Out with the old and in with the new

I talked a few days ago about purging our animal supply so I could travel and focus on the dogs more. I also mentioned wanting to get down to having just dogs and rabbits. well we've done a good job of finding homes for some of our critters, still a couple left to go, but all in all it's much more manageable. Anyway we have big big plans for our rabbitry this spring. We plan on moving to a partial colony type set up instead of all hutches. I think it will be better and more natural for the rabbits. They will have loads of space to romp and it will be easier to feed them hay which is the best food for them. We plan on putting up an enclosure in our current rabbit barn not sure yet if we are going to put in a mesh floor to prevent digging or if we are going to go with dirt. If we go with bare ground the rabbits can dig like in nature, but it will make them harder to catch. We will also have to bury the fencing about 2 feet to prevent digouts. Two feet sounds deep to me when I have to dig it out. We plan on only putting the does in the colony enclosure so we can control the breeding a bit more. Since our daughter may start doing 4H this is important. Our bucks will be housed still in hutches. I'd like to do a buck enclosure, but I fear they will fight and hurt each other, so for now anyway it will be hutches for the boys. So with this expansion into colony raising it allows us to have space for more rabbits. I think the feeding will be easier since most of the rabbits will be in one area. Just some quick hay a few pellets and a bottle of water and they'll be good to go. Now I'm filling each hopper with food and each cage needs a water bottle, much more time consuming. So we are waiting for the weather to break to get a start on the pen, but we have started the colony introductions and all seems to be going well. After the pups left we decided to use the whelping box to house a few rabbits together.

These are our new zealand white does in the whelping box, everyone is playing nicely!

For valentine's day Hubby and I invested in some colored New Zealands to add to our herd. This is our new black doe. I just picked her up today.

Our new red New Zealand doe, again just picked up today.

A couple weeks age we got the kids a couple Japanese harlequins for getting good grades. This is a black harlequin.

This is a chocolate harlequin. We are going to have some more harlequins coming our way next weekend. I just love their colors.