Category Archives: Pet Rabbits

Birthday Parties and Easter Bunnies

Pet Rabbits December 12, 2012 Leave a comment
Wanna take me to your birthday party??

Wanna take me to your birthday party??

We have been busy breeding bunnies around here in preparation for two big rabbit seasons – Easter and the fair. We have several litters due around the end of December and beginning of January!

 

A friend suggested we give “birthday bunnies” a try and, after checking several other rabbitries that offer this option, we’re going to give this idea a whirl at Mad Hatter with our next crop of baby bunnies.

 

Do you have a birthday party coming up where baby bunnies would be a hit? We will bring cute, cuddly baby puffs of bunnies to your party (number proportional to the number of party attendees you have) and do a short, educational talk on rabbits, then give your kiddos a chance to play with a bunny! They learn a little, play a little, and we get a chance to spread knowledge about how awesome rabbits are to our community! Win, win for everyone!

 

We’ve tested this idea on a daycare center – the kids LOVED petting our rabbit, especially because the breeds we have are so exceptionally soft!

 

If you’re interested in scheduling a birthday party in February or March, shoot us an email at madhatterrabbits {at} gmail {dot} com!

Add. Definitely.

Mini Rex, Pet Rabbits December 10, 2012 Leave a comment

The last question was “To Add or Not To Add?” and the answer for us today is: “Add. Definitely.”

 

We’ve just brought Dexter and Kenya home with us and I can’t deny it, I love these mini Rex! As an added bonus, Kenya is pregnant, so we should have some more little Rex monsters running around here in about two weeks!

 

So, meet our new rabbits:

Dexter, chocolate otter buck

Dexter, chocolate otter buck

Kenya, chocolate doe.

Kenya, chocolate doe.

 

Dexter has an amazing red sheen to his coat, so I’m looking forward to what he creates with Butterscotch.

 

If all goes well around here, we should have a number of new rabbits available for the spring!

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.

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?

10 Bunny Facts

Pet Rabbits October 31, 2012 1 Comment

Brownie knows he’s cute.

The rabbit watch is still on. Duchess has not had her babies yet.

That doe is going to give me a heart attack.

In honor of learning about the rabbit, here are 10 random facts (and my own commentary!) about bunnies:

1. It’s not just a hot dog. Until the 18th century rabbits were called coneys, based on the French cunil, shortened from the Latin cuniculus. “Rabbit” first referred to the young of coneys until eventually the word took over in popularity. Incidentally, this is also the origin of the name Coney Island or Rabbit Island, the beachside amusement park in New York. It is one of the only references to coney that is still used in North America.

2. Stephen King isn’t the only Fang. Rabbits teeth never stop growing. If their jaws are misaligned, the non-matched teeth won’t grind down and can cause major injury, even death.

3. They have blurry indigestion. Rabbits are nearsighted and they cannot vomit. Those are two completely unrelated facts that might save you when you’re on Jeopardy. You’re welcome.

4. Shipwrecked. Hundreds of years ago Phoenician sailors discovered rabbits in Spain. In fact, “Spain” could mean “land of the rabbits.” The Phoenicians loved the little breeders, loaded them on their ships, then stopped at various deserted islands and let them loose in hopes of giving shipwrecked sailors a reliable food source.

5. They’re athletic. The current world record for a rabbit long jump is 3 meters; the current world record for the rabbit high jump is 1 meter… and you know you want to petition ESPN to show that on the 72″ big screen!

6. They’re the original Native Americans. Rabbits and hares commonly found in the United States of America include the cottontail, jackrabbit, snowshoe rabbit and the domestic rabbit. There is a difference between a hare and a rabbit, although they can be crossbred.

7. The Brits like them. In England rabbits have become the third most popular pet (after dogs and cats). This makes sense, because they can be litter box trained and they don’t expect you to be subservient to them à la the feline. However, keep the water bowl filled, a 4-lbs. rabbit will drink the same amount of water as a 20-lbs. dog.

8. They’re cinematic. I watched the movie Harvey once. Harvey, the six-foot-four invisible rabbit companion “pooka” to eccentric man Elwood P. Dowd (played by James Stewart) displayed some thought-provoking behaviors. I still don’t get the movie, however.

9. Big Ears. Rabbits cool themselves using their ears as a ventilation system. Because of this, rabbits born in the summer may have “summer ears” – non-genetic growth that produces big ears.

10. You’re so vain. Rabbits are compulsive groomers and spent the majority of their day in various stages of grooming. They also lose their hair several times a year in a process called “molting.” Mama rabbits develop a huge, goiter-looking lump of fur called a dewlap, which they pull out to line their nest when they have babies.

Now, don’t you feel smarter about the lagomorph? Do you have any rabbit facts to share?

 

 

A Family Affair

Meat Rabbits, Pet Rabbits, Show Rabbits October 24, 2012 Leave a comment

Daddy’s overseer during cage manufacturing!

One of the great draws for us in raising rabbits is the ability for each member of our family to participate.

 

Our children can help around the rabbitry in many ways each day:

 

  • They can check the food and water levels
  • They can watch the weather report and make sure our rabbits are protected in inclement weather
  • The are able to rake up any bunny berries that get out of line
  • They can socialize each rabbit

 

Additionally, our children are learning life skills from their time working with the rabbits:

 

  • They learn how to respect a precious creature and honor life
  • They gain pride in accomplishment as the animals thrive
  • They experience joy in the companionship of their rabbit
  • They understand financial responsibility and opportunity cost as they raise and sell
  • They gain knowledge of where their food comes from
  • They learn basics of genetics through breeding

 

There are many other ways our children benefit from having rabbits, but these are a few that are compelling for us. What would you add to the discussion?

What About the Poop?!

Meat Rabbits, Pet Rabbits, Show Rabbits October 17, 2012 Leave a comment

Bunny Berries are excellent for reuse in gardens.

USES FOR RABBIT MANURE

Rabbit manure, or “bunny berries,” used as a plant fertilizer is superior to other manures due to its unique composition. Often referred to as “super fertilizer” or “Bunny Gold,” gardeners revel in the fast and abundant growth of their crops, plants, gardens and produce. Rabbit manure will not “burn” the plants when applied directly to the plants.

Composting with rabbit manure is also popular and rabbit manure ranks among the finest of all manures to use for this purpose.

Worm farming (Vermiculture) has additional benefits as the worms thrive in properly maintained worm beds and rabbit manure is the favorite manure to use for raising worms. The raising of worms under cages can be used to eliminate odor in the barns. Open, ventilated barns are ideal for this venture.

Worm farming also provides additional income by selling the worms for bait or composting, and the worm “castings” as potting soil.

 

Written by Pat Lamar, President of the Professional Rabbit Meat Association (PRMA) and the Chairperson of the Commercial Department Committee for the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA), 1998

Preparing Your Hutch for Winter

Champagne d'Argent, Holland Lop, Meat Rabbits, Mini Rex, Pet Rabbits, Show Rabbits, Silver Marten October 15, 2012 1 Comment

Now that winter is upon us, we take a few different precautions winterizing our rabbits. Rabbits thrive in cold weather, but it still makes sense to make sure you don’t wake up one morning after a frigid night and discover your livestock frozen solid!

Our hutch is a double-decker, lean-to style. The sides are made of T11 insulating material with corrugated fiberglass interiors. We’ve attached a heavy tarp to the front of the hutch that can be dropped down in driving rain, super snow, or during our terribly windy spring days.

We also give each of our rabbits a box stuffed with hay for the below-freezing weather.

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Meet the Holland Lops!

Holland Lop, Pet Rabbits October 15, 2012 1 Comment

Our Holland Lops are from three separate bloodlines and are currently living in three homes as pets! Here are just a few of the babies from Grand Champion lines we have as part of our breeding stock! (Look for more babies around Christmas 2012!)

 

Caramel Machiatto

 

Chocolate Chip

 

Brownie

 

Meet the Mini Rex!

Mini Rex, Pet Rabbits October 15, 2012 Leave a comment

Well, we went a’rabbit huntin’ this weekend. We intended to come home with a Silver Marten buck but due to several circumstances, including our very spoiled daughters, we ended up with Min Rex rabbits!

 

We now have two does, two bucks who were born in August 2012. Almost got all of them in one picture, but Snowy was too quick for my camera!

 

Butterscotch, Bushy, and Maverick one their first day at Mad Hatter Rabbits.