3 month old holland lop pregnant???

Question
hi my holland lop had babies 3 months ago and two of the babies one boy and one girl were still together until i got another cage   they are seperated now but i think the girl may be pregnant and shes only 3 months old. what will happen if she is since she is so young? also what will happen since it was brother and sister and the genetics are the same? thank you!

Answer
Dear Emily,

It's not impossible for a 3 month old baby to become pregnant, but it is definitely not good for her.  I hope she's just got a little belly, and this is a false alarm.  But if they are 3 months old, the boy probably has descended testicles and can be neutered so that he cannot impregnate his sister, so I'd have that done pronto.  You can find a good rabbit vet here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

You might want to bring the little girl to the vet now to have the vet check for pregnancy, which is difficult to detect before it's late term in a rabbit.  She is really too young to be spayed yet, so the best prevention is physical separation, at least until the boy has been neutered and healed for about 3 weeks (sperm can live inside the internal ducts for at least that long, so even a freshly neutered bunny can impregnate a fertile female).

Holland lops are already incredibly inbred, so there's no telling what will happen in a brother/sister mating.  The babies might be normal, or they might not.  They certainly have a higher risk of expressing harmful recessive traits that both siblings carry than if they were *not* the product of inbreeding.  Only if there are actually babies will you know for sure whether harmful traits have made it into the next generation.  (If you would like more information on the risks of inbreeding, I can provide you with a long and boring lecture on genetics. But I won't do that unless you ask.  :)  )

Hope this helps.

Dana