Find one of the few American rabbit breeding partners near you and be part of the comeback.
American
American
American rabbit breeding is conservation work. This heritage breed nearly disappeared twice in the last century, and every litter either widens its gene pool or narrows it. The owners above are looking for breeding matches. Here is what responsible stewardship of a rare breed actually involves.
Short answer
Rare, but recovering. Only 6 Americans were shown at the 1954 national convention, none in 1961, and a 2006 survey found just 183 alive across 16 breeders. In 2026 The Livestock Conservancy moved the breed from Threatened to Watch, which still means fewer than 2,000 exist worldwide.
A heritage breed is one kept alive from an earlier farming era. The American earns the label twice over. Lewis H. Salisbury of Pasadena, California developed it, showed it in Los Angeles in 1917, and had an official standard published in March 1918.[1] He first called it the German Blue Vienna. Anti-German feeling during World War I got that name changed. The club’s historian traces the switch through Charles Gibson’s 1918 breeding manual, which lists the breed as “(Formerly Called German Blue Vienna)”.[2]
Salisbury never said which breeds he crossed. The Livestock Conservancy names Blue Vienna, Blue Beveren, Blue Imperial and Blue Flemish Giant as the likely founders.[1] Whatever the recipe, the rise was fast. By 1920 a good pelt brought $2.00 and a breeding-age doe started at $25.00, which was real money then.[1] Both varieties held a following through the 1940s.
Then the interests of rabbit keepers changed, newer breeds took over, and the American faded. At the 1954 ARBA Convention only six Americans were entered, one White and five Blues. Seven years later, nobody entered any.[2]
A century of the American rabbit, in dates
Watch is the Conservancy’s second-lowest risk category, one step below Recovering. For rabbits, four numbers define it. Two are population figures: under 200 registrations a year in the United States, and an estimated world population under 2,000. Two are activity figures: fewer than 500 rabbits shown in five years, and between 31 and 60 breeders.[4] Read that breeder figure as the band the category allows, not as a headcount somebody took. It is still the best sense of scale available, and it explains why finding stock takes effort.
There is now proof in the same species that this works. The Silver Fox rabbit joined the list as Critical in 2006. In 2026 it became the first rabbit breed ever to graduate off the list entirely. A club census in late 2023 counted more than 3,200 Silver Fox rabbits. Over 1,050 had been shown at National shows in five years, and well over 250 breeders were raising them.[3] Twenty years of ordinary breeders keeping ordinary records did that. It is the road American breeders are on now.
Short answer
Breeding to keep genetic variety alive, not just to make more rabbits. The Livestock Conservancy’s guidance is concrete: keep more bucks than a production rabbitry would, and pull replacement males from different family lines instead of one favorite doe. Then treat your rabbitry as one herd in a national network, because many small herds preserve a breed better than one big one.
Start with what is at stake. The Conservancy is plain about the cost of losing genetic variety. A population without it adapts poorly to new conditions, throws more genetic disease, and produces fewer young that survive to breed. Once a breed is gone, it is gone for good.[5] A breed sitting under 2,000 animals worldwide has very little room for that.
Dr. Phillip Sponenberg, who built the Conservation Priority List and the standards behind it, writes the practical version. Conservation programs use more males than production programs do. Leaning on a few favorite bucks for years narrows a population fast, and he names that habit as a main reason so many rare breeds sit where they do.[6]
The second point surprises most people. Production breeders treat the buck as the improver of the herd. Sponenberg’s counter is that the does hold most of the genetic variation, so a rare breed gains more from a wide range of does than from one outstanding buck.[6] Use proven older does to their full potential, and take your replacements from a range of sires rather than from one.
Third, replacement bucks have to come from different parts of the population. Pull them all from the same two families and those families quietly become the whole breed within a few generations.[6]
What that looks like in a backyard rabbitry
One more idea holds the rest together. Your rabbitry is not the program. It is one herd inside a national one. The Conservancy states it directly: a network of multiple herds, each independently managed and selected, is the best way to make conservation succeed, and cooperation among breeders is crucial to it.[5] Many small herds also survive a barn fire, or a breeder walking away, far better than one big herd does. Breeders put that idea into practice in 2009 with the American Drift. The gene pool had gone shallow inside isolated pockets, and size and weight problems were showing up as a result. Jeremy Cowan organized breeders to move stock across the country.[2]
One contrast is worth pausing on. Two other rabbit breeding guides on this site are built around a single gene. Our Holland Lop breeding page covers the dwarfing gene, and our Lionhead breeding page covers the mane gene. The American has no equivalent landmine in the nest box. Its hard decisions are about which animals you keep and who you sell them to.
None of this has to be built from scratch. Breeders of the American Rabbit National Specialty Club, known as BARNSC, is the ARBA-chartered breed club and runs the National show. It reports more than 130 members.[2] The Livestock Conservancy keeps a breeders directory that other keepers actually search.[13] ARBA runs a public Find a Breeder listing, though breeders pay to appear on it.[14]
You do not need a farm for any of this. You need record-keeping discipline and homes lined up before you breed. The Conservancy’s own getting-started guidance puts the market ahead of the animals, and reminds new breeders that not every rabbit born is breeding quality.[13] Decide where the pet-quality kits are going before the doe is ever bred.
Short answer
Yes, and with stock this scarce, most breeders eventually do. But a naive Blue x White cross often throws a litter of many colors, because White Americans can hide other color genes behind their albino coat. The breed club publishes a two-step plan that gets you back to show-quality Blues and Whites.
The American comes in two recognized varieties and no others. Blue is the signature, and The Livestock Conservancy calls it “the deepest blue color of any of the recognized breeds in America”.[1] White arrived in 1925, bred from white sports thrown by the Blues plus White Flemish Giant blood, and it carries pink or ruby eyes.[1] ARBA lists the same two and nothing else.[12]
Whites are albinos, meaning the coat carries no color pigment at all. Whatever color genes the rabbit has underneath stay completely hidden. Cross that rabbit to a Blue and the hidden genes come straight out in the kits.
Jeremy Cowan, writing for the breed club, explains where those hidden colors came from. When the breed nearly vanished, breeders outcrossed to other breeds to save it, and steels, torts, blacks and agoutis came in with them. Those colors are still sitting under white coats today. He is blunt about the consequence. With so little breeding stock available, breeders cross Blue to White anyway, and “in most cases, this cross results in litters comprised of a rainbow of bunny colors”.[7]
The breed club’s two-step for a true-blue White
One quarter is the average across many litters, not a promise about the litter in your nest box.
The payoff is worth the two seasons it takes. A White that is really a Blue underneath can be bred back to a good Blue and give you nothing but blue and white kits. That is exactly what a scarce breed needs from a cross.[7]
Off-color kits from two purebred parents are still purebred Americans. They can go to pet homes with paperwork that says plainly what they are, and they can never be shown or registered. Write that into the listing. Buyers reading our page on American rabbits for sale are told to treat any color but Blue or ruby-eyed White as a warning sign. A vague description costs you a sale you deserved to make.
Short answer
Smoothly, by reputation. The Livestock Conservancy describes American does as hardy, producing large litters and mothering them well, and Penn State Extension puts the average commercial litter at 8 to 10 kits. Pregnancy runs 30 to 33 days. The breed-specific rule is patience: most breeders of large heritage stock wait until a doe is 8 to 9 months old.
The Conservancy sums the breed up in one line, and it sets expectations well. Americans are “a hardy breed, docile in nature, produce large litters and are typically good mothers”.[1] No breed-specific litter count has ever been published. Penn State Extension puts the average commercial rabbit litter at 8 to 10 kits.[8] Treat that as the commonly cited number rather than a target.
From mating to go-home day
Here the American parts company with the small breeds. A Holland Lop doe can take a first litter at 6 months. An American doe should wait longer, and the reason is size. Penn State Extension puts breeds in the 9 to 12 pound range at 6 to 7 months, with bucks maturing about a month behind the does. That is production timing on a production schedule.[8] Breeders raising large heritage stock commonly wait longer, to 8 or 9 months, because a 10 to 12 pound doe is still filling out her frame at seven. Treat 8 to 9 months as working practice rather than a published rule, and weigh the doe instead of only counting months.
One line of the standard is worth saying out loud, because it reverses what most people expect. American does outweigh the bucks: 10 to 12 pounds against 9 to 11.[1] That roomy doe, with a reputation for milk and mothering, is what the breed kept from its commercial decades. It is also the main reason litters this size go as well as they do.
Feed eight to ten kits on a 12 pound doe and the hay rack empties at a rate that surprises first-time breeders. Peak demand lands in weeks three to six, when the kits are eating solids and still nursing. Buy the hay before you need it. To put real dates on the rest of it, the rabbit breeding calculator turns a mating date into the nest box date, the kindling window, and the earliest go-home day.
The rest of the calendar is species-level and the same for every rabbit breed. Three to four litters a year is the ceiling for a hobby rabbitry. Kits leave at 8 weeks at the earliest. Most does retire from breeding at 3 to 4 years old. A retired American doe still earns her space in a conservation rabbitry: her daughters carry the line forward, and her paperwork is what the next breeder will want to read.
Short answer
Pedigreed American rabbits generally run $50 to $150, modest for a breed this scarce. The real cost is distance: with roughly 31 to 60 breeders nationwide, founding stock often travels by specialized rabbit transporter at $75 to $120 per rabbit. The annual ARBA Convention doubles as the breed’s marketplace.
The published band is narrow. Everbreed’s breed guide puts American rabbits at 50 to 150 dollars, depending on line quality and breeder reputation.[9] When we checked marketplaces in 2026, homestead-line rabbits without full pedigrees sat lower, closer to 30 to 60 dollars. Nothing in the market supports a large rare-breed premium on top of the published band. A triple-digit price with no pedigree, no registration and no show record is a warning sign rather than a market rate.
Where founding stock actually comes from
Expect to travel or to wait. With a breeder count in the 31 to 60 band, your nearest American is often several states away. Moving stock across the country is baked into this breed’s recovery anyway. Specialized rabbit ground transporters run mapped routes that can take two weeks, and they charge a flat 75 to 120 dollars per rabbit. You meet them at a fixed stop at a fixed time.[10] Air cargo exists too, and one rabbitry puts a rough all-in estimate near 600 dollars, several times the ground rate.[10]
One line covers the legal side for most hobby breeders. Federal rules treat a seller whose buyers see the rabbit in person as a retail pet store, and retail pet stores are exempt from USDA licensing.[11] Selling sight-unseen and shipping is the regulated activity, and it can bring the $500 per year gross threshold into play. Check with APHIS before you ship, and check your state and local rules either way.
Then do the arithmetic honestly. A 12 pound rabbit eats like a 12 pound rabbit, and a conservation rabbitry keeps more animals than production logic needs by design. That is the whole point of it. Treat the money as funded stewardship rather than income. What breeders actually get back is a National show every year, a breed that still exists because people like them kept it, and buyers who want precisely what they have.
The American nearly died out twice, and neither time was the rabbit’s fault. Breeders drifted to newer breeds and the numbers followed them down. The 2026 move to Watch happened the other way round. A few dozen people bred to the standard, entered shows, and sold with paperwork, year after year, until the Conservancy could move the breed up a category.[3]
Two documents get mixed up constantly, so keep them apart. A pedigree is the three-generation family record you write out yourself and hand over with the rabbit. ARBA requires it to show the name or ear number, the weight and the variety of every parent, grandparent and great-grandparent, all of them the same breed.[12] ARBA registration is different and stronger. A licensed registrar, an examiner ARBA appoints, goes over the rabbit in person. The rabbit has to be at least 6 months old, with that complete pedigree behind it. The record then lives in ARBA’s system permanently.[12] Registration is what turns your record-keeping into a number that shows up in the breed’s published census.
The club’s own 2025 member poll shows how much of this is still being built. Seven in ten responding members keep ten does or fewer, and roughly the same share report that 76% or more of their Americans are pedigreed.[2] The herds are small and the paperwork is improving. That is what a recovery looks like from the inside.
If you take this breed on, five commitments carry the weight. They are short enough to keep on the barn wall.
Temperament is the quiet advantage here. The Livestock Conservancy describes the breed as hardy, docile and typically good mothers, and ARBA says the calm temperament makes the American an excellent project rabbit.[1][12] That is why pet placement works so well for this breed, and pet homes are a perfectly good destination for off-color and non-show kits. Be clear with yourself about the difference, though. A kit in a pet home is a good outcome for the kit. A pedigreed kit in another breeder’s barn is the outcome the breed needs.
Size is the part pet buyers underestimate. A 10 to 12 pound rabbit needs floor space closer to a small dog’s than a dwarf rabbit’s. It should also be met at ground level rather than picked up. Match kits to homes that already understand that. Our page on American rabbit adoption walks through the same space math from the adopter’s side, and it is worth reading before you promise a kit to a first-time owner.
Petmeetly connects American owners to each other directly. For a breed with this few keepers, a listing is often how the next pairing gets found at all. The rabbits at the top of this page are where a well-planned litter starts.
Sources
Fact-checked against The Livestock Conservancy, the American Rabbit Breeders Association, Breeders of the American Rabbit N.S.C., and Penn State Extension.
What first-time American breeders ask before they pair two rabbits
Not in the way it once was. The Livestock Conservancy listed the breed as Critical in 2005, later moved it to Threatened, and moved it again to Watch in 2026. For rabbits, Watch is defined as fewer than 200 US registrations a year and an estimated world population under 2,000, so the breed is still genuinely rare. The direction of travel is the good news.
Lewis H. Salisbury developed the breed in Pasadena, California and first showed it in Los Angeles in 1917. He originally called it the German Blue Vienna. Anti-German feeling during World War I got the name changed to American Blue, and the first standard, published in March 1918, carried the new name.
The breed has two recognized varieties and no others. Blue, which The Livestock Conservancy calls the deepest blue of any recognized breed in America, and ruby-eyed White, which was accepted in 1925. A kit born any other color to two purebred parents is still a purebred American. It cannot be shown or registered, so it belongs in a pet home with honest paperwork.
Yes, and with stock this scarce many breeders eventually do. White Americans are albinos, so their coat hides whatever color genes sit underneath, and a first cross often gives a litter of mixed colors. The breed club publishes a two-step plan: cross your Whites to Blues, keep the blue and black kits, then pair those carriers with each other.
Large litters. The Livestock Conservancy describes American does as producing large litters and mothering them well, and Penn State Extension puts the average commercial rabbit litter at 8 to 10 kits. No breed-specific count exists, so treat 8 to 10 as the commonly cited figure rather than a target.
Pregnancy runs 30 to 33 days, the same as every rabbit breed, and 31 to 32 days is the usual average. Put the nest box in with clean bedding between day 26 and day 28. A kit born outside the box chills within minutes, so early is safer than late.
Later than a small breed. Penn State Extension puts breeds in the 9 to 12 pound range at 6 to 7 months, with bucks maturing about a month behind the does. Breeders raising large heritage stock commonly wait until a doe is 8 or 9 months old so she has finished filling out her frame. Most does retire from breeding at 3 to 4 years.
Senior bucks weigh 9 to 11 pounds and senior does weigh 10 to 12 pounds. The does are the larger sex, which is unusual among rabbit breeds, and that roomy build is part of why the breed earned its reputation for raising big litters well. ARBA sets 12 pounds as the maximum weight for the breed.
Pedigreed American rabbits generally run $50 to $150, depending on line quality and the breeder reputation behind them. Homestead-line rabbits sold without full pedigrees list lower. The bigger cost is usually distance: a specialized rabbit ground transporter charges a flat $75 to $120 per rabbit on a mapped multi-week route.
Not for face-to-face pet sales. Federal rules treat a seller whose buyers see the rabbit in person as a retail pet store, and retail pet stores are exempt from USDA licensing. Shipping to buyers who never saw the rabbit is the regulated activity, and it can bring a $500 per year gross threshold into play. State and local rules sit on top of that.
It is breeding to keep a breed genetically varied, not just to make more rabbits. In practice that means keeping more bucks than production would need, taking replacement males from different family lines, and selling breeding stock with the pedigree included. A purebred rabbit with no paperwork behind it is effectively lost to the breed.
Yes, with one caveat about size. The Livestock Conservancy describes the breed as hardy and docile, and ARBA calls the calm temperament what makes it a good youth project. A 9 to 12 pound rabbit needs real floor space though, and it should mostly be met at ground level rather than carried, so adults should do the handling.
More vetted material for owners planning an American litter
A first-litter guide built on ARBA standards, USDA RHDV2 surveillance, and Merck veterinary references. Covers when a rabbit is ready, what tests and vaccines are non-negotiable, the 31-day pregnancy day-by-day, post-kindling care, ethics, and real costs.
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