Solar Ovens

Friday, August 26, 2011

A surprise from the rabbits!

The rabbits we got were supposedly not old enough to breed yet.  My son was convinced that the girl was pregnant.  I kept telling him she wasn't old enough, besides you can't really tell they're expecting.  Even experts can be fooled.    But about 2 1/2 weeks after we got them, there were baby bunnies in the nesting box!  Unfortunately, they were dead baby bunnies.  Now it's not uncommon for the first litter of a doe to be born dead.  But it's also possible that they froze to death since we didn't have the nesting box ready, having had no idea any bunnies were coming!
I emailed Wendie, & she'd had the same unpleasant surprise, except her chickens had partly eaten the dead babies before they found them.  Ew!  Apparently, unbeknownst to Wendie, her son had bred the rabbits.  She was very apologetic.  "Well", I thought, "lets try to be tough about this".  My kind son was very stoic about it!  He got some disposable gloves on, a plastic grocery sack, & got all the dead bunnies of the nesting box for me & threw them away.  What a trooper!  It gave me hope that we could do this, between he & I!
I also realized that they were old enough to mate, & I needed to get them out of the same cage.  I tried various "dividers" in their cage, while I was trying to find a good deal on a hutch.  But nothing worked.  The wood they nibbled off the top until there was a big enough space to jump over.  I tried wire on a frame, & they pushed & pushed on that until it came loose.  Finally, I found a hutch I could afford (someone sold me a really good one for $30, & gave me one that needed some repairs for free!), & moved the boy out.  But by then she was expecting again!  Too late for us to have bunnies for Easter, but still expecting!

1 comment:

  1. I just found your blog through the blog hop & am loving it and very inspired. I'm also a single mama of one boy. My son, Gage, is 9.5 yrs. old and we just bought a home on 1.25 acres and are beginning the journey towards more self-sufficiency. We have 7 chickens that hopefully will begin laying eggs in a few more weeks. I built a large coop so that we can also raise some meat birds in the coming year. I'm reading up on rabbits, including your info, with plans to start raising them soon also. We're in south Florida, so my garden will be gearing up soon, as its too hot during our summers for most veggies to grow. Looking forward to reading more of your blog!

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