I have seen this question on many forums and over heard breeders discussing the fact that their rabbit changed gender. In fact rabbits that have won awards at ARBA conventions as a doe, have been shown later only to find out it was actually a buck. Does this mean that a rabbit has changed sex?<\/p>\n
Amazingly in nature there are some instances where an animal can change its gender. Take for example a clown fish. Clown fish live in schools. Within that school is a leadership\u00a0structure\u00a0led be a female clown fish. When that clown fish dies, the highest male in leadership takes over for the female and changes gender including reproductive functions. This is however a rarity for this type of\u00a0biological\u00a0change to take place. In fact there are even more rare cases of humans that have changed gender as a result of either\u00a05-alpha-reductase deficiency (5alpha-RD-2) or\u00a017-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency (17beta-HSD-3).<\/p>\n
Rabbits do not fall into that strange and rare category of animals that change gender. A rabbit born a buck, will be a buck at 6 months, will be a buck at a year. A rabbit born as a doe will be a doe and 6 months, will be a doe at a year.<\/p>\n
At young ages it can\u00a0occasionally\u00a0be difficult for experienced breeders, and even more difficult for inexperienced breeders to sex a rabbit. The majority of “sex changed” rabbits are actually the result of rabbits\u00a0mis-sexed\u00a0by the breeder.\u00a0We have rarely made this mistake. You can usually trust a breeder who has been breeding for several years.<\/p>\n
There are other factors that can contribute to a mis-sexed rabbit. A buck with a split penis will often be sexed as a doe. Using unreliable techniques to determine the gender of a rabbit will often result in mistakes. We will soon have an article on how to properly sex a rabbit.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that it is genetically impossible for a rabbit to change gender. Next time you hear that, remember, its a rabbit that was not properly sexed.<\/p>\n
Rob Usakowski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have seen this question on many forums and over heard breeders discussing the fact that their rabbit changed gender. In fact rabbits that have won awards at ARBA conventions as a doe, have been shown later only to find out it was actually a buck. Does this mean that a rabbit has changed sex? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[5636,5635,202],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}