Our doe becomes a mother rabbit
When we last
made a rabbit post, we
were anxiously awaiting a litter of rabbits while mother rabbit was
preparing a nest in her nesting box. Sometime the night of the
post, our doe delivered her first litter. The litter was 11 kits,
one of which we lost the first morning. She delivered on a night
that was pretty cold and we surmised that the kit had wandered away
from the huddled litter and died of exposure. We had wrapped the
hutch in plastic and provided a incandescent lamp as a heat source, but
it wasn't enough. We later swapped out the lamp for a space
heater... probably throwing our cost per pound of rabbit equation off
due to electricity consumption. We had planned the timing of the
litter based on Easter though, so we had anticipated the possible
issues with the cold.
Since that first night we
lost another kit at about 4 days old, we think because it was
accidentally suffocated. It was away from the group and under the
hay, and we think the doe inadvertantly rested on it while tending to
the rest of the young.
Turns out our speculation in
the last post about the "bird's nest" depression in the hay was
correct. She had the litter exactly where we thought she
might. The kits were also a bit larger than we had expected at
about 4-5 inches long at birth. I think we both expected them to
be about half that size. They have also grown phenomenally
fast! At less than a week, they had beginnings of fur. At
about 10 days, their eyes began opening. At two weeks, they had a
full coat of fur. At less than one month old, they are several
times the size they were at delivery and are weaning themselves by
eating hay and rabbit food. They have also started learning how
to drink from the chicken waterer nipple, which is quite a feat when one
considers that they can barely reach it! Next time around, I
think the nursery hutch will have a lower nipple for the young.
Dawn also discovered it's quite
difficult to count the number of kits in the litter since when they
hear activity in the nest box they start jumping around like
crazy. They won't stop moving enough to be counted since they
think that activity means nursing time and they start actively search
out a mother and a teat.
I'm concerned about the fact
that these things are so cute that it's going to be tough when it comes
time to butcher. I guess time will tell how well we are able to
deal with that process. For now, we're just learning about what
it takes to have a litter of rabbits to care for, especially in the
cold.
Dawn also discovered rather
disconcertingly that once they were out of the nesting box that they could easily fall out
of the hutch. After a nerve wracking chase of one little fella
around the yard, she added a "rabbit retaining wall" to the door of the
hutch to help retain the frisky kits. Mom can be seen with three
of the kits along with the retaining wall in the photo above.
Shannon and Dawn
will be sharing their experiences with raising meat rabbits on Tuesday
afternoons. They homestead on three acres in Louisiana when time off
from life and working as a sys admin permits.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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11 bunnys is a lot for 1 mother to feed and care for. She is an excellent mother if she has only lost 2 out of 11. If possible you may want to breed 2 does at the same time. Then if one has an overly large litter, you can add 1 or 2 bunnys to the other litter.
Good luck with your bunnys. You're gonna love the meat.
My late Labrador retriever had her first and only litter back in 2002. It was on a brutally cold night and she had the litter under my shed. Her first litter was 11 pups, and we didn't lose any of them.
Fast forward 10 years and our doe had her first litter on an unusually cold night... and her first litter was 11 kits.
Random chance?
Anyway, she has definitely been a good mother. Both Dawn and I have been impressed with how attentive she seemed to be when we would check in on them. We just separated the kits from her last night so that she could have some breathing room. They had pretty well weaned themselves already anyway, either at her insistence or their own initiative. I think it was earlier than Dawn's read that they should be weaned, but it was time. She was starting to thump the cage and telling the kits it's time to go make their own homes...