Can't read rabbit pedigree. . .please help?

[Bunnylady]

I'm sorry. His color is nice, but he does look a tad heavy & long in the ears. I've a girl the same way. I think she's mini or mixed except the breeder only does Holland & Flemish Giants! She's still a sweetheart.
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I can't remember if you can do the feel the ribs on buns or not for weight. Unfortunately it happens where larger than the average & smaller happens. Hope you find him a home if you don't keep him.

The Holland Lop is one of the breeds that employ the dwarfing gene to get the tiny, compact animal described in the breed standard. Unfortunately, the dwarfing gene is a lethal gene, which means that every baby that inherits two copies of it dies, typically within a couple days of birth. Because of this, even the best, typiest show Hollands with pedigrees as long as your arm only have one copy of the dwarfing gene, and one copy of the normal growth gene. Breed two such rabbits together, and some will get a copy of the dwarfing gene from either the mother or the father, and get a normal growth gene from the other parent; these are the "true dwarfs" that will most likely wind up small enough to show. Some will get the dwarfing gene from both parents and die (the sad little things called peanuts). And some will get the normal growth gene from both parents, These are the "false dwarfs." False dwarfs have longer ears, longer faces, longer bodies, and longer legs, and grow to be perhaps half a pound to a pound heavier than their true dwarf siblings. As I said, a lot of people will breed false dwarf does (some call them 'brood does'), being a little bigger, they often have slightly larger litters and hardly ever have kindling problems. Because they don't have a dwarfing gene, they can't pass one on, so they never give birth to peanuts. You can get really classy offspring from a false dwarf, the trick is to learn to recognize good type in the slightly larger and longer frame of the false dwarf, and breed to a good, typey true dwarf.

 

[ShellyBear]

The Holland Lop is one of the breeds that employ the dwarfing gene to get the tiny, compact animal described in the breed standard. Unfortunately, the dwarfing gene is a lethal gene, which means that every baby that inherits two copies of it dies, typically within a couple days of birth. Because of this, even the best, typiest show Hollands with pedigrees as long as your arm only have one copy of the dwarfing gene, and one copy of the normal growth gene. Breed two such rabbits together, and some will get a copy of the dwarfing gene from either the mother or the father, and get a normal growth gene from the other parent; these are the "true dwarfs" that will most likely wind up small enough to show. Some will get the dwarfing gene from both parents and die (the sad little things called peanuts). And some will get the normal growth gene from both parents, These are the "false dwarfs." False dwarfs have longer ears, longer faces, longer bodies, and longer legs, and grow to be perhaps half a pound to a pound heavier than their true dwarf siblings. As I said, a lot of people will breed false dwarf does (some call them 'brood does'), being a little bigger, they often have slightly larger litters and hardly ever have kindling problems. Because they don't have a dwarfing gene, they can't pass one on, so they never give birth to peanuts. You can get really classy offspring from a false dwarf, the trick is to learn to recognize good type in the slightly larger and longer frame of the false dwarf, and breed to a good, typey true dwarf.

Oh wow, thats really cool and crazy. . .I do have another question though. My friend has a false dwarf buck that he breed to his does not to long ago (In our freezing weather) and she had all peanuts. What might be the reason for that?

 

[Bunnylady]

The most obvious answer to that is simple - those babies weren't peanuts. They couldn't have been. A rabbit can't contribute a gene it doesn't have, and since a false dwarf doesn't have a copy of the dwarfing gene, it can't give one to its offspring. A peanut by definition is a baby that has inherited two copies of the dwarfing gene, and when one parent is a false dwarf, it is guaranteed to give a copy of the normal growth gene to all of its offspring, so the maximum possible number of copies of the dwarfing gene they could have is 1 (which would have to come from the true dwarf parent, assuming that's what it is).

There are lots of reasons baby bunnies may die besides the dwarfing gene. Particularly since in this case, apparently the whole litter died, I'd be inclined to think that's what was going on here. There are organisms that can infect a litter and all of the bunnies just fade away and die in spite of all you can do, and in cold weather, simply being cold can drag them down to the point that even well-fed litters may perish.

Of course, it is possible to have a true dwarf with such awful type that the owner might think it was a false dwarf, but in a case like that, the odds would be that only some of the babies would get two copies of the dwarfing gene, with some having only one or two copies of the normal growth gene as usual and surviving.