To Add or Not To Add

Mini Rex, Rex December 8, 2012 Leave a comment
Durango, buck, chocolate otter.

Durango, buck, chocolate otter.

The big question around here the last few days is whether we will be adding to our mini Rex herd.

 

A few months ago I fell head over heels in love with a chocolate otter buck named Dexter. The sight of him literally stopped me in my tracks! I hadn’t realized I loved chocolate otters until then, and once I saw it the first time, I was hooked.

 

Otters are distinctive because they have a lighter color on the inside of the ears, on nose, around the eyes and running along each side of the tummy.

 

After falling in love with Dexter we decided to pursue standard Rex’s with the hope of getting chocolate otters, and right now we have Durango growing up so when we breed him we will have our own standard Rex chocolate otters running around here!

 

Yesterday, however, Dexter’s owner contacted me and asked if we’d like to have him hang out with us. (She’s narrowing her focus to different colors.)

 

We need another mini Rex about as much as a punch to the gut, but this is Dexter we’re talking about! We’ve been going back and forth over cage space, long term plans, and such… and right now we’re leaning toward bringing Dexter home with us.

 

Oh! The rabbit madness!

 

My name is Brick and I’m a stud.

Silver Marten December 4, 2012 Leave a comment

Dear admiring public,

My name is Brick.

I’m the newest stud around Mad Hatter and, well, I don’t mean to brag, but I’m really quite a catch.

brick

If you look closely here, you’ll see eight pounds of handsome Silver Marten specimen captured in this body, excellent eye rings, great silvering up my sides, and a well-filled haunch. I’m a pretty cool buck.

I came to live in the mountains this weekend with my sweetheart, Bonfire. She’s a great gal, we’ve got a few kits running around. She’s two, which is getting a little old for a lady rabbit, but me, I’m still in my prime!

What I don’t understand is this cute little bun bun I met once I got here. Her name is Peppermint and she’s a fox! Great hair, good silvering, she’s the type of gal I want to spend some quality time with, if you know what I mean. When we met yesterday I thought in my head, “Yeah! I’m gonna get me some of that!”

She rejected me. It’s never happened to me before. I always make a positive impression on the ladies! I don’t know if it’s because of her age or my newness or what, but… but… that girl… she bit me!

peppermint and brick

She must not know my pedigree. She must not have heard of my winnings at the shows. She must be naive.

This simply cannot be. I demand an opportunity to pursue my romantic inclinations again! I have a purpose in life and that purpose is to procreate! Bonfire is not enough for me, I need Peppermint to complete my reputation!

I don’t know where this leaves me. I hope I’ll be singing a different tune in the next 24 hours. I cannot be beaten by a sassy young thing named Peppermint. It must not happen.

Sincerely,

The Brick, a.k.a. Stud Muffin

Show Offs

Show Rabbits December 3, 2012 Leave a comment

This weekend we traveled to Tucson for our first show.

We’ve never really considered ourselves “show people,” although I’m not sure we ever really defined the “show” stereotype. (I believe my perception was vaguely informed by watching the movie Best in Show. I loved the movie but also though it was a train wreck of people who were completely obsessed.)

With that in mind, I was highly interested to visit the rabbit show circuit!

The SARBA show was a full day, 8 a.m. to a bit after 5 p.m., and offered six shows, three youth and three open. (Here’s a great list of the vocabulary and things you’ll encounter at a rabbit show.) I don’t know the exact number of rabbits entered but… it was a lot!

Some people had rabbits for sale, some set up shop to tattoo rabbit ears, others had little tables available and grooming tools. Overall it was an amazing cross-section of humanity, all brought together by love of the lagomorphs!

The showing itself was ridiculously easy – you simply brought your rabbit to the table and placed them in the little box in the right order! The judges were incredible about giving concise comments on each rabbit, and by leaning in and listening carefully we were able to learn an enormous amount about our breeds and what a judge looks for in the comparison process.

It was also amazingly useful to lay eyes on the various types of colorings and breeds of rabbits. Even though I’ve been online and read a ton of books about rabbits, seeing is believing. I have a much better understanding of coloring, temperament, and type after one little day spent at the rabbit show.

Our rabbits did reasonably well. We discovered there is a difference between having a “show quality” rabbit and a “showable” rabbit! Our Silver Martens performed the best of the rabbits we took, winning Best of Variety, Best Opposite Variety, and Best of Breed. Most importantly, we have a clear direction of where we’re going with our breeding program in the future.

We loved our show experience and are very grateful to SARBA for sponsoring the show and making it available to us! I’d recommend anyone give it a shot! I think you, like us, will discover you’re looking forward to your next time to get together!

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?

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?