My first post on Shannon Down Rabbitry

I figured I would start a separate blog for my Rabbitry venture as there isn't a whole lot of information on the internet about raising meat rabbits.  After having been inspired by www.rawdogranch.com and seeing they were raising meat rabbits I started doing some research.  It was hard to come up with anything on the internet but I was able to find some good information and I researched the different meat rabbit breeds and decided on raising New Zealand Whites.  They breed easily, they produce large litters and they grow fast so it just seemed like the best breed for what I wanted.  I also figured out that I wanted to start off with 3 does and 1 buck, after looking around on the internet for NZW breeders near me I contacted Peter Comunale (aka Carolina Pete - www.carolinapetesrabbitry.com) who lived about an hour from us and he had 3 does and 1 buck who were the right age for me to come and get.  So I picked them up on April 5th, 2010 - 3 does who were sisters that I named Jeneva, Vanora and Zurina and an unrelated buck that I named Bialy (all the names mean 'white').  They were about 8 weeks old, the buck was just a little bit older so I had a while to wait until I could breed them since I wasn't going to breed them until they were 6 months old.  In the meantime, I didn't have any rabbit cages - though I had some crates that worked perfectly for them for a while, I needed to build cages for each of them.  More on the rabbit cages in another post, but first - I must introduce the first 4 rabbits that got me started...