I've become a bit of an expert on the "birds and the bees" in the barnyard.

{B&B. &B}


Tom turkeys work pretty hard to win the favor of the hens, not only through strutting and a "spit and drum" vocalization, but they also are gentlemen who wait to be invited for more advanced maneuvers (unlike chicken roosters who just "grab and go" with any hen, any time they can catch one).

In addition, once a hen accepts tom's favor, there is an elaborate dance on her back, the tom using his claws up and down the sides of her back to trigger her pleasure receptors.

Alpaca males "orgle" while mating, their vocalizations a key part of the process for female receptivity.

But nothing is as  funny as rabbits coupling.

If the doe is receptive, the male will not waste any time getting things done, grabbing the hair on the back of her neck in his mouth to hold on has he vibrates like a jackhammer then siezes up as if having a heart attack, then falling over on his side.

If you blink, you'll likely miss it.

So don't blink.

And have a Happy Valentine's Day!!

Our Velveteen Lop Mini Rex bunnies turned 5 weeks old this week.

And you know what that means - soon they will be old enough to wean and find new homes.

It has been hard for us to choose who will stay behind, to be Hunny's bunny buddy.

Did I mention they are litter box trained already?

It's such a tough decision. Too much cuteness.

Currently we're leaning towards keeping two of her daughters, the darkest grey which we've been calling Kohl, and one of the brown ones which we've dubbed Molasses.

They are wonderful at cheering you up when you're having a bad day.  Recently the babies took a trip to visit a friend who was feeling sad.

It's really hard to be sad with a couple of bunnies in your lap.

Because we've been socializing these babies since their first days, they are all quite calm and love to sit in a lap and be pet.

I'm surprised to admit it, and Papa agrees, baby bunnies are even more fun to raise than lambs or crias.

You get a lot more "hands on" time with these babies, and when socialized properly, they really enjoy spending time with their caregivers.

Wherever they end up next, someone is sure to be as smitten by them as we are.

Cheers -

Although we've had her for almost two years, Hunny has never had a litter before.

We tried, lord how we've tried.

There was the first time, when I met a Velveteen Lop breeder in the parking lot of a rabbit show 2+ hours away and she had her first "date" with a sweet orange-colored Velveteen boy in the back of my Envoy XUV.

There was some action.

27 days later, she nested, but no babies came.

[Nesting is when a rabbit doe builds a soft nest in the hay of a nest box and lines it with fur pulled from her own belly.]

And then there were several attempts with our own buck, sometimes bringing her to him every day for a week before she would accept his advances.

More nesting, more empty nests at day 31.

I thought perhaps she was infertile.

An infertile rabbit?  Is there even such a thing?

And so it was with some trepidation that I asked a friend of mine if we could borrow their Mini Rex buck for a few weeks.

Enough of this dating stuff - they were going to live together, and I would find out once and for all if she was infertile or just highly particular about her dates.

She seemed to like the Rex almost immediately.

And by that I mean she didn't beat him up or run away and cry like all her other dates.

They were getting along!

I even saw him attempt to breed her - albeit on her head.

I left them with some privacy and crossed my fingers they would figure it all out.

I also marked the calendar.  27 days - put in a nest box.  30 days - start checking for babies.

A couple of weeks into the cohabitation she started vocalizing.  Rabbits don't make much noise, one of the benefits to raising them.  I have never hear Hunny make noise unless she is crying and running away from a date.

This was new, and weird.

Also her dewlap grew.  On some does this will happen either if they gain too much weight or during pregnancy.  They store their extra fat there.  She had not done this with any of her false pregnancies before.

On day 27 she nested.  The other pens still had all the big nest boxes, so we swapped out her little one for one of the bigger, nicer ones.

I checked her box for the next 3 days - she did not rebuild her nest.

I figured she must be infertile after all.

On day 31 I checked her nest box - no nesting, no babies.  Then I moved her mobile pen to a fresh new patch of grass.

And then I saw it - a tiny grey baby on the ground.

She had laid it "on the wire," which means birthing a baby outside of her nest box.

I quickly scooped it up thinking it would be dead.  A solitary baby lying on the cold grass would not live more than a few minutes.

It was chilly but not dead, and in fact was pretty active considering its dire straits. I had arrived just in the nick of time.

I held under my sweater against my warm belly and rushed into the house where I continued to hold it against my skin as I set up a kennel and heating pad and soft towel.

Once it had warmed and I felt it was OK to leave it in the kennel for a few minutes, I rushed around getting the nest box into the house and moving Hunny inside, too.

If a mama lays one baby "on the wire," they often lay the rest that way.  This is not uncommon for first time moms, and she was an older, first-time mom.

At least in the bathroom I could check on her frequently and if more babies came, get them into the nest box right away.

As soon as I set her in the bathroom into the nest box she got right to work delivering 6 more babies and covering them with her belly fur.  I placed the now-warmed up first baby into the nest as well.

Hooray!

After she left them I checked on the litter - one big dark one was not moving around as much as normal, healthy babies move around.  Not a good sign, and indeed, it died within a couple of hours. Again, not uncommon to lose a weak one or two shortly after kindling (birth).

But the rest were alive and wiggly.

Hunny is a soft grey with an almost peach undertone.  Her Mini Rex boyfriend was a silver grey.  I figured all the babies would be light grey.

The skin will show some color but you can't really tell until the fur comes in a few days later what colors they will really be.

So far it seems the babies are shades of grey to black with a few light grey like mama, one slightly darker grey and two very dark greys.

I am beyond thrilled.

Out of this litter we hope to keep one female to be her ever-after buddy, and sell the rest as pets.

Rabbits are after all very social creatures - but they are quite particular about who they want to socialize with.

Mamas and daughters make nice companions.  The male offspring need to be removed by 11 weeks of age to prevent breeding back to their mamas, but male and female kits even of different litters have gotten along quite nicely in our colony in the barn during the winter until they are of breeding age.

I am so excited to see how these babies look as they grow up.

Will they have lop ears or the little upright Rex ears?  Will they have the super soft coat of their mama?

Only time will tell.

But if you are in the market for a Velveteen Lop Mini Rex baby come mid-November, look us up.  We should have five weaned babies ready for sale.

Cheers -

I try to keep a good attitude, I really do, but lately this extended deep freeze and wind chills to the double digits below zero has been driving me cranky.

"Psst: wanna hear a secret? Winter is never going to end!!"

Chores last eve got me so riled up I smashed my empty buckets and sled together just to keep from breaking something more valuable in my frustration.

And it's not even like there were things going wrong.

Granted, the sled always seems to tip over with full buckets of water now as I move over the frozen river of ice that used to be a driveway.

And I fell down on the ice while smashing aforementioned buckets together.

And I get awful tired of lugging buckets of water out of my bathtub, the outside water spigot having been frozen since early December.

really, who wouldn't smile at this face?

But it was more than that.

I've just plain had enough of this winter.  It's time to let up.  It's time to crack the lid on this chest freezer and give us some room to breathe again.

So to cheer myself up I'm posting some photos here of the things that still make me happy.

To highlight how much I still have to be grateful for, despite my weariness and crankiness and dwindling propane and frosty windows.

I hope they bring a smile to your face, too.

Cheers -

{P.S. - if you missed my post about adopting Gypsy, our border collie, feel free to read it here!}

If you are squeamish or reading this aloud to a young child, you might want to skip this post.

We have a fairly new litter of bunnies in our colony.  They were born on 2/4, right on schedule (31 days after the doe, Athena and buck, Atlas, had their, ahem, date).

When I checked the nest box during morning chores I found a small pile of dried off babies in the back of the nest box, and 4 more just born near the entrance.

I knew from reading a variety of resources that babies can get cold very quickly and die, and also that sometimes mamas have some in one place and some in another and they all need to be together to conserve heat.

Every resource I've read agreed - contrary to popular belief, you should move the babies if they are not together in one pile.  Mama will not abandon her nest, especially if she knows you and your scent already.  And this mama doe knows me - she is the tamest of the colony, following me around the barn begging to be pet.

I also knew that even though our barn stays above zero most days, the next box in the back corner of the barn was near a cement wall that had frost coming through the cracks in white blobs, and our temps at night were still sub-zero.  That corner of the barn would not be nearly as warm as the front.

So I moved the new pile of babies to the back of the box as carefully and quickly as I could.  Then I put the top back on the nest box and left it alone for the rest of the day.

I tend to only check babies once a day, as I hate to let cold into the nest box by opening the top and also don't want to stress the mama doe.  So the next morning after checking on the poultry, chickens, sheep and alpacas, I once again peeked into the nest box.

The pile of babies had decreased in number, and one was half eaten.

{i think i threw up in my mouth at this point}

Being the only one in the barn at the time, I had no choice but to remove the dead, mutilated baby myself.

{more throw up}

Over the course of the next several days, the remaining pile of babies dwindled to four. Although I never got a decent count on the first day, I estimated 7 or 8 babies where in the box the first day.

I did not find any more partially eaten remains, so I assumed mama had eaten the others entirely.

The last one to disappear did seem to me to be rather runtish, smaller and weaker than the rest.  Perhaps she knew she could only support a certain number and culled the weak ones herself.

Sometimes mother nature is violent and brutal.

If any of you reading this are aching to move out to a little farm of your own, envisioning yourself romping throught he wildflowers surrounded by puppies and kittens, where all the days are summertime-sunny and all the critters are always happy and healthy, stop the daydream.

Yes, there are days like that on the farm. That is what entices us to our own a piece of land.  That is what sustains us through the bad times.

But there is also the flip side.

The day you walk out to the paddock to find your favorite bantam Silkie chicken has drowned in the water bucket.

Or the day you move the rabbit pens and find one baby has slipped through the cracks and is dead in a patch of clover.

Or the day you walk out to the paddock to find your favorite fawn alpaca has tangled and wrapped himself so tightly in the portable net fence you're not sure if he is even alive. And three agonizing weeks later, he dies of his injuries.

Or the day you come home from Christmas vacation and on your first round of barn checks, find your favorite cria quietly cushed in the spot where she and her mama always rest together.  But her eyes don't see you anymore, and she is not breathing.  She is still warm.  She died as you were hauling your luggage to the house.

Of course there are more good days than bad, or none of us would survive all of the heartbreak.

But still, we must get through the bad days somehow.

And so with a heavy heart I lift the lifeless body - be it chicken or bunny or alpaca - and carry it away. And hope that there won't be another for a long, long time.

Yesterday was one of those heart-heavy days.

After my usual round of chores I checked the rabbit nest box on my way out of the barn. There had been four fat, happy babies the day before, just starting to open their eyes.

I checked the pile and found only three.

I searched the rest of the box, which is always packed tight with hay in the opening (by mama) so it seemed unlikely one had escaped.

There was a clump of rabbit fur between the entrance stuffed with hay and the pile of babies.  Mama does pull out their own belly fur right before she kindles (gives birth), in order to line the nest.  The pile of fur seemed heavy and matted together. I lifted it out of the box.  It was too heavy to be just fur and hay and it smelled putrid.

I didn't investigate further.  There was something dead in it.  I just took it from the barn and burned it in the burning barrel.

One more dead baby.

Why?

Did mama kill it?  Is it because now that they're eyes are opening we've starting holding them a little bit and that's stressing out the mama?  Is it because of the colony?  This is the first litter born in the colony.  Is she just a bad mama?  This is her second litter and we don't lose a single one of her first litter.  Am I just a bad caregiver?

All of these questions weighed heavily on my mind and heart, so I grabbed my snowshoes and pruner and machete and headed out to the back of the property to cut brambles.

Physical labor is always a welcome relief when the mind and heart are heavy.  The tougher the task, the better at taking my mind off of dwelling on unanswerable questions.

Gypsy accompanied me of course, eagerly waiting for me to set down my tools and throw her stick for the millionth time. And whenever I paused to do this, I had to smile and laugh watching her bound through the deep snow and pounce on the stick whenever she found it. I've never known a dog to smile as much as she does.  Or have as much energy.  Or want to play such endless games of fetch.

When I returned to the house an hour and a half later, I was physically and mentally tired and that felt good.

This morning I enter the barn with trepidation.  I do all of my chores - open the pop-hole for the turkeys and chickens, check the nest boxes for eggs (finding three turkeys and one chicken all sharing the dog kennel I use for the turkey nest box) top off the feeders.  I feed the rabbits, top their water, check the babies in the nest box.

Three fat babies are still in there, thank goodness.

I am about to head out of the barn for the last time when something tiny and white catches my eye.

It is a baby rabbit hopping across the barn.

Now that their eyes are open apparently one made it past the packed hay in the end of the nest box.  I assume it is one of the three remaining so I catch it and put it back in the nest box.

To my surprise, there are still three in there!  This is number four!  It must have gotten out yesterday and escaped my notice during both morning and evening chores.

Hooray!

Which means the pile of fur and rot that I took out the day before had been from the week they were disappearing, not from yesterday.

So, Athena did not kill her 2-week old baby.

And I did not kill her baby by holding it.

She is still a good mama.

And I am still a good caregiver.

There will be more losses in the future, of that I am sure.

But today, I give thanks for one tiny baby bunny hopping through the barn.

Cheers -

awwww

The kits that were born last Friday no longer look like tiny piglets - naked and wrinkled.

They've grown and filled out the wrinkles, along with sprouting a fine coat of white fur.

They now look almost rabbit-like.

If you are already familiar with our rabbit pens, which have slatted floors and are moved across the pasture twice/day, you're probably wondering, "How will they keep the babies in the pen?  Won't they fall through the slats?"

Well, in fact, yes, they would.  Once the babies start venturing outside the nest box we will indeed have to "baby proof" the pen.  To keep them from falling through.

whiskers!

I had a mishap yesterday actually, when one of the sides came apart from the nest box and a baby wiggled out of the box and fell onto the grass below the pen. I found it and placed it back into the nest box.  It seems perfectly fine today.  And fixing the nest box is now our top priority this weekend. 

But for the next few days at least, Mama will still have unrestricted access to the pasture. 

And babies will remain in a pile, safely in the nest box.

Cheers -

I just can't get enough of these babies.

Would you look at those ears.

Those noses!
 

The whiskers!

And toeses!

Cheers -
Dr. Seuss

aka:

Leave it to the rabbits to throw our day out of whack.

It was all so neatly scheduled. 

For the first breeding, Atlas our New Zealand White buck (male) bred Astarte on Tues. and Athena on Wed.  A week later we tested them both to see if the does "took" the first time. 

Astarte CLEARLY was not interested in a rebreed - hopping out of the rabbit tractor entirely in an effort to get away from Atlas.

Athena however was a little less convincing and in fact allowed Atlas to breed her, convincing me that her first "date" wasn't successful.

We started the countdown. 

27 days from the first breeding date Astarte's nest box would go into her mobile pen. 

On day 26, Astarte started nesting activity (pulling belly hair out to line the nest box).  I picked it up off the ground after I moved her pen and went to get her nest box.

(Their mobile pens have slats in the floor so they can graze pasture between the slats, and their pee/poo falls onto the pasture.  As does a pile of white belly fur.)

I also brought out some hay and put a handful along with her fur into the nest box. After munching on some hay, she jumped into the nest box to "decorate."

27 days from the second breeding date, Athena's next box would go in. She did not begin nesting on Day 26, or Day 27 or Day 28, 29 or 30.  So I assumed my calculations were correct and she would be due the following week.  But just to be safe, I put in an old nest box (which Papa Bear was going to replace over the weekend with a brand new one) on Day 30, along with some hay.

Then came day 31 post breeding #1.  Eager to see if Astarte would deliver, I checked inside the nest box during my morning rounds.  Nothing.

Later that day, just as I was wrapping up a work call, PB came into the office and said "I was going to swap out Athena's nest box for the new one but there are babies in her nest box."

Wha???

He continued "Oh, and Astarted delivered, too.  Two sets of babies just born."

Oh. My. Goodness.

Needless to say we forgot about heading into La Crosse for the farmer's market that afternoon. We were busy counting heads (five in Athena's litter - her first - and seven eight in Astarte's litter - her second) and snapping photos.  

Newborn bunnies look nothing like rabbits.  If you had showed me this picture and I had not known what the white fur was, I'd have assumed these were piglets.

Eventually we got all the evening chores done and we did go into town to celebrate our 11th anniversary.

Happy Anniversary Hunny. 

May we be as prosperous in life as our rabbits.

(But perhaps not quite as prolific).

Cheers -