New kits arriving soon!

Zahra and Vanora are both due very soon.  Tomorrow will be their 29th day, nest boxes went in today and they started their nest building, no hair pulling yet but they constructed a nice hay nest in the box.  This will be the very first little for Zahra, so I am just hoping for a nice size litter of healthy kits and that she's a good momma.  This will be the third litter for Vanora.  So tomorrow begins my running to the rabbit shed over and over throughout the day and late into the night to check on the soon-to-be mommas.  I hate waiting :)

A cage full of babies!

These are my youngest babies, just under 6 weeks, from my last two litters (Jeneva x Bialy and Zurina x Bialy).  There are 11 of them (6 from Jeneva - 5 from Zurina).  They just moved into their own cage since I have re-bred their mothers and it's time for weaning.  I plan on getting another cage to put my weaned kits in since 11 in one cage is quite a lot, it works for now but as they get bigger they will take up quite a bit more room.

Vianca

Introducing "Vianca", a singleton out of a Vanora x Bialy litter.  She is the second doe I have kept from one of my breedings and keeping within my theme, her name means 'white' and it starts with V, since her mothers name starts with V.  I really like this little girl, she's very sweet and doesn't mind to be picked up and held, though of course right now she's still on the small side (she's 8 weeks old now).  She's got a while before being bred, but she's maturing nicely and I really like her temperament.  If you sit out in the shed you'll occasionally see her get a little spurt of energy and hop around the cage for a few seconds. 

Zahra

Introducing "Zahra", the first doe I kept from one of my own breedings.  She is from one of the Zurina x Bialy litter.  She was from a larger litter but we lost all but her and her brother due to feral cats terrorizing them.  Something I will post about in the future.  I kept her and she is now 6 months old and pregnant with her first litter.  She is due to kindle around May 10th.  She is a grouch of a girl, she rather just be left alone and keep to herself, doesn't care to be handled much but if she can produce good litters of kits she is free to stay here for quite some time :)  On the up side she's a pretty relaxed girl, she doesn't chew on and destroy things (her mother demolished a plastic feeder very quickly and is trying to destroy her metal feeder too) and other than occasionally pawing in her feeder and wasting some of the pellets, she doesn't get herself into any trouble :)   I am guessing she will put on another pound as she matures a bit more, she's probably around 10+ pounds now but I have not weighed her in quite some time.

Nest boxes

Like most everything else, we made our own nest boxes (or my dad did anyways), but he forgot the measurements I gave him for the door and ended up making them a bit to tall, so to get them in the cage, I have to turn them sideways - which means I can't take the nest box out of the cage to check on the kits but I have worked around that little snafu.  I just pull the box to the door of the cage and check on all the kits.  I forget the measurements of these boxes but will measure them soon.  The front is about 3 inches high, it keeps the little kits from crawling out but low enough for the doe to easily get in and out and the babies, when they are older, can easily get in and out of them.  The babies also like to sit on top of the boxes when they are older :)  They get a little stained but they are throughly cleaned when the babies are older and the box is removed and I change the bedding and clean out the box every week or more after the babies are born.  How often I change the bedding depends on how many kits there are and how old they are.  They make more of a mess the older they get and of course with a larger litter there is more feces and urine to be concerned about.  The picture above is a pic I just took of the empty nest boxes, but below is a picture of a nest box in use.  I put hay and shredded paper in the boxes and the does pull their hair to make the nest.

And a picture of momma Jeneva checking on her babies.  I also have a video of one of my does pulling hair, I will have to post that when I work on videos.

Baby savers

With my first litter, and only 2 kits, I had absolutely no problem with the kits being dragged out of the nest box and crawling through the sides of the cage and falling on the ground.  Plus they were already pretty big since there were only two and she waited to the last possible minute to have them, so it didn't take them long before they were to big to go through the cage walls.  But with the litters I had after that, occasionally a kit would get dragged out of the box (latched on to mommas nipple and stayed latched while she left the nest box, taking the baby along with her) and even though they are tiny, they can sure move and I ended up walking out to the shed, counting babies and discovered there was one missing.  I searched all over and I found the baby at the other end of the shed - thus making me research baby savers.  I tried several things but finally found some wire that works great.  I cut it to so that it covers 3 inches around the cage, on all sides.  I just used zip ties to attach them and waited to see if the does would bother them at all (they love to chew) but they have left them alone (the first few things I went through the messed with).  Since installing the baby savers I have had no lost babies, though occasionally one will still get out of the nest box but it can't get out of the cage.

And if you haven't figured it out already - you can click on all the pictures to enlarge them.  

The rabbit shed

When I started out, I didn't have anything to put the rabbits in - a building or covered shed of some sort.  So they started out being caged under a shade tree - since I got them when the temps where in the 90's (and the temp only got hotter through the Summer)  I found a great spot in the front yard that was up against the woods under a tree that had a big overhanging branch that kept them in the shade at all times.  We didn't get much rain through the Summer so that wasn't a big worry, when we did get rain I covered them with a big tarp until it passed but I knew I would need a place to put them and shelter them from the elements, especially with Winter coming.  We bought a covered car port of sorts that has worked great.  I can't remember the measurement on it but will figure that out and post, it's big enough for all the cages I have now (7 at the moment, want to get another cage to put weaned babies since I only have one at the moment) plus all their stuff, feed pellets, hay and alfalfa cubes, etc.  This was wonderful during the Winter, it's totally covered and you can zip up the front of it, so during the Winter I would keep it zipped up to help retain heat in the building and keep them from getting any sort of draft. It totally keeps the rain out and we had quite a bit of snow this Winter, and of course it kept them nice and dry and out of the snow.   Now that it's starting to warm up again I keep the front open unless it rains and if it starts to get any hotter I can pull the side up on one side so they can get a cross breeze and keep them from sitting in stagnant air.  Here's a picture I took tonight...

This is a picture taken from the front of the shed (it's right on the side of our house, I can walk out the front door and over to the side of the house to tend to them).  The 'doors' are staying open and bungee'd back now that it's warm outside.  I have 4 cages on one side and 3 on the other.  The big gray bin in the back has a bail of hay in it for them so it's off the ground, when it rains the water tends to run in sometimes and it would get the hay wet - plus this keeps mice out of it. Their food bin is to the left of that - it's a garbage can with a lid that snaps so nothing can get in their food.  The bucket I mainly use to sit on :)  As of right now they are sitting on two pieces of wood that are raised on saw horses until we can build a shelfing unit where we can stack the cages, it will have a drop pan between the bottom and top crates so the feces and urine doesn't land on the rabbits below.  But as of right now this is the set up, I hose the wood off quite often as a few of them tend to pee on the wood.  I will be taking pictures of everything when we do start making the shelfing unit, and will be posting about that, I want to be able to put 4 cages on the bottom and 4 on the top - all I need for the numbers I have are 8 cages for now.  I have the buck and 3 does I started out with, plus another doe that I kept from one of my litters that is at breeding age and another young doe I kept from one of my last litters, she's still got several months before I can breed her.  So I have 5 does and 1 buck at the moment and one growing cage that the weaned kits go in, but I would like another as I tend to have 2 litters around the same time and they can sometimes be very large litters.  Oh, and I have a florescent light that hangs from the top of the shed, but my lights have blow, so I strung the heat lamp up there for the time being until I can get more light bulbs, but it's got light so I can check on the rabbits after dark (especially if I have a doe that is due to kindle).