Rabbits

When we first got to the new place, we had to do something we hadn’t done in years: buy meat. Not only is the store-bought stuff super expensive, but it’s also nowhere near the quality we were used to. So we bought some Californian rabbits.

We suspended cages from the rafters of a carport. The cages all have water nipples and feeders. At the moment we have 7 breeders, who have a large cage each, and then the weaned litters go into a whole unit of cages (with doors between them open). We may expand the whole enterprise at some point by tractoring the rabbits out on pasture, but this is enough for right now.

The current setup isn’t ideal. We feel they need a little more protection from the elements and would love to somehow incorporate a burrow for each rabbit. But it’ll do for now.

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Rabbits

Rabbit Fodder

Abe has started a little fodder system going for the rabbits.

We sprout seeds (oats, wheat) and then put them in a very small amount of worm castings in aluminum trays. Keep them moist. After a few days this beautiful grass has grown and all signs of soil has been swallowed by this super thick mat of roots.

The rabbits LOVE it. It is fresh grass, so much tastier, and it's considerably better for them, as the nutrition increases significantly from seed to grass. Plus it is a lot cheaper than buying a grain or concentrate.

After doing several test trays, Abe is now building a shelf system, so that we can start doing this for almost all the rabbits' food.

Furs now for sale

We are now selling the exclusive and incredibly soft fur items made from our sustainably raised bunnies. If you, or anyone you know, would like to buy one, please check out this page.

Furry Stuff

Of any animal we’ve had, rabbits are by far the easiest to raise. They are quiet, cute and very efficient on food.

We keep them for meat, for ours and other families, and nothing goes to waste. The dogs and pigs share everything that gets shed during the butchering process and I get the furs.

I've been tanning the hides since the beginning and am now starting to do stuff with them. I've made some as gifts into handbags, purses, cushions, and even Kindle covers. And I am now getting ready to sell them.

To that end, I just bought myself an awesome sewing machine. It's a 1950s Dressmaker heavy duty machine and I got it for a steal. Everything in it is metal, which makes it heavy, but it beats the new, plastic crap on the market.

Gathering

We have spent several days over the last month gathering food for the animals. We collected a couple of truckloads of Mesquite, which is high in protein and both the pigs and the rabbits love it (we ferment it for the pigs). We will also be grinding some of it up into flour for our own use.

Plus we cut and dried a truckload of alfalfa. A friend of ours has a patch that we can cut in exchange for some rabbit meat. Abe uses the scythe to cut it, I pile it up and load it into the truck, Leo chases frogs, and Nico sleeps (that little one of ours is very lazy!). At home we lay it out in our old driveway to dry and then make little bales by compressing it in our ice chest and tying it up. We will be going and cutting another load this week. We hope to store enough over the summer to last us through winter and dry season.

We give the rabbits and pigs a bucketload of grass and weeds each day from the garden. Even though the pigs can get it for themselves, they still like us to give them some - I guess it makes them feel special.

Rabbit fur handbag

It's a good friend's (Leo's Godmother, without the baptism!) birthday this week, so I made her a gift out of rabbit fur.

I have been tanning all the furs we've gathered, but this is the first thing I've made with them. There were a few items on the learning curve of sewing leather, but all in all not too bad. I was pleased with how it came out, especially the softness, something you cannot appreciate through a photo.

Here's a couple more photos.

Rabbit Cages

We love the colony style of rabbit keeping, where the rabbits get to hang out together instead of being in separate cages. It just seems like they are happier (due to companionship) and more healthy (because they can exercise). However, we have encountered a fairly large flaw with the system.

They have a large pen outside as well as an inside space, and many of them had started having their litters in burrows they made outside. Not only did this pose a problem with keeping track of whose babies were whose (now that we have a doe getting pregnant every week and babies a week apart look fairly similar), it also put the babies at risk, like when we had that freak cold front, we found five babies dead outside. There were also some casualties with trampling, when older litters would run over burrows of newborns.

So, we have come up with a compromise. We made two cages that we hung in the air inside. A couple of days before a doe is due to give birth, we put her in one of the cages. She then stays in there until her babies open their eyes (about a week to 10 days), by which time they are not nearly so fragile. We can count the babies, know their colors, and monitor them a lot more closely in that first crucial week this way, and yet they still get to be with the others for most of the time. We have tried it out with a couple of does and it worked great.

We now need to make two more, and when we do we'll post a how-to article.

Property Updates

I haven't written much about the place recently, so I thought I'd do a little update on how things are doing.

Building
We haven't done any building since we finished the bathroom and hot water system. We really have everything we need, so no need to hurry on to the next construction projects, at least until well after the baby is born. We'll probably make the pantry (a big cupboard in the entranceway) and another shelf or two, but that's it for the next couple of months.

Hot Water system
This has really changed our lives and is the greatest luxury on the place. There have been a couple of small issues to work out, but Abe figures them out and fixes them. Unless it's cloudy for several days or unless we use the floor heaters a lot, our tank temperature sits happily at 130 degrees and will almost burn you!

Compost Heater
This did not work out as well as we had hoped. Although it heated Leo's wall a lot at the beginning, it does not do so steadily. We will have to tweak the idea to make it more effective. At least we''ll get a big old pile of compost out of the experiment.

Pigs
The three pigs are growing at an incredible rate. They more than doubled (and one of them almost tripled) their weight in the first month we had them. We made a pasture for them and they love to run around in it, root up the dirt, eat grass and play. When you arrive, they come running up to be petted, scratched and fed scraps. They consider Leo one of them. Photos

Chickens
We replaced most of our chickens a little while ago with some young layers. They have recently started to produce eggs. So far we are getting about two a day, but that will increase with Spring. It's Leo's treasured job to collect them (although he is only allowed to carry one back to the house).

Rabbits
The rabbits are amazing. We have kept a lot of the best females to pad out our breeding stock. We now have twelve females, four of which are still not ready to breed. By March, when they are all of breeding age, we will be getting a litter a week. Right now we have a little over 40 of them, of all different sizes!
They are truly the easiest animals in the world to keep and a joy to watch. Photos

Gardens
We didn't plant anything for winter outside. There was a lot going on at the time and we decided to let it go for this year. The inside dining room planter is on the other hand doing great, with all kinds of herbs, greens, carrots and garlic going crazy. We will shortly be doing soil blocks for the living room one.

Road
For the grand old price of $15, we got our road graded the other day. Most people don't understand what this means, but to sum it up for you, our road is long (2 miles), dirt and was in terrible condition after the rains we got this year. It now feels like a super highway, and my increasing belly is very grateful.

Rabbit weening and weigh in

The first of our two litters of rabbits reached 6 weeks old on Wednesday, so we got all the babies out of the pen to weigh and sex them. Out of the 9 babies, 5 are female, all of which we will be keeping. On average, they weighed 2 pounds (a little under a kilo). The three largest (over 2lbs each) we have put in a separate pen to ween them. We will be weening the other 4 of Reina's babies over the next week or two.

One side note: we used asphalt board (painted) for the shed, and we are not impressed with it. Although it keeps the inside dry, it has bowed considerably. It will work fine for a while, but we will have to replace or cover it some time. We won't be using it again.

For more photos, see here.

Sex changes

It can sometimes be a little tricky to sex young rabbits, especially if they are squirming around. With that in mind, we decided to re-sex our rabbits, just in case, before the young ones get old enough to breed (they can breed when they are 3 months old, but we want to wait until they are 6 months).

Obviously no need with the adult females, Reina and Coco, who have both had babies since arriving at our place. Likewise with the adult male, Socks, who has a big old pair of testicles.

However, with the others, we discovered two mistakes. It turns out Obama is a female - I guess she now becomes Mrs. Obama? And Frisky is a male - the name can stay. Hopefully Frisky isn't yet old enough to have bred Reina or Coco so soon after they gave birth. We'll see in a few weeks.

Rabbits

Well, we finished the rabbit shed. For photos, click here.

There are 4 pens inside - one for the females, one for each of the two males, and one for the babies once they're weened. All with dirt and straw (and toys for them to get under and on top of). Plus each pen has an outside yard area (although we haven't yet done the females' one).

The shed has its own catchment system, with a 1000 gallon tank.

There's an electric fence around everything to help keep predators away.

But, more exciting than the shed, is that we went to the city yesterday and got a bunch of rabbits! The guy we bought them from has a colony set-up as well, although his males are not separated from the females, which we wanted to do so that we can give each female a break from being pregnant.

We have three adults - one male (Socks) and two probably pregnant females (Reina and Coco). We then have five younger ones - one male (Obama) and four females (Button, Oreo, Kiwi, Frisky). They are the sweetest little things and super curious and playful. We will be getting each one (except the pregnant females) out of the pen every morning to play with them and tame them up a little. Needless to say, Leo LOVES them. It's hard getting him away from the shed, unless you tell him that the dogs are waiting to play with him.

The rabbit in the photo is Button - she's the baby of the family. For photos of the others, click here.