Tag Archives: rabbit breeding

We Have Baby Rabbits!

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proud momFinally! (Though not completely on our own yet; more about that later.)

A little background: We got two eight-week old female rabbits last June, a few weeks later we got a slightly older male (from a different breeder). In October they were old enough to breed, we brought Clover (doe) to Winston’s (buck) cage and they did what needed to be done — though it was awkward and Clover wasn’t very encouraging. But we had officially started breeding our rabbits.

Sorta. It didn’t work, and didn’t work, and didn’t work… We tried Winston with each of the females, repeatedly. We bred in the morning, we bred in the evening, before meals, after meals. Each time it seemed like they couldn’t quite get into the right position for correct “contact”. We read forums and blogs for insight. We inspected the genitalia, we inspected the poops. We tried holding the female in position and “assisting” the male. We fed them a little less to make them leaner. We tried swapping cages so they could smell the other’s scent and get in “the mood”. We tried overnighting them together (they are very docile), rabbits are nocturnal after all. We tried adding apple cider vinegar to their water (supposed to be an aphrodisiac). Then after each attempt we’d wait and see if there were any signs of pregnancy, a couple of times we even waited the whole 28 – 31 day cycle, and we were repeatedly disappointed and discouraged.

WE’RE BREEDING RABBITS, we thought, HOW HARD CAN IT BE!

We mostly took December off, it was very cold here (relatively) and it is a busy month. When January arrived we got together with our good friend Rob, the man we got our rabbits from, to trouble-shoot the situation. We determined we didn’t know if one or more of our rabbits were “broken”/infertile. So we decided to breed our rabbits with his “proven” stock. We brought Clover, to Rob’s place, to spend the night with Bugs (who has fathered many litters). We also brought back his doe, Cali, to spend the night with Winston. This was the middle of January, so we’d know by the middle of February.

Mid-February arrived and Cali/Winston had a litter of 10! So Winston wasn’t shooting blanks and apparently, with the right motivation, could do what needed to be done. But the Clover/Bugs breeding was unsuccessful.

Rewind slightly, two weeks after we bred Clover with Bugs we brought over our other female, Artemis, to breed with Bugs. So even though Clover hadn’t “delivered”, we still had our hopes out for Artemis (and Rob felt very sure, based on their time together, that Artemis would be pregnant).

young kitsFinally the week came, we put in the nesting box and last Thursday morning (2/28) I went out to feed them and we had a litter of seven kits (baby bunnies)! We had six alive and one dead. Unfortunately, likely since it was her first litter, Artemis hadn’t used the nesting box; instead making a nest out of cardboard (that had been lining the nesting box), hay, and of course fur in the corner of her cage. It worked, though I suspect the one that died may have been near the edge and got too cold. I, carefully, moved all the nesting material and then the remaining kits into the nesting box and they quickly snuggled into the soft fur.

To say I was excited was an understatement! (I later described my feelings as “disproportionately excited.”) I took a couple of pictures and then texted Sarah, the kids, and Rob that we had finally been successful!

We’re now about a week in, mom and babies all seem to be doing very well. Artemis appears to be a good mom and the kits seem to be growing and developing appropriately.

The next test, now that we know both Winston and Artemis “work” is to successfully breed our two rabbits together. We’ll do that in a couple of months.

We traded Clover, with Rob, for a four-month old female. We’ll breed the new female, Clover 2.0, when she reaches six months.

I write about this not only to share our failures and victories, but again as a warning: ANYTHING in your preps that you’re going to depend on needs to be tested first. Last summer we would have asked, “What could possible go wrong breeding rabbits? They breed like rabbits, right?” Finally after four months we are, mostly, successful.

Test, and retest your preps, plans, and the systems you have in place. Be sure you know how to use them, take the time to actually make them work appropriately, know basic trouble-shooting steps, and then share this information with the rest of your family.

 

What We Did This Week To Prep 11/9/12

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Since we’ve added a Ford F350 truck to our household we needed to get a bug out bag (BOB) in it. We’ve got top-notch ones in each of our two primary, daily use, vehicles; then a pretty good one in the Jeep CJ-7. We took the one from the Jeep and put it in the truck. Now Ryan (my 18 y/o son), who is now the primary driver of the Jeep, is in the process of building his own BOB. He has a Maxpedition Vulture II pack and we’ve gathered some stuff for his kit; he’s got a decent start and has made a list of items to round it out. It’ll be good for him to build his own BOB so that when he goes off on his own he’ll have his kit that he knows and has confidence in.

It was interesting seeing all the views of my blog during and after Hurricane Sandy. It got double the hits in that week than I get in an average month. It’s ironic how being prepared all of a sudden becomes “common sense” when a disaster is on the way (or after it has already struck…). It’s also interesting to see which posts people are searching/reading. In the near future I’m going to add a new page that has a list of all of the top viewed posts that people seem to find the most valuable. By far the most popular post during this time was How To Wire Your Gas Furnace To A Generator by guest contributor Rick Brodersen; it received hundreds of views daily. Plus Rick has been a great resource, he has personally answered each of the comments in the section and has been directly responsible for several people being able to heat their homes when their power was out.

Last spring Momma Bear wrote a post entitled Home-Made Reusable Sanitary Napkins. It was a valuable topic that may, one day, be very relevant to almost half of our population. Recently “Kate” wrote in the comments section of that post about menstrual cups. Her knowledge and experience were quite extensive and she wrote a great summary. I contacted her and asked her if she’d be willing to write it as a blog post for us and she pleasantly agreed. So Monday (10/12) I’ll post the first of her two-part article on menstrual cups; first-hand knowledge is always invaluable.

Well the time for having baby rabbits came and went. Apparently, despite some maternal indications, Clover was not pregnant. She did gain weight (though we fed her more thinking she was pregnant) and she did go through a nesting phase, but no babies. Apparently it’s not that easy to tell when a rabbit is pregnant, and determining it mostly comes down to experience and knowledge (neither which we have yet). So this weekend we’ll try breeding our other doe, Artemis. I’ve done some additional reading and feel more confident about how to maximize our chances of fertilization. Who ever thought breeding rabbits would be hard??

What did you do?

What We Did This Week To Prep 10/5/12

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Monday morning I bred our rabbits for the first time; it was relatively uneventful and went, essentially, as one would predict. We should have babies about November 1st, and then harvest them about February 1st. We’ll bred Mom #2 December 1st. This should establish a cycle where we bred one of our two mothers and butcher a litter, of approximately eight off-spring, ever eight weeks. If things go as planned, that will provide one rabbit to eat (approximately 2 1/2 pounds of meat) a week.

I ended Monday by going to my friend Rob’s house (where I got the female rabbits from originally and where I helped butcher more last month) to again help him butcher the current litter and to continue developing my skills and knowledge. I brought my son, Ryan, and had Rob teach him the process. After watching Rob, Ryan did three of his own; since there were fewer in this litter I only did one. Ryan and I are feeling relatively confident in our skills, we’ll probably help Rob another time or two before we do our own.

That day had a “Circle of Life” type feel to it: breeding to create life in the morning and ending life to provide food that evening. It was interesting to view, and participate, in the cycle first-hand.

Several months ago Sarah, along with her cousin, set a goal of getting in better shape. To do so they decided to challenge themselves by signing up to run a half-marathon. Sarah has never been a runner, and though she works out on a regular basis, this was a new thing for her. This past Sunday she/they achieved the goal by successfully competing the Bellingham Half-Marathon. She trained regularly and was well prepared for it and did very well, including accomplishing it within the time-goal they had set. Afterward, and in the days following, she felt pretty good; we attribute that to good sleep, nutrition, and especially hydration leading up to the race. Is this a prepper topic? I believe it is. A lifestyle that includes healthy and consistent: exercise, nutrition, sleep, hydration, learning, and achieving goals is the key to success now and will be even more important in a collapse.

Property update: We got the septic inspection (passed, all looked good), well inspection (passed, also looked good), and the home inspection (there are several things that need done, but the house is structurally sound) done this week. We approached the Seller with some items that needed repaired so  the house would appraise, and we were told they didn’t have the money or time to get it done and were unwilling to do it. This essentially stopped the process and at that point we chose to walk away. Maybe time, and lack of success, will make them more willing to negotiate in the future. We still love the property, the location, and the pole barn, and believe the house is fine for now and has potential for the future. But we want to be smart about this decision and approach it logically and as unemotionally as possible.

What did you do?