This week was busy! We butchered eleven rabbits, which are aging presently and should be ready for making dinner with vacuum sealing and freezing the rest. This freed up some cage space and lowered feed consumption, but only temporarily. Luna kindled three, but two were DOA fetal giants, so only one black survivor. Still, I am very hopeful this one will have the fur quality I got the first of this pairing, and a better type this time around would be nice also. Misty Blue Too surprised us with five out of Leon. I had not seen a fall off, but the old man is still quite fertile and even with his old weak legs, so apparently able to still impregnate a willing doe even when I cannot detect a fall off. Under all that blue fur are five healthy sleeping black kits, and she even pulled more fur! Misty's surprise newborns meant we urgently needed to prep a cage with baby wire yesterday evening because Luna was still in the kindling suite. None of our cages had b...

The NZW buck we culled on Sunday was a sprayer. All bucks are to some extent, but this one was really determined to set three records in our rabbitry for amount, distance, and number of animals and persons (yes, that would be me included). I could hardly clean him up enough, being that he was supposed to be a pristine white, to take pictures for a listing that did not show him as bright yellow. Then there is this little fact of life that rabbits should never be bathed, because they freak and some have died during the process.  Because the rabbitry was crowded and we have Canyon in quarantine, we ended up with bucks in cages next to does. The does were also sprayed, of course. Their fur is...well, they needed cleaning and all their cages needed a deep cleaning. So, that is what we spent the day doing Sunday, besides processing. My husband and I decided that we need to have another plan for the bucks, so they do not see each other or the does, until we are ready to breed the...

I confess that I have been rather discouraged this rabbit breeding season, but I finally have the number of Silver Foxes for breeding I wanted and I have hopes with the upcoming breedings as I will have only purebred Silver Fox kits! Yesterday, I thought out what I would like to accomplish with the end of the breeding season fast approaching, because breeding in the heat of summer in the Southeast is not a good idea. Being that I am visual type, I had to make some charts as I thought it all out. My original breeding plans had to change because I bought two Silver Fox does who would need to be added in the rotation.  Then, there is the other problem of space that probably every rabbit breeder understands. Presently, we have eleven cages. Seven years ago, we started with just six cages and that worked well enough with a New Zealand trio and their large kindles that often had to be separated for grow out. Then we added a pair of Silver Foxes and added a couple more cages and ...