Find a health-checked Mini Rex breeding partner near you and plan a litter you can stand behind.
Mini Rex rabbit breeding is built around one clock: the velvet coat that defines this breed cannot be honestly judged until months after kits normally go home. Learn to read that clock and the rest follows. The owners above are looking for breeding matches; here is what to know first.
Short answer
The Mini Rex is consistently the number one or two entry at ARBA’s national convention, and its scorecard is unusual: fur alone carries 35 of 100 points, as much as the entire body. That fur cannot be properly judged until months after kits normally go home, so Mini Rex breeding runs on a coat clock.
Start with volume, because it changes what a beginner can do. ARBA’s own breed listing calls the Mini Rex the number one or number two top entry at any ARBA Convention.[1] Chewy’s breed feature puts figures behind that: between 2005 and 2009, 93,853 rabbits were shown at ARBA conventions, and more than 12,000 of them were Mini Rex.[2] That is roughly one entry in eight. More Mini Rex cross the show table than any other breed. A beginner faces stiffer competition because of that, and gets more honest comparison stock within driving distance than any other breed offers.
The breed is younger than most of the rabbits it beats. Monna Berryhill of Texas began the work after she won a pair of Dwarf Rex rabbits at the 1984 ARBA Convention in Orlando. Marylouise Cowan donated them. A surviving buck named Zoro was paired with a small Lynx Rex doe named Cotton. Their litter of seven gave the breed its three foundation does: Happy, Bashful and Dopey.[3] ARBA accepted the Mini Rex at the 1988 convention in Madison, Wisconsin.[1]
Temperament is the quiet reason first litters go smoothly here. The president of the National Mini Rex Rabbit Club describes an unusually even temperament in the breed, and says few pets enjoy a gentle rub on the forehead more.[2] PetMD’s vet-reviewed page for the standard Rex, this breed’s larger relative, calls rex rabbits friendly and patient family animals.[4] A doe calm enough to tolerate a daily nest check does half the job for you.
Short answer
Rex fur is recessive: a rabbit needs two copies of the gene to show the coat. Pair two rex-coated rabbits and every kit gets velvet. Cross a Mini Rex to any normal-coated rabbit and the entire litter comes out normal-coated carriers, losing the coat for a generation. Curled whiskers, visible from birth, mark the coat.
The coat traces to one mutation in a hair-growth gene called LIPH. A 2011 study in PLoS One found a single deleted letter of genetic code in that gene, which cuts the resulting protein short. The guard hairs, meaning the longer outer coat, came out about 43 percent shorter than normal, and the soft undercoat about 20 percent shorter.[5] The two layers end up close to the same length. With no long hairs left to lie down over the rest, the pile stands upright and feels like velvet whichever way you stroke it. The study animals were a French farmed strain rather than Mini Rex, but this is the mutation behind commercial rex coats.
What each pairing throws
Rex fur is inherited recessively,[5] and these are the standard ratios for any recessive gene. They are averages across many litters, not a promise about the litter in your nest box.
The arithmetic is the friendliest thing about this breed. Rex to rex breeds true, so a herd of rex-coated rabbits keeps producing rex-coated kits with no sorting. The cost appears only when you outcross to a normal-coated rabbit for size or body type. That cross gives you a litter of carriers and no velvet. The coat returns in the next generation, when a carrier is paired back to a rex or to another carrier. The breed’s body type is settled enough that few breeders need to outcross at all. Most of the work here is reading the coat clock rather than chasing the gene.
The same mutation bends the whiskers, and that gives you a check you can run on day one. Researchers recorded bent or curly whiskers on rex animals, and kits show them from birth.[5] The whiskers tell you months before the coat does, which makes them the first honest signal in the nest box.
Mini Rex also show heavily in the Broken group, the white-and-color pattern that comes from the English spotting gene. Those pairing rules work the same way in every breed that carries the gene, and they explain why breeders avoid putting two broken rabbits together. Our Mini Lop breeding page works through those rules in full, and they apply here unchanged.
Short answer
Body and fur split the scorecard at 35 points each, with 15 on color and five each for head, ears, and condition, per breeder transcriptions of the ARBA standard. Judges want a compact, well-rounded rabbit with an ideal weight near 4 pounds and dense, upright fur between half and seven-eighths of an inch that springs back.
Where the 100 points go
Figures from a breeder transcription of the ARBA Standard of Perfection, which ARBA publishes and sells as a printed book.[6] Coat scoring as heavily as type is unusual, and it is what makes this breed different to select in.
Weight is a hard line rather than a preference. ARBA sets the maximum at 4.5 pounds, so a heavier rabbit cannot be shown.[1] Breeder transcriptions put the ideal at 4 pounds for a senior buck and 4.25 pounds for a senior doe, and cap the ears at 3.5 inches.[6] Seniors run roughly 3 to 4.5 pounds. Keep a scale in the barn and weigh through the grow-out. A rabbit that creeps over the maximum is out of its class, however good its coat is.
A Mini Rex is born in an immature baby coat that tells you nothing, and the adult coat arrives in two waves months apart.
The coat clock
A rex show career effectively runs from 5 to 12 months of age, between the two primes and the molt that separates them.[7]
You end up culling in two waves because of that clock. Body type is readable at about 8 weeks, so the first wave is a type cull. It lands exactly when pet kits are ready for their new homes. Fur cannot be judged until the junior prime is in, so the second wave lands months later.[7] Two things follow, and both are about honesty. You will sell kits before you know what their coats did. You should say so in those words rather than promise show quality on an 8-week coat.
Every coat fault worth selecting away from comes down to guard-hair length. Guard hairs that are too long or too sparse leave what breeders call an open coat, where the pile parts instead of standing. Guard hairs shorter than the undercoat give the coat a curly finish. Soft or silky texture and flat-lying fur are faults as well.[7] Run your hand against the pile on every rabbit you are considering, and keep the ones that spring straight back.
Color choice is unusually wide here. ARBA’s published breeds-and-varieties list gives the Mini Rex 23 showroom varieties, one of the longest line-ups on that list.[8] They run from castor, the original, through the otters and shaded colors to the Broken group. Keep a first herd inside one color family. Each variety carries its own pairing rules, and a mixed barn leaves you juggling several sets at once.
The National Mini Rex Rabbit Club is where the pairing advice lives. It runs an annual Mini Rex Nationals and keeps year-round sweepstakes standings in both Open and Youth divisions.[9] For the most-entered breed on the show table, a club show is the fastest way to compare your rabbits against a hundred others in one afternoon. Take two, get them handled by people who judge the breed, and listen.
Short answer
Yes. Breeder references list the Mini Rex among the breeds that carry the dwarf gene, which is how a 4-pound rabbit got its size. Pairing two true dwarfs can produce peanuts, kits with two dwarf-gene copies that always die within days or weeks. Holland Lop breeders plan around the same math; it applies here.
The mechanics fit in three sentences. A true dwarf carries one copy of the size-reducing gene and shows the small, round type the standard wants. A false dwarf carries no copy at all and runs bigger than the ideal. A peanut carries two copies, does not grow, and always dies, usually within a few days.[10]
A guide written for this breed puts the same thing bluntly: some kits are born as peanuts, smaller and deformed, or born dead.[11] Learn which of your rabbits are true dwarfs and which are false dwarfs. That one piece of knowledge keeps the arithmetic in your favor.
False dwarfs earn their keep in a show herd. A bigger-than-ideal doe that carries no dwarf copy cannot produce a peanut, whichever buck she is paired to, and does like that tend to raise litters more easily. Plenty of show herds run on exactly that pairing: a false-dwarf brood doe under a true-dwarf buck, with the small show type coming from the sire.
Our Holland Lop breeding page works through the full arithmetic, with the ratios and what to expect in the nest box. It transfers to Mini Rex unchanged.
Short answer
A Mini Rex-focused breeder guide puts first breedings at 6 to 8 months old, pregnancy at 28 to 31 days, and the nest box in the cage on day 27. Kits wean gradually at six to eight weeks and leave at eight weeks at the earliest. No reliable breed-specific litter average exists; plan for a range.
From mating to go-home day
The breed-specific ages come from Mini Rex 101, a guide written for this breed alone. It puts a first breeding at 6 to 8 months, gestation at about a month, typically 28 to 31 days, and the nest box in the cage on day 27.[11] The species-wide band runs 30 to 33 days, which is what the breeding calculator below uses, so a doe still pregnant on day 32 is inside normal. Weigh the doe as well as counting months. An overweight doe is a common reason a mating fails to take.
Litter size is where honesty beats a tidy number. No trustworthy Mini Rex average has been published, and the breed-dedicated guide does not give one. Two things are on the record. The litter that founded the breed held seven kits,[3] which is an anecdote rather than an average. Small breeds also run smaller litters than the meat breeds. Budget feed and grow-out space for a spread rather than a number.
In a true-dwarf pairing, losing a kit or two as peanuts is a known cost rather than a mystery illness. A peanut in the box also tells you something useful: both parents carry a dwarf copy. Write that on the pedigree, because it is the cheapest way to learn which of your rabbits are false dwarfs.
The rest of the calendar is species-level and the same for every rabbit breed. Kits wean between 6 and 8 weeks and leave at 8 weeks at the earliest. Three to four litters a year is the ceiling for a hobby rabbitry, and most does retire from breeding at 3 to 4 years old.
To put real dates on all of it, the rabbit breeding calculator turns a mating date into the nest box date, the kindling window and the earliest go-home day.
Short answer
A Mini Rex specialist rabbitry prices pet kits from $80, brood stock from $90, and show stock from $100, while smaller barns sell pedigreed kits for $20 to $60. The margin is thin either way. The real cost discipline is selection: responsible breeders pull any rabbit that develops sore hocks from the program, because thin foot fur passes on.
What the tiers mean, and what they cost
Those figures come from published price sheets rather than from asking around. Magnolia Creek Rabbitry, a Mini Rex specialist, starts pet kits at $80, brood stock at $90 and show stock at $100.[12] At the volume end, working barns charge a fifth of that.[13] This is the most abundant show breed in the country. Supply keeps prices honest, and nobody funds a rabbitry on kit sales. Our page on Mini Rex rabbits for sale breaks the same numbers down from the buyer’s side.
Ask a seller which tier they mean, because the same kit gets described both ways. One rabbitry publishes its definitions plainly: show quality means free of disqualifications at the time of sale, and brood quality means an asset to a breeding program despite a fault. That rabbitry also adds the hedge every honest seller should add, which is that judges’ opinions vary.[14]
One selection question belongs to this breed alone. A rex coat puts thinner fur over the footpads than a normal coat does, and thin foot fur is what lets sore hocks form. Sore hocks are pressure sores on the hock, which is a rabbit’s ankle joint. PetMD names two groups at raised risk and separates them by cause: short-coated rex breeds, through thin fur, and giant breeds, through weight.[15] Mini Rex sit in the first group, so the mechanism here is the coat rather than the size.
Breeders who have worked the problem give three rules. Do not breed an animal that develops sore hocks, because a thin foot pad is genetic and passes to its offspring. Give every rabbit a solid resting surface rather than bare wire. Keep selecting in that direction across generations, and foot trouble becomes rare in a herd.[16] Rex lines differ from each other, so this is a line-by-line judgment rather than a verdict on the whole breed.
On the spending side, plan to house three rabbits rather than two, because the pair lives apart and the litter needs a grow-out pen. Add bedding, resting boards, feed that scales with the litter, and a vet line you will actually use. Line up homes before you breed. Placement is the part that goes wrong, and it goes wrong after the kits already exist.
One line covers licensing 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.[17] Selling sight-unseen and shipping 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.
This is the show world’s default first breed, and the reasons are good ones. The does are calm. The standard is forgiving enough to learn on. The coat gene breeds true, so you are not sorting kits by genotype. And there is more comparison stock within a day’s drive than for any other breed in the country.
What the breed asks for in return is patience with the clock. You cannot know what you produced until the junior prime comes in, somewhere between 18 and 24 weeks, and most of the litter has gone home by then. A breeder who is honest about that keeps buyers. A breeder who promises show quality on an 8-week coat does not.
One more route is worth naming. Plenty of adult Mini Rex are rehomed by their owners every year, and adopting one is the other way this breed finds homes. Our page on Mini Rex rabbit adoption covers that route, and an adult comes with a finished coat you can actually assess.
Petmeetly connects Mini Rex owners to each other directly. The rabbits at the top of this page belong to owners looking for a match, which is where a well-planned pairing starts.
Sources
Fact-checked against the American Rabbit Breeders Association, the National Mini Rex Rabbit Club, PetMD, and PLoS One.
What first-time Mini Rex breeders ask before they pair two rabbits
Recessive. A rabbit needs two copies of the gene to grow the velvet coat, so pairing two rex-coated rabbits gives you a whole litter of rex-coated kits. Cross a Mini Rex to a normal-coated rabbit and every kit comes out normal-coated, carrying one hidden copy. Pair two of those carriers and about one kit in four gets the coat back.
Yes. Breeder references list the Mini Rex among the breeds that carry it, alongside the Holland Lop, Netherland Dwarf and Polish. Pairing two true dwarfs can produce peanuts, kits with two copies of the gene that do not grow and always die. A false-dwarf doe carries no copy at all and cannot produce a peanut, whichever buck she is paired to.
A guide written for this breed puts first breedings at 6 to 8 months old. Weight matters alongside the calendar, so weigh the doe rather than only counting months. An overweight doe is a common reason a mating fails to take. Most does retire from breeding at 3 to 4 years old.
About a month. The breed guide gives 28 to 31 days, and the species-wide range runs to 33, so a doe a day or two past 31 is still inside normal. The nest box should be in the cage with clean bedding by day 27. A kit born outside the box chills within minutes, so early is safer than late.
No reliable breed average has been published, so plan for a range rather than a number. The litter that founded the breed held seven kits, which is an anecdote rather than an average. Small breeds generally run smaller litters than the meat breeds, so budget feed and grow-out space for a spread.
Body type is readable at about 8 weeks, but fur is not. The first coat you can properly evaluate is the junior prime, which starts around 12 weeks and finishes between 18 and 24 weeks. That lands well after kits go home, which is why honest sellers call an 8-week kit show potential rather than show quality.
ARBA sets the maximum at 4.5 pounds, so a heavier rabbit cannot be shown. Breeder transcriptions of the standard put the ideal at 4 pounds for a senior buck and 4.25 pounds for a senior doe. Seniors run roughly 3 to 4.5 pounds overall.
Thirty-five of 100, tied with the body, per breeder transcriptions of the ARBA standard. Color takes 15 points, and head, ears and condition take 5 each. A coat that scores as heavily as type is unusual, and it is why the coat clock drives every selection decision in this breed.
In 1988, at the convention in Madison, Wisconsin. Monna Berryhill of Texas began the work in 1984, after she won a pair of Dwarf Rex rabbits at the ARBA Convention in Orlando that year. A buck named Zoro and a small Lynx Rex doe named Cotton produced the litter that founded the breed.
The rex coat puts thinner fur over the footpads than a normal coat does, and that thin padding is what lets pressure sores form on the hocks. PetMD lists short-coated rex breeds at raised risk through thin fur, and giant breeds separately through pressure and weight. The tendency runs in lines rather than across the whole breed, so breeders select away from it and give every rabbit a solid resting surface.
Working barns sell kits for roughly $20 to $60, most with pedigrees available. A Mini Rex specialist rabbitry starts pet kits at $80, brood stock at $90 and show stock at $100. This is the most abundant show breed in the country, and that supply keeps prices honest.
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.
More vetted material for owners planning a Mini Rex 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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