetics don’t work that way!

Instead, you should always aim to breed the best to the best. When selecting breeders, look at each rabbit individually and ask:

• Does this rabbit meet my standards?
• Is it in the top 10% of my herd?
• If I could only keep one rabbit from this litter, would this be the one?

If a rabbit falls into the bottom percentage of your herd, it should be culled or removed from the breeding program. Breeding should always be an ongoing process of improvement, and that means consistently working to refine your stock over time.

In my case, I have a few older foundation does that I love, but I’m holding them back until I find the right buck to help refine shoulder structure. For my younger does, I’m breeding them early in the season so that if I don’t get the results I want, I can try again next year.

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Step 3: Timing Your Breeding Season

Once you know your pairings, the next step is deciding when to breed. Timing is critical because:

• You want to avoid stressful periods (e.g., extreme weather, noisy holidays).
• You need to plan for cage space, especially as kits grow and need to be separated.
• You may have show deadlines if you’re breeding for competition.

Key Considerations for Timing

1. Avoid Unfavorable Birth Dates
   • Write down dates when you don’t want litters to be born (vacations, holidays, extremely cold or hot months).
   • I personally avoid litters being born during frost dates, but since I now have a barn and a heated basement, I have more flexibility.
2. Consider Space & Sales Timing
   • How quickly do you sell or harvest your rabbits? If your buyers take a few weeks to pick up their rabbits, make sure you have enough cage space before the next litters need to be separated.
   • My breed tends to need separation by 9–10 weeks old, or they’ll start fighting. If I know a litter will be ready to go on August 1st, I won’t plan another litter that needs separating until at least September 1st.
3. Show Season Planning
   • If you’re raising show rabbits, consider how long they take to develop. Some breeds need 8–12 months before they’re ready for competition, so plan your litters accordingly.
   • I have two or three does that I want to show this year, so I’m holding off on breeding them until after their show season.

Step 4: Tracking & Adjusting Your Plan

No breeding plan goes exactly as expected, so you need to be flexible. I highly recommend keeping a breeding journal to track:

• What you planned vs. what actually happened.
• Which pairs successfully bred.
• Any unexpected issues, like a doe refusing a certain buck.
• How each litter turns out, so you can refine future pairings.

For example, if I have a doe that didn’t produce a strong litter, I’ll note whether it might be a genetic mismatch with the buck and try a different pairing next time. I use Trello for this because it’s easy to access on my phone, but a physical notebook works just as well.

Final Thoughts: Keep Improving Your Herd

Breeding rabbits is an infinite game—there’s always something to improve. Even if you fix a problem, genetics can bring it back years later. That’s okay! What matters is staying aware and making adjustments as needed.

I’ve had shoulder issues creep back into my herd after being under control for years, and I’m working on fixing them again. That doesn’t mean I’ve failed—it’s just part of the process. The key is to stay observant, keep records, and always aim for improvement.