Furry Friends Friday

Remember this baby bunny from one of my January posts. Well they are getting big and fluffy now. But my other two rabbits just had litters Wednesday night. One had 8 and one had 9. They will be ready for Easter.

Here is a picture of one of my does with her litter. These babies are about 3 months old. Aren't they cute.


Here are 2 more of my does. We have 4 does, Prancer, Angel, Cotton, and Cloud. All named by my daughter. We also have a really nice buck named Bigwit, also named by my daughter. The name comes from an old cartoon movie about rabbits called Watership Down. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. I also made the cages they are in by hand. The cages have been recently rearranged so they can stack on one another and make more room in the barn for the crates I use when they have babies. i use crates cause I was loosing too many when the does would decide to have them on the wire instead of the nest box. A straw lined crate eliminates that problem.



This is a picture of our rabbit barn. It is a shelter logic barn from TSC. I was skeptical as to how it would hold up, but it withstood the hurricane force winds that Ike brought us late last summer. I am quite proud of it since I put the whole thing together all by myself. I also cleared the land were it is at It was at the edge of the woods and all grown up with thorny bushes and stuff. I got a very nasty case of poison ivy doing it. It is really nice because the doors at both ends roll up so I can close it up for the night or only open it up a little bit if it is really cold out and in the summer I can raise both doors to get a good breeze going through. Rabbits hate hot weather and can die of heatstroke very quickly. They much prefer the cold.



You may ask what happens to all those baby bunnies. We do sell them for pets or 4-H projects sometimes., but that is not very profitable. We usually take them to a packer. He dresses them and they are then shipped out to become cat food. Some of the hypoallergenic foods the veterinarians use is made of rabbit (Royal Canin's Rabbit and Green Pea Recipe). So they are going to help poor itchy and vomiting kitty's all over the US. I would lie if I said a few don't wind up in the freezer here at home. They are a very healthy meat, and I know they have not been fed antibiotics or steroids etc. Can you say that about your meat.