Rabbits

This is a picture of my doe half stash (original name isnt it, she has a half mustache so I named her half stash), she was due to have her babies on January 30th and rabbits are usually on time so I wasnt expecting them until the 30th. On January 29th I looked in the rabbit house and found this.

 I know this looks like a pile of cotton but what it is actually is a nest. When a rabbit is about to give birth her fur will get loose and she will pull lots and lots of fur out to make a nice warm nest for her babies to keep them warm.

I dont usually bother the babies except to count them and check to make sure they are all alive for the first week. After they are about 10 days old they will open their eyes and start to move around and that is when I like to try and get them used to being handled and it makes it easier for me when I move them to the grow out pen until they are old enough to be butchered. We raise rabbits for meat so we try not to get to attached to them but it is hard.

I raise my rabbits in a colony setting so they are all kept together. I keep them in a dog pen that has chicken wire around the bottom of the walls and fence underneath the dirt on the bottom. Hopefully in the summer I can get a better pic for you. This picture was taken when it was raining and it is muddy and the tarp on the top is weighted down. In the spring I will add some more dirt to the bottom of the pen and make it look pretty again. There is a large box connected to the back of the pen with a hole big enough for the rabbits to go in and out, this is their house where they go out of the weather and have their babies in it. This set up works well for us but might not work well for everyone.

Rabbits are easy to feed. A 50 pound bag of rabbit food lasts us at least a month for 5 rabbits and they also get hay and veggies from the kitchen. In the spring and summer I also give them grass, they love it. You can see in this picture one of the spots that need dirt over top of the fence. The rabbits love to dig and they dig in the dirt down to the wire, which makes more work for me but that is ok because they are worth it. Raising animals and having food that comes right off my farm is great and I love knowing where my food comes from and what all is in it and I know that my animals were treated wonderfully while they were on this earth and that is a great feeling.