buck had allergy now what?

[SquashNut]

I am culling my buck because he is passing allergies to his kits. (alergic to hay)
Some of his kits die just as they start getting hay in the box to eat.
Does that mean any of the kits that survive and eat hay normally are OK to keep? I mean as long as they don't show symptoms. Or is it possible they may not show it and still pass it on to their off spring.
I have one doe of breeding age that is out of him, That I am going to try breeding to a different buck. I was breeding her back to him and she lost most her litter, some of it because of the alergys.
I have another does litter from him still in the box. That lost half it's kits because of this, I wondering if I can keep any from that litter if I make sure I breed to a different line of rabbits.

[KSALguy]

even if you breed to an outside line you run a very strong risk of passing the alergy down in the recessive traits that may not show till later, and if you sell stock it may show up in someones rabbits you sold too with out realizeing what happend,

if you want to try and keep any of his line and breed to another line i would keep them compleatly separate and cull hard and not let any out of your rabbitry untill as absolutly sure as you reasonably can be (ie: several generations down the line) that its been neutralized. but still it may be something that will always be there that could turn up randomly in the future if two semingly healthy rabbits pair up but both happen to carry that gene.

if it were me and there was any possibility that i would be selling stock in this breed, i would cull all that bloodline out, and not run the risk, but if it was something i would be useing for meat anyway i might try and breed away from it.

[SquashNut]

This is (was) my pet line. it's kinda messed up right now.
But, it is only the 1 doe and 3 kits left related to the buck, so I'm not going to loose much, if I cann't use them. Unless you count all the kits that died from his bad genetics.

If it would take 3-4 generations, sounds like a waste of time.

[KSALguy]

honestly i have NO IDEA the possible transmission of the alergy via genetics, it may be something that is easily bred out, i know some genes are easyer than others to get out of a line relativly quickly, others can hang on for A LONG TIME< and you would never know you even had it in your stock untill you happend to pair two carryers togather, someone better versed in this particular problem than me can probably give you a better outlook, being alergic to hay in rabbits would be like being alergic to sunlight in humans i would think, EXTREAMLY WEIRD AND RARE,

[SquashNut]

To me it almost seems funny. Who ever heard of a rabbit being alergic to anything green.
it would be different if it were the mold or dust in hay. But it is the hay.

[KSALguy]

how did you discover what was going on? thats something i never would have guessed, is it a particular KIND of hay or just dried plant matter in general?

[SquashNut]

The bucks eyes swell a little when he gets hay. i didn't think much of it till some of his kits started dieing at older ages.
then I started going over my records and started putting 2 and 2 together. Most of the deathes of his kits were when hay was introduced at 10 to 12 days. Then I would loose a few when I started Hay feeding when I was to busy to get greens for them.
i switched hay, in case it was mold and I am getting the same results. The breeder admits he knew about the alergy, and they mentioned it to me, but didn't let me know how bad it was for the kits.
One breeder said I need to quit cleaning the box at 10 days the mother might be killing the kits, when I do it. I don't know where she got that and she has a good sized rabbitry.

[KSALguy]

i doubt the doe is killing them, one freak doe might have but with as many does as you have had problems with i would count that out,

alergy is most likely the culprit, and even if it were just a certain kind of hay it would still be a problem,

[SquashNut]

It looks like I got involved with some show breeders that are on the look out for new breeders to sell their junk to. Like they will never see them again, so why not take advantage.
Then when some thing goes wrong they blame it on my management.
Except I buy from the show all the time and I won't be out right nasty, but I won't be afraid to let people know what happened.
What gets me is they stick up for each other.
Now I need to figure out how to deal with the remaining offspring of this buck. He is gone already, but I don't know where or how drastic I have to be to fix this problem.

I wanted to add, the breeder told me that if I made sure the buck was only used when he had no allergy symptoms then his contribution to the breeding would be healthy and the kits would stop dieing. This sounds crazy to me, What do you think?

[SFM in KY]

Originally Posted by SquashNut

I wanted to add, the breeder told me that if I made sure the buck was only used when he had no allergy symptoms then his contribution to the breeding would be healthy and the kits would stop dieing. This sounds crazy to me, What do you think?

Nonsense.

Allergies are not like communicable diseases that are passed on by contact so can only be passed on if there is an active, ongoing infection. The predisposition to allergies tends to be genetic and can definitely be passed on by inheritance.

As for the question about how drastic you need to be about culling ... my personal opinion, developed through a lifetime of breeding livestock of various kinds ... not specifically rabbits ... is that you are porobably better off culling the entire line. Things like that can crop up just when you think you'ove solved the problem and got it behind you ... I lost an entire line of dogs once doing that and became a real believer in the earlier and more drastically you cull when you have a known problem, the fewer problems you have to deal with later.

[YuccaFlatsRanch]

Cull the affected animals and all of the young. Rabbits are just too easy inexpensive to get more of, to waste time putting up with diseases/allergies, all of which are traits you don't want in your breeding group anyway.

So what if it costs you $100.00 to replace the affected breeders. You would spend/waste much more than that in time, vet supplies, etc and then still have defective rabbits. Cut your losses and move on.

As far as I am concerned this applies to all stock except cattle and horses and maybe exotics like Alpaca's. Even sheep and goats are too inexpensive to fuss with if they aren't top producers. Of course I am not one to "Fall in Love" with my animals.

[SFM in KY]

Originally Posted by YuccaFlatsRanch

As far as I am concerned this applies to all stock except cattle and horses and maybe exotics like Alpaca's. Even sheep and goats are too inexpensive to fuss with if they aren't top producers. Of course I am not one to "Fall in Love" with my animals.

I don't know about the exotics since I've never had them, but I was raised in a ranching family and have also bred horses most of my life.

Our cattle were culled very seriously ... any cow that didn't have a calf every year got sold that fall as well as any cow that consistently had unthrifty calves or didn't milk heavily enough to raise a heavy calf.

I culled an entire line of sporthorses in my breeding program because of temperament problems at one point. Getting a reputation for producing horses that were "difficult" and didn't have good trainability would have cost me a lot more in the long run than losing 6 horses and the stallion out of the breeding program.

I just find it easier now with rabbits after having to make those same decisions with cattle and horses.

[SquashNut]

I'm not in love with my rabbits.
I am however having a bit of confusion.
If you have a litter with some problems, you only cull the ones with the problem , right?
Other wise you would have no rabbits. Why doesn't this apply to this senerto?
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to keep the rabbits, just trying to understand.

[SFM in KY]

Originally Posted by SquashNut

If you have a litter with some problems, you only cull the ones with the problem , right?

If you are keeping breeding stock, no ... I would cull everything in that litter/line. The problem is that you don't know for sure how it is being carried.

If it is a dominant gene ... if you see the problem, it is there ... if you don't see it, it is not there then those that do not have the problem don't carry it, therefore can't produce it.

However, if it is a recessive ... must be paired up with another recessive before it is "active" and produces the problem ... you don't know if the ones in the litter that do not show the problem are carriers or not. It could sit in the background for a couple of generations even, IF you did not happen to breed to something that was also carrying that recessive "problem" gene ... at which time it could pop back up again.

Then to make things even more fun, you can have a problem that is being carried by more than one specific gene, some of which may be dominant and some recessive.

It just seems to make more sense to me to cull everything and not run the risk of producing a problem that you know exists in that line. It's true that you may not ever have that problem again if you keep some of the rabbits in that line and breed to a different line. But why take the chance?

[SquashNut]

The breeder has never told me how old the buck was when he started showing symptoms. he is so into making excuses for the buck, that he is no help.
One of the does 14 day old kits out there is already showing symtoms. He is hanging in there, but his eyes are not opening. We will probably cull him today.
The day before we realized what was happening, we bred a doe to the buck. She's related to him also. So if I cull these rabbits it would be easier if I did it before you can tell there are kits in there.

[SFM in KY]

There's obviously going to be a lot more chance of the kits being affected if the "line" carries the problem rather than just the buck ... but you really have no way to be sure unless you keep the does, breed them to another buck and don't have problems.

But then, you can't be absolutely positive that it is not a recessive problem and that if you breed to another buck from that line (or another line) that carries the problem, it won't crop up again. The other problem is that even if you never breed back into that line, if you sell kits to another breeder and THEY breed into that line ... they could come up with the same problem.

I agree ... it's difficult to cull apparantly healthy animals. But I've made the mistake of not culling a problem line in the past and later regretted it.