that a baby, for instance, cannot be fed solids until it is twelve months old. Suppose that someone would try to wean a baby from milk entirely at six months. Would it be peculiar if that youngster should pass away?
Yet people are constantly trying to fly in the face of Nature by doing this very thing with their rabbits. There is nothing to be gained in weaning the youngsters sooner than eight weeks. And if you practice this religiously you will find at the end of the year that you have had very little of the infant mortality you hear other breeders complaining so much about.
One of the largest breeders of New Zealand Reds in the country states that he weans the youngsters at seven weeks of age, allows the doe to rest a week, then breeds her again, provided it is in the breeding season, which is late winter to early summer, or in the fall. During the summer months he does not breed at all.
And he never does this unless he is rushed
