The Actual Use Of A Pedigree

A grand champion listed on your rabbit's pedigree do not guarantee grand champion kits from breeding it. Then what is the actual use of a pedigree?

Let me explain first what I mean by my first statement above. When you breed a rabbit, you must know that the traits that you see currently is exactly what that is going to be passed on to its offspring. You should always go back to the fact that each parent rabbit will contribue one part of the gene. So how could you expect a rabbit from 2 generation above manifesting itself?

Here are a list of usage for pedigree:

1. Knowing the birthdate/age of your rabbit

2. Compatibility of your rabbit with other lines

In order to keep the desired traits, related rabbits near or far are bred to keep the gene pool in tact. Certain lines do not work well together and certain lines do because they may come from the same descendants. Knowing the ancestry will tell you roughly if 2 rabbits can compliment each other in that sense.

3. A rough guide to colors

Knowing the color of the ancestors may tell you roughly what color gene your rabbit carries. For example, Holly Hope is a lilac (dilute of chocolates) and Skor's a chocolate carrier because one of his parents is a chocolate rabbit. So the cross between Skor and Holly Hope will always yield chocolates and blacks chocolate carriers. So their kits will have both Skor and Holly Hope listed. If the kit happens to be a broken black like Truffles, you are sure to know that Truffles is a broken black chocolate carrier (chocolate gene courtesy of Holly Hope).

So what does all this means to a breeder? A pedigree is very important for a breeder that cares a great deal about what he/she is working on and most importantly for someone that needs to ensure exactly what they strive to produce. For a breeder that couldn't care less except to get kits, a pedigree is definitely not important to him/her at all because at the end of the day, there is no objective in what they are doing except for producing more rabbits with reasons only known to themselves. That's a big shame actually.

Sample pedigree (courtesy of LazzyBunny.wordpress.com)