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The first rule in breeding rabbits is "don’t breed unless you are prepared to live with the consequences." That may mean finding homes for the bunnies, housing them yourself or, if you are so inclined, using them for meat animals.

Angoras are generally sexually mature at six months of age. It is usually best not to breed them at that age but to allow them a few more months to finish growing themselves. They should, however, be bred by 12 months to avoid possible reproductive problems.

The gestation period averages 31 days. Before breeding the doe should be groomed, plucked and cleaned – especially around her tail. She is then taken to the buck’s cage. A buck should NEVER be taken to the doe’s cage. A doe is too territorial to allow a buck in her cage without fighting. Once the doe has been introduced to the buck’s cage the mating occurs very quickly.

Rabbit birth is referred to s "kindling". About five days before the expected kindling date reduce the feed slightly and place a nest box in the doe’s cage. The nestbox may be made of metal or wood and must be clean and sanitary. Several inches of clean bedding, such as straw, wood shavings or a combination of both should be put in the nestbox. The doe will use this bedding, along with wool she will pull from herself, to make a nest for her young. Known as kits. The average litter size is from five to seven kits.

After kindling you should distract the doe with a treat while you check the nestbox. You will need to remove any dead kits and check that none have become entangled in the bedding or wool. It may be necessary the clip the wool in the nestbox into short pieces to prevent the kits from becoming entangled in the long strands.

The mother will normally nurse her young once or twice a day for about five minutes. As long as the bunnies are together in the nest it is a pretty good indication that all is well with the litter. The kits will remain in the nestbox for about four weeks, at this time they will be able to hop in and out on their own. Occasionally, one of the kits may be accidentally brought out of the nest by the doe. You will have to replace it to the nestbox, as the doe has no way to physically move her babies. Once the babies are able to go in and out of the nestbox on their own, at about four weeks, you should permanently remove the box. Most kits are weaned by the time they are six weeks old, but many breeders will leave the babies with the mother until they are eight weeks old. At weaning the kits should be moved to a separate cage to grow – remember they should be free fed at this point. The mother can then recover from the litter and, if desired, rebred in two to four weeks.

The following section should be done soon.

A very brief tutorial on rabbit colors.

"What color is my rabbit, and how do I get more or insert color name here."

We'll stick to the most common colors, at first, all of which can be determined by the pairing of the color determining genes. Later on, I'll go into

certain color patterns that are a subsets of the major color patterns.

Basically, rabbit colors are controlled by five main sets of color genes. They are represented by the letters a–e—twice (two parents, one from each parent).

A capital letter denotes a dominant, thereby visible, trait, and a lowercase letter will denote a recessive color that will only show if the animal inherited the same recessive trait from both parents. The color traits are:

A - Agouti Pattern
a - non-agouti (solid/no color rings)
B - Black
b - Chocolate
C - Color is visible
c - Color is invisible (albino) There are several variations of this one. I'll go into the most common one later.
D - Full color is shown
d - Dilute, color is shown at a lesser depth
E - Normal color pattern
e - modified color distribution

How these different traits line-up determine the color, color density and color pattern. It may be very straightforward, and easy to understand, or may seemto be an exercise in "how'd you get that?".

Let's start with an easy one.

AABBCCDDEE - This is a Chestnut Agouti. Why? Let's examine the string. First, the two capital A's produce only an agouti-patterned rabbit. It's Chesnut (black tips) because of the two B's. Because of the two C's, you can see the color. With two D's, you see all of the color. And with two E's the color isn't modified at all.

Make sense? Good, let's mix it up a bit with some of those recessive genes. How about this: AAbbCCDDEE. What color do you think this would be? It's almost identical to the first example, except for the two b's. The lowercase b's denote a recessive to black—chocolate. Therefore, this rabbit would be a Chocolate Agouti. If there were only one lowercase b, the rabbit would still appear to be a normal Chestnut, but would be carrying the gene for the recessive chocolate color.

Let's mix it up again. How about AABBCCddEE? Again, only a minor change from the first example, with only the two lowercase d's;hey are dilute colors. (Think of dilutes as a watered-down version of the full color. The basic example of dilute colors is black diluted becomes blue, and chocolate diluted becomes lilac. that should be enough for now, as this will define most of the color variations, and much later on the other colors.) Did you figure out the name of the color yet? It's a Blue Agouti, more commonly known as Opal.

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