Bunny, garden and house update

Gertrude and her 6 kits

Mabel's 10 kits

(now out of the nesting box)

2 rabbit tractors (cages) will be built this week to house the kits on the grass once they are weaned. Gerties are weaned on Friday, and Mables the following Friday.

Our garden is getting put in as quickly as we can with everything else going on.

Garlic

The 2 rows on the left (tall ones) are Organic picked up when we arrived here and planted back in the fall (zone 4a).

The 4 rows on the right (short ones) are what we saved from our garden last year (zone 7b).

Such a stark difference.

A better view.

The organic are much darker green, taller and just more 'lush' if that term could be applied to garlic.

Now, about my brother's new house. I will be going to SK to paint it out for him when he gets possession next month. Super excited for him. This will also give me a chance to visit with my youngest son and his family too.

 

Mabel's due date

Well today, May 6, is Mabel's last technical due date... sometimes they can run late up to 3 days but I looked inside her nesting box this morning and saw nothing new, no fur and even felt around in the back there to make sure. Yup, nada. Guess she's not pregnant after all.

This afternoon I took over some grass for the rabbits to enjoy while I collected the chicken eggs. I wasn't even looking but FUR caught my eye.... sure enough the fur was 'breathing' from the kits underneath squirming around. 

Because I do not know if this is her first breeding, I decided to leave the kits alone until tomorrow (Sat).

Then when I went out to put everyone to bed for the night, I grabbed more grass for them and decided that since she would be busy eating that it was a perfect chance to check on the kits.

10!!!

10 new teeny tiny all black kits delivered by Mabel during the night last night. Wowsers.

This gives us a total of 16 kits delivered in the last week.

Oh, and also I was at The Great Canadian Superstore (Grocery chain) yesterday and came across this, by chance:

Frozen Rabbit

$17.61/KG CAD

($6.20/Lb USD)

You could have knocked me over to find this in the shops.

1st Kits have arrived

Quite naturally, I forgot to take the phone with me and hence do not have a picture yet. Here is one off the web which looks the same but for the number of kits.

Gertrude had 6 kits on May 1st. 5 are black and 1 looks surprisingly white (hairless and pink at the moment).

Mable has developed her 2nd chin and has begun making her nest. 

I expect the 2 deliveries to be fairly close as Gertrude delivered on the last day of her 'expected' due dates. 

Hopefully Mable's delivery will be faster in case I need to (unlikely, but...) move some of her kits over to Gertrude in the event that she has a large litter. This fostering is only possible if the deliveries are within a few days of each other.

I did pick each one up today ( 24 hours after birth) to accustom them to the feel of human hands, one is larger than the rest and one is far smaller than the rest.

If the pink one does indeed prove to be white -- and female, she will become the new Mable.