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.