What happens when two rabbits from the same family breed/mate?
OK, education time here on what inbreeding (breeding of related animals) does and doesn’t do. It brings out recessive traits and stabilizes traits from the parental line in the offspring. In geneticists’ terms, it increases homozygosity. Inbreeding does not create lethal or deformed traits. If those traits are already in an animal’s background hiding as recessives, it could cause them to be actually shown in an offspring resulting in an mis-formed pup. This is both a good and a bad thing. It is obviously bad for the deformed pup but it also alerts the breeder to the presence of the trait so that he or she can work toward eliminating from the breeding population. Just as inbreeding can bring out bad traits in an animal’s background, it can also bring out good traits and make lines more consistently high quality. Inbreeding is an important tool in developing almost every strain of superior domestic plant and animal, both for our food supply and for animals we enjoy as companions and plan
