Monthly Archives: November 2012

Ugly Babies

Champagne d'Argent, Holland Lop November 21, 2012 Leave a comment

While most “baby” animals end up looking cute, the majority are born looking pretty… well… pathetic.

Baby bunnies are no exception.

Baby bunnies are born hairless, with their eyes and ears closed. They are very susceptible to death, as they can get chilled quickly. Mama pulls hair out of her dewlap (basically a double chin with purpose!) and uses the hair as insulation for the litter.

Holland lop litter, hours old.

And, did I mention they’re ugly?

Champagne d’Argent, hours old.

Mama rabbits will nurse only once or twice each day and stay away from the babies in the meantime. Somehow, even without much nurturing, love and support, the baby rabbits will gradually grow hair and fill out.

Champagne d’Argent, three days old.

The wisest course of action during this time for a human is to simply leave the babies alone. Check them once, maybe twice, each day to be sure you don’t have a dead baby in the nestbox. (Distracting mama with a bit of apple, carrot, or celery is a good idea.) Other than that, just let time take its course and mature the babies.

If a baby bunny is born pink, odds are it will be white. Black skin color is equal to black bunnies.

Champagne d’Argent, six days old.

We’re excited every time we have a new litter – and patience is hard! But healthy baby bunnies are what we’re after, so it’s best to let the mama do what the mama does best and stay out of the way!

Baby Bunnies and Freezing Temperatures

Champagne d'Argent November 14, 2012 Leave a comment

Duchess’s first kit. Champagne d’Argent, hours old.

We are terribly excited to announce that Duchess gave birth yesterday, on Day 33!

Typically a Champagne d’Argent will have 6-8 kits per litter, so we are a bit surprised that she only produced one. However, it’s her first litter so we’ll give her a few more tries to get things figured out before we make any judgements about her production ability.

Having only one baby did give us a different kind of problem, however. Usually between mom’s fur covering and the sibling’s body heat a baby is fine well into freezing temperatures – but our little one has no one to snuggle with and share warmth while our temperatures bottom out around 17* at night.

Some breeders put a warming plate or heating light in their nestboxes, but the use of these is questionable because they can very easily roast your fur-less rabbits. (Remember, temperatures over 80* or so can be deadly to your rabbit.)

What to do?

We are using a wire nestbox and the hutch is about three feet off the ground. We placed a few cinderblock on end under the nestbox and a normal electric heating pad on top of the cinder blocks (There’s a gaps of about eight inches between the heating pad and the floor of the cage.) Then we dropped the tarp covering down on the hutch and said a prayer.

This morning we have one healthy kit still alive and squirming! Mom’s water dish still had some ice in it but wasn’t frozen solid, so we feel we’ve hit the right combination of warmth.

There’s no perfect way to raise a rabbit, so it’s good to learn how others do it and use your own ingenuity. Here’s to a great little kit growing up strong!

Why our babies rehome at six weeks or later

Pet Rabbits November 11, 2012 Leave a comment

Bushy, broken blue mini rex buck.

This is the story of a guinea pig, Christmas, and how a six-year-old’s life lesson has to do with rabbits.

Earlier this week we had someone ask us if our Holland Lop babies would be ready to go home in time for Christmas morning.Unfortunately the answer is no. It will be right after New Year’s instead (and we’ll do our breeding in better time next year!)

I almost buckled and told them we would make an exception because it was Christmas… and then I had a flashback to the Christmas I was six-years-old.

Christmas was a big deal growing up; our financial situation was always modest so any presents we received were a Really Big Deal.

(When I was seven years old my greatest desire was a Trapper Keeper with kittens on it from Revco, the local drug store. When I woke up that Christmas morning and saw that Trapper Keeper… oh! I just couldn’t get over how lucky I was! Perhaps I was exceptionally excited about the Trapper Keeper because I could remember my gift from the previous year.)

As a little six-year-old, still believing in Santa Claus but realizing that Mommy and Daddy were the financial backing of most gifts, I woke up to a stocking filled with navel oranges, life savers, bubble gum, and a medium-sized cardboard box.

When I unwrapped that cardboard box, there was something amazing inside!A guinea pig!

It was white and brown and very snuggly! It was mine, all mine!  Oh, the joy!

I held that guinea pig on our cream-colored velour sofa and gave my heart to it completely. I loved that guinea pig, knowing we were meant to be fast friends.

The guinea pig was so willing to sit calmly on my lap! It was lovely with its pink nose and beaded eyes.

I couldn’t have been happier with my guinea pig!

Right up until the moment I realized it wasn’t breathing anymore.

Yes, folks, my parents gave me a guinea pig on Christmas morning and by lunchtime on Christmas day… it was dead.

Now that I’m a parent, I can only imagine what my own parents were thinking as I came to them, crying, with a dead guinea pig in my arms. The kicker, though, was that I looked at my mom, accusingly, and asked, “Did you get it on sale?!”

My mom assured me they did not get it on sale and we travelled an hour away on Christmas day to another city to pick up a new, very live guinea pig from the breeder.

I remember being depressed about the new guinea pig. I had really loved the first one so the replacement was just… a replacement.

It turns out the guinea pig was separated from its mother too soon in order to send it home for a Christmas-morning reveal.

Nothing puts a damper on the Christmas spirit quite like a dead animal.

I had forgotten this story until today (proof the scars we receive as children really do heal). I told the gentleman asking us about rabbits that we’d provide a professional quality photo to wrap for the gift and visitation rights instead.

We will let our babies go to their homes when they are weaned, not before six weeks. If they are aged six-to-eight weeks, they need to go in pairs, as rabbits who are together just do better. If it’s just a single rabbit, they need to be eight weeks old before they head to their new digs.

And that, my friends, is the end of that.

Bunny Hop

Rex November 5, 2012 Leave a comment

Teddy visited with a local preschool today.

Today we had a chance to take Teddy to a local preschool.

 

He was perfectly behaved and the kids really enjoyed the opportunity to rub his velvety fur! Rabbits are excellent therapy animals and most enjoy socializing with people.

 

I heard the kids are going to read The Velveteen Rabbit this week in honor of Teddy’s visit!

Rabbit Watch, Day 3

Champagne d'Argent, Pet Rabbits November 1, 2012 Leave a comment

Rabbit Pregnancy

We’re on rabbit watch, day 3.

I don’t mean to get so involved in Duchess’s birthing process, but it’s her first litter and, well, I get excited when there are baby bunnies floating around!

Duchess is not cooperating. I put more alfalfa hay on the floor of her cage in hopes she’d gather it up and put it in her nestbox… she didn’t.But she did enjoy her tasty snack!

I’ve spent the last two days searching the internet for information on how you can tell your rabbit is about to give birth. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. Every rabbit has a different gestation length. The average length of a rabbit pregnancy is 31 days, although the range is 28-35 days. Let me tell you, the difference between 28 and 35 days is a l o n g time when you’re checking your rabbit every few hours!

2. Pulling hair is spontaneous. Some rabbits will pull their hair and prepare their nestbox several days in advance. This is a well-prepared, type-A rabbit. Then there are the free-wheeling, fun loving rabbits who pull their dewlap fur an hour before birth. Ellen of Sky Island Livestock told me she has does who will pull their hair as they are giving birth. Talk about procrastination!

3. I’ve got a bad attitude. Duchess is a sweet, shy rabbit. In the last week she’s been ridiculously jumpy and grumpy. When we put her next to a buck she began to growl and try to fight him through the cage wire (we quickly moved the buck to different quarters!). Today when I tried to give her our daily scratching she frantically hopping through her 4’x2.5′ cage like I was a demon after her soul. She is not herself. (Frankly, I’m not myself during the last bit of pregnancy, either!!)

4. Test mating might get you more than expected. We bred Duchess, then did a test breeding on day 12 to see if she was pregnant. Turns out the mating activity will stimulate one side of ovaries at a time – and the “test mating” recommended by so many people might actually trigger a second fertilization. Let me put it this way: a rabbit is capable of carrying two pregnancies, simultaneously! So there’s a chance Duchess is about to deliver a litter… and in two weeks she’ll deliver another! I’ll let you know how it goes.

5. When in doubt, send up a prayer and wait. The reality? I can do absolutely nothing to help Duchess right now. Once she births there’s a chance I can save the kits if she has them on the cage floor instead of the nestbox. Still, it’s a waiting game. Those babies will come when they want to come and I’m along for the ride. Patience, patience, patience. I’m developing this virtue!

Do you have any stories of first time rabbit deliveries?