What causes rabbit breed degeneration? How can it be prevented?
Causes of rabbit breed degeneration and prevention methods
Causes of degeneration
Extensive management and inbreeding: only emphasizing the rabbit's characteristic of eating grass without supplementing with concentrated feed causes nutritional deficiencies and breed degeneration. Ignoring the blood relationship of breeding rabbits and mating close relatives causes offspring rabbits to have poor disease resistance, slow growth, smaller body size, deformities, and breed degeneration.
Lack of strict selection measures: not paying attention to selecting and retaining breeding rabbits according to breed characteristic requirements, often selling off the large, fast-growing, and well-conditioned ones first, while keeping the small, thin, and weak ones to continue raising, causing gradual breed degeneration.
Mating too early and kindling too frequently: allowing breeding rabbits to mate just after reaching sexual maturity, without attention to age differences between male and female rabbits, resulting in old-to-old, old-to-young, and young-to-young pairings, which prevents breed characteristics from being stably inherited. Some rabbit farmers, seeking quick profits, frequently practice blood mating and do not pay attention to supplementing nutrition for does, making them weak and sickly, with offspring rabbits showing poor development and poor disease resistance, causing breed degeneration.
Prevention methods:
Regardless of the economic type and breed of rabbits being raised, a core breeding rabbit group that conforms to the breed characteristics and can meet the breed's production targets must be cultivated and selected in a planned manner. The selection method: after offspring rabbits are born, mark the ones to be retained first with iodine tincture or color, frequently observe their growth and development, conduct preliminary selection of young rabbits, final selection of adolescent rabbits, and refined selection of adult rabbits. For those that conform to breed characteristics and show outstanding growth and development, give them focused cultivation with meticulous management in all aspects. When putting them into production, be sure to mate the best male rabbits with the best female rabbits.
In breeding production, continuously purify and rejuvenate the breed, paying attention to using excellent male rabbits to improve ordinary or small-bodied female rabbits, and then selecting excellent male and female individuals from their offspring. Never use ordinary male rabbits or small-bodied male rabbits to mate with excellent female rabbits. At the same time, pay attention to performance selection and breeding of offspring.
Strictly control the initial mating age and body weight of breeding rabbits; those that have not reached the initial mating age and body weight must absolutely not be allowed to mate. Offspring produced by prime-age breeding male rabbits have relatively stable genetic performance.
Extensive management and inbreeding: only emphasizing the rabbit's characteristic of eating grass without supplementing with concentrated feed causes nutritional deficiencies and breed degeneration. Ignoring the blood relationship of breeding rabbits and mating close relatives causes offspring rabbits to have poor disease resistance, slow growth, smaller body size, deformities, and breed degeneration.
Lack of strict selection measures: not paying attention to selecting and retaining breeding rabbits according to breed characteristic requirements, often selling off the large, fast-growing, and well-conditioned ones first, while keeping the small, thin, and weak ones to continue raising, causing gradual breed degeneration.
Mating too early and kindling too frequently: allowing breeding rabbits to mate just after reaching sexual maturity, without attention to age differences between male and female rabbits, resulting in old-to-old, old-to-young, and young-to-young pairings, which prevents breed characteristics from being stably inherited. Some rabbit farmers, seeking quick profits, frequently practice blood mating and do not pay attention to supplementing nutrition for does, making them weak and sickly, with offspring rabbits showing poor development and poor disease resistance, causing breed degeneration.
Prevention methods:
Regardless of the economic type and breed of rabbits being raised, a core breeding rabbit group that conforms to the breed characteristics and can meet the breed's production targets must be cultivated and selected in a planned manner. The selection method: after offspring rabbits are born, mark the ones to be retained first with iodine tincture or color, frequently observe their growth and development, conduct preliminary selection of young rabbits, final selection of adolescent rabbits, and refined selection of adult rabbits. For those that conform to breed characteristics and show outstanding growth and development, give them focused cultivation with meticulous management in all aspects. When putting them into production, be sure to mate the best male rabbits with the best female rabbits.
In breeding production, continuously purify and rejuvenate the breed, paying attention to using excellent male rabbits to improve ordinary or small-bodied female rabbits, and then selecting excellent male and female individuals from their offspring. Never use ordinary male rabbits or small-bodied male rabbits to mate with excellent female rabbits. At the same time, pay attention to performance selection and breeding of offspring.
Strictly control the initial mating age and body weight of breeding rabbits; those that have not reached the initial mating age and body weight must absolutely not be allowed to mate. Offspring produced by prime-age breeding male rabbits have relatively stable genetic performance.