Whoops is turning 4 years old on March 2, 2018 and with age comes some challenges in regards to breeding and kindling:
Older does tend to have smaller kindles.
This makes it rather difficult to know whether Whoops was actually pregnant or not as rabbits, particularly meat rabbits, really do not show their pregnancies. However, she was rather cranky about me touching her...she even grunted at me this week, which completely out of character for her and common with pregnant does.
Older does tend to go past their due dates.
I was not too concerned about her not kindling on the 31st day after her breeding, which was Saturday, February 3rd, 2017, but it is still a wait full of anticipation and then impatience. Mostly because Whoops was bred to NZW-A and is promised to start up breeder who is also getting the last of my NZW-B, who is unrelated to the sire of this kindle. That way they could pick a doe or two to develop and breed with NZW-B that would not be related to their brood buck.
AND to just to complicate things even more...
Does can have false pregnancies.
They may even think they are pregnant to the point that they will make a nest and be cranky. Some does just seem to want to be mommies. In our case, when we place a doe in the kindling suite, she may assume she is pregnant out of habit triggered by the environment.
Whoops was bred with an unproven NZW junior buck.
So, it comes down to wondering if the buck was too young to be fertile or if Whoops is no longer fertile. I am for hoping neither, of course.
Originally, this was a test breeding to determine if Whoops was still fertile as well as if the buck was ready to be bred because his first breeding did not take with my 4-year-old Misty Blue, while a later breeding with Misty Blue and another buck did. (Remember that at this point all my brood does are at least three years old.)
However, all that changed when I was contacted by someone who was anxious to get started with rabbits, but was not really ready for them. We made the offer to allow Whoops to kindle here and then transport her with her kindle along with NZW-B after the kits have opened their eyes, so they have time to prepared their cages and hopefully all the kits will survive.
But now it is day 35 and I have resigned to Whoops is not pregnant....
There is nothing quite so disappointing as waiting over 30 days and looking into the nesting box with hopeful expectation to finding it empty day after day and doubly so because I envisioned sending pictures of tiny pink kits to their possible new owner who was very excited too and instead I had to inform them the breeding did not take.
But now it is day 35 and I have resigned to Whoops is not pregnant....
There is nothing quite so disappointing as waiting over 30 days and looking into the nesting box with hopeful expectation to finding it empty day after day and doubly so because I envisioned sending pictures of tiny pink kits to their possible new owner who was very excited too and instead I had to inform them the breeding did not take.
