Topic: rabbit gender
I hesitate to use the s*x word because all sorts of spam will come my way, so how does one go about figuring out how many girls and boys are in any litter? How soon can you tell?
The best pictures I have EVER seen for checking out what you have is Valerie Anthony's web site.
It helps to have many bunnies to check against, and if you have a small litter and they all look the same...they all COULD be the same!
At age 4 days, the spots you are looking at are 1/8 inch away from each other, and it is very hard to see any differences. Each day that bunny grows you can tell better, and the ones that grow faster than the others are easier to see first as ALL their parts grow proportionally!
The biggest thing to remember is this...when you depress girls' genitalia, the slit that appears slopes down. When you depress boy's genitalia, the circular opening will pop out and stay round and does not slope "down".
At age 10 days - 2 weeks I can get pretty accurate. For instance, Liebchen's litter looks like 3 guys and one girl. I started seeing differences at 10 days, and they have been consistently growing as I suspected. Gretel's litter is JUST 10 days old and I see 4 guys and one girl. I will check daily until they are 3 weeks old, at which time I generally sell the bunnies (although they do not leave mama until they are 8 weeks old).
MOVING DAY...With balmy 40* temps predicted for the next few days, I am taking this opportunity to move everyone out of the cellar and into the light of the Girls' Bunny Barn. I took great pains to recreate the cage/nest for Gretel EXACTLY as she had it in the cellar, for she is new at this mothering thing and I wanted her to find some familiarity after the move. I kept the nesting material the same. Back when Gretel and Liebchen had been pulling fur the day the bunnies were born, I had removed half of the VOLUMES of wool pulled with this move in mind. As babies soil the nesting material, it is important to keep things as clean as you can to prevent disease, so I had clean and fresh wool to add to their nests as a buffer against the colder temps they are dealing with at night.
