False pregnancy, kind of...

Gertrude was put in with Peter on May 16th, so she was due between June 13-16th. On June 10th I gave her a nesting box and she set about happily making her nest, all was well with the world.

June 16th came and went, no kits.... I waited and waited, nothing.

June 20th, I removed the nesting box because it was clearly a false pregnancy.

The morning of June 22nd, a single deceased kit appeared in her cage with her. 

Peculiar, none of my rabbit friends have never heard of such a thing and we can only surmise that the kit died before the due date and her body finally removed it.

Very sad and unfortunate.

 

Rabbit tractors

The rabbit tractors are made, these are the tractors (cages) that the rabbits grow up in on the grass. I needed something to put on them for shade and found at Home Depot some corrugated plastic in a multitude of colours. I chose yellow because it is a happy colour, more suitable than red, blue or green I thought.

For the record, they are completely covered with heavy gauge mesh, the plastic is only for shade purposes...

The bunnies love having fresh grass every day as you might imagine.

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.

Garden bird netting

 Well, I said I'd get a pic of the bird netting over the garden... what better way to see it than through the rain 'they' said we were getting!

Garden

Cat House aka Water Pump House

Guess I'll have to take another pic of the garden once the snow melts and the netting lifts back up over head height.

No kits yet, I check on her 3+ times a day. Today is technically her first due date so between today (27th) and the 31st -- sometime.

Garden begins and Kits are imminent

And so it begins.... the garden is being put in. Weed fabric is down and we put a bird net over the top ( I didn't think to get a picture of... later, I will.

Weed fabric. Garlic strip on right under straw for winter

Uncovering the garlic for sunshine and ~20 mm (3/4") rain 'they' say we're getting.

Gertrude is setting up her nest and she was pulling hair yesterday which usually means kits are imminent. Nothing as yet though.

Here are some updated pictures of them all:

Peter

Gertrude (with nesting box)

Nesting box is being renovated to accommodate the babies (kits)

Mabel 

(seems to be getting a double chin so we'll see)

All 12 chickens having a blast in the chicken run

We are super excited to get our first set of kits from Gertrude anytime now. Also quite hopeful that Mabel is pregnant too but I am still unsure about her. She will be going to freezer camp anyway because she attacked Peter and we don't want to breed aggression. 

 

Mable attacked Peter

Warning: Sensitive details of rabbit breeding.

If you recall me mentioning it...

Doe rabbits will sometimes attack the Buck and detach their genitals while the Buck is attempting to breed.

Wouldn't you know it -- sure enough, Mable did.

No problems with Bambi or even Gertrude but Mable - went for the gusto.

I always but the Doe in 2 days back to back. Only for an hour each time and the 1st day I only left Mable in with Peter long enough to see him have 2 goes at her. Because I had a lot on the go that day and didn't want to forget to take her out - knowing I would put her in again the next day to be sure he had impregnated her, I opted to remove her - and good thing too.

Fortunately, on day 2 - I was there and able to separate them immediately because she was having none of it.

Problem for her is that no one wants to breed aggression, so she will have to be culled with her kits. I will hold back one of Gertrude's kits for my second breeder. 

We are not able to breed them over the summer as it is too hot for rabbits and the males actually go temporarily sterile so the new kit will have time to grow to breeding age without any problem ( 16 weeks) by fall.