Tag Archives: rex rabbits

Hungry, Hungry Hippos (or Bunnies)

I do feed my rabbits. I swear I do. They have free choice hay, plus nearly unlimited pellets while they are pregnant, nursing, or babies. Still, though, whenever I refill the bowl, it’s mayhem.

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Absolute mayhem! You’d think I gave them pellets once a month instead of refilling their bowls twice daily.

 

Most of the garden is preparing to sleep for the winter now. I’ve had a light frost on my car windows, but my backyard is a warmer microclimate, and even the tomatoes are still limping along…ripening those last few cherry tomatoes. The olive tree has small green olives on it, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with those. This is the first year it’s attempted to set actual fruit.

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We’ll see. The tree is tucked up against the house wall, in the warmest possible place. There are a few apples left on the apple trees, and we just ate the last of the pears. That was exciting – it was our first year to have pears! The mini pear “Seckel” produced about 15 pears, and they were very tasty! Just like full size pears, only half the size. One of my co-workers brought me couple of unusual fruits she’d been given by a friend of hers. They are a pear/ash cross, called a “Shipova”.  I’d never heard of them, but according to One Green World, they are “A unique hybrid of Mountain Ash and Pear, Shipova Mt. Ash Hybrid bears round, yellow-orange fruit, about the size of a large apricot. Quite delicious, the sweet, seedless fruit has a delicate, rose-like aroma. Shipova forms a pyramidal-shaped tree with attractive, grayish-green foliage.” They are pollinated by actual pears, so I think I might try getting a tree next year. The ones she brought me were slightly overripe, but still very good!

It’s weird, planning for the future, when you know the world as we know it is coming to an end. I’m pretty sure I won’t even be here on earth next Spring…but in case I’m wrong about the exact timing of the Rapture and start of the Great Tribulation, I still have to keep going, planting my garden and providing for my family, as the Bible commands. But it’s a strange, strange feeling.  I’m also in high gear planning for Christmas, and I hope I won’t even be here for that! I’d so much rather celebrate Christ’s birthday in Heaven with him.

I’m also crocheting like a fiend, getting tons of charity items and gifts finished…but I’m also making a few things for me, of course! One of those things is this Virus Shawl. Love, love, love the pattern – once you figure it out, it’s fun, because it’s the same four rows repeated, so you can do it without thinking. Perfect for watching YouTube videos and listening to audios!

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And I love MelodyyByWolltraum on Etsy for the yarn. She imports this gorgeous gradient Wolltraum yarn, which is “is hand-tied gradient yarn made with love in Switzerland. The gradients are created by tying little strands of colors together and the tiny knots (TK for short) are so small they are easily hidden within your project with no additional cutting/tying necessary.” It’s so much fun to work with, and unlike many of the other importers, her shipping is very reasonable. The above shawl was made with her Summerwine yarn, and it is just yummy! I have another order in with her for a cake of her Brown Sugar yarn, and I can’t wait to get it.

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Highly, highly recommend her.

 

Broken Beaks and Beauty

A broken beak can be a serious thing for a chicken. Beaks are their tools, their hands, their major way of interacting with the world.  Sometimes the bird needs to be euthanized, if the break is so bad that it can’t regrow. (I’ve seen some truly dreadful pictures of hens with their beaks broken entirely off. Shudder.)

Fortunately for Booty, her break, while serious, wasn’t quite that desperate.

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This picture was taken yesterday, after it had healed for almost a week. It is a lot less bloody and oozy. You can’t truly tell in the picture, but it looks like she snapped the entire top layer off, including the tip.  The below pic, for reference, is what a beak is supposed to look like.img_6826_zpsekzn5ajf

For a couple of days after it happened, poor Booty was clearly in a lot of pain, and although she clearly wanted to eat, she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. The internet said that a snapped beak has nerves in it that makes the pain equivalent to a broken tooth. I kept dabbing some chicken-safe medicinal ointment on it, and kept offering her all her favorite soft foods. She wouldn’t eat. I seriously was considering putting her down, because I didn’t want her to starve to death, and I was afraid she must be in terrible pain. But then mom took her out some bread, and came back in with the wonderful news that she’d eaten some. It still took a few more days, but finally she is able to eat her regular food again, and is clearly going to be ok. Beaks can regrow if enough of the beak is left, and in her case I think it will. But that will be quite a few months down the road. Poor girl. I wish I knew how she did this to herself!

Except for Booty’s trauma, things have been great on the urban farm. The sunflowers are blooming.

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The skies are glorious.

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And I have a bunny barn FULL of bunnies. Two does, and their two litters, born one week apart. I think I have thirteen or fourteen baby rabbits in there. I’m not sure. I was busy, and put off getting an accurate count, and then…they were suddenly out of the nest and hopping everywhere…and getting an accurate count right now is impossible. I went out to the barn last night and watched them playing for awhile, and it is the cutest thing ever. At one point, they tired themselves out and just collapsed into this massive soft wiggly pile of sleepy bunnies! I did get a video of some of it – not the bunny pile, though, the light was too far gone at that point.

Colony rabbit raising is absolutely the best way to go. I feel so sorry for rabbits stuck in small wire cages, either all by themselves, or crowded in a bunch of babies, with no room to express their natural social behaviors. These two does are sisters, and have been together from birth. While they did get a little ornery and testy with each other (and me!) during their very first pregnancies, by this second litter, they have figured everything out, and are perfectly sweet with each other, and I can pet them without fearing a bite.

And the babies! They are so sweet with their babies – with all the babies. I am not sure if they nurse only their own, or if they just feed whichever babies are hungry. I know I have seen babies that belong to Thistle come up to Blackberry and attempt to nurse…but these does don’t believe in nursing when the human is watching, so I don’t know if they hop away because of me or because they are holding out for their own children. I suspect the former, though, by the way the babies are acting.

I should have gotten rabbits on the farm ten years ago!

 

A Garden Ramble

Sometimes I amuse myself in the garden. I like my garden moles. I like them even more when I move a hedgehog statue into one of their holes…

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I’ve been busy planting more things in the chicken yard. My mom read me an article that said the one thing that really improves a chicken’s wellbeing is not being able to see the entirety of their run at any given moment…they like having little nooks and corners to explore. My yard definitely fits that ideal!

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I should take you on a video tour sometime – would you like that? It’s basically a very long L shape along the east and south sides of my yard.  They sometimes spend weeks just in one particular end – and then they’ll spend a week at the opposite. It’s like they have vacation homes!

The Rex rabbit kits will be 10 weeks old this Saturday, and are such a lively bunch. I moved them out of the Bunny Barn colony at eight weeks because I bred one of the does (Thistle) and wanted to give them their own space to finish growing out.  Thistle has since had a litter of four very healthy kits! This colony system is really working out well.

Inside the house, I finally got my sourdough “mother” going so I can bake bread.

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I used Maryjane Butters’ book “Wild Bread” and I highly recommend it! Packed with info, cool pictures, and the easiest method of making a mother I’ve ever seen. One bit of warning, she does want you to buy $70 worth of brand-name bowls, etc, to get started, but you definitely don’t have to. I used what I had at hand, and it worked perfectly fine. So far I’ve made pancakes and waffles, and both were excellent. Sunday, my mother will be strong enough to try bread!

And I’ll end this with a few beauty shots of things growing in my garden. This is a water clover, growing in one of my pools.

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And these are calendula flowers. I love growing these intermingled with my vegetables because they attract bees, are so bright and colorful, and are edible themselves!

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Chicks and Bunnies!

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Just look at the feet on this little Rex fellow! He’s only about four weeks old.

They were much smaller such a short time ago….

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They grow so fast.

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Here’s a video when they were just about twelve days old:

And here’s another at four weeks:

We also have new chicks on the farm. Two are with Ophelia, and apparently I didn’t get pictures yet, so those will be for another blog. The other two are Dark Cornish, a traditional meat breed. We’re giving them a try, to see how it goes. They are fostered on Sansa, my 1 year old Cream Legbar. She is a perfect mother.

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It is so much fun to see chicks out in nature with their mother, learning how to be real chickens.

I’ve also been working in the garden. I got the roof on the meat chicken coop finally:

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Don’t you just love the metal duck? I also bought a metal chicken!

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She is hanging out in the brand new wildlife garden area. It’s still very much a work in progress.

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I also got the summer kitchen largely completed. The roof is on, the lights are installed, and I have a sink and counter, even if neither is *quite* finished. It’s usable, at least.

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I need to add a door onto this sink cabinet, at some point. And also install a faucet.

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I’m really pleased with my kale bed. Last year, it bolted, so I cut it off at the ground, and covered it in some mulch/rabbit poop. I was getting ready to replant, when to my surprise, the kale came back up from the roots, flourished the rest of the summer, and overwintered to provide some gorgeous kale in the very early summer. It’s just beginning to bolt again, so I think I’ll cut it off again at the roots and see if I can keep this bed going forever!

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Very early spring, before the roses and the peonies and the rest of the drama queen flowers bloom, is really my favorite time in the garden. Everything is SO beautiful.

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Quick Farm Update

First, let me just say that if you’re reading this and only want to hear about my upcoming book releases, my book email list sign up list is here. Sign up and you’ll get one short novel free, as well as any future short novels I write.

Now back to the animals….

The two new Cream Legbar hens are all grown up, and should be laying their first eggs soon. They are supposed to be sky blue, but I’m slightly skeptical that they will really be THAT blue. I’ll keep you posted!

I’ve named these two new girls Khaleesi and Sansa. The white one is Khaleesi, of course!

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Their brother, Bertie Wooster, who I was hoping to keep, turned out to be gorgeous.

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Pure white, and he seemed like he might turn out to be a pretty nice guy. Unfortunately, while the nearest neighbors were fine with him, some guy on another street complained, and so I had to get rid of him. Roosters are technically legal to have inside the city limits where I live, but they come under the noise complaints laws, so if someone complains, you’re out of luck. Oh well, better now I guess, then when the hens really got attached to him.  They were a little annoyed by him now, because they just didn’t get the point of his dancing and posturing. They thought he was one weird hen…see Josie’s face in the picture below? That’s her “good gracious, what is he going to do now?” face!

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The Rex rabbits are grown up too, but I’m not going to try breeding them until the end of February, at least. I don’t want to deal with new mothers, babies, and cold temperatures. I’ve been letting the male, Sorrel, out to run in the chicken yard, and you can tell they’re of age, because he goes right over to the does’ barn and says hello.

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There’s nothing sweeter than a stolen kiss through the wire!

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The does are not particularly friendly – they tolerate me because I bring the food, but Sorrel loves to be petted. Since he is so tame, I trust him to play out in the entire yard.

If you’re wondering, the “thing on his neck” is his dewlap. It’s a roll of fat that adult rabbits have. (My mom just had to ask that question on camera, lol).

New Rabbits!

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Last Sunday, Mom and I drove up by Hamilton to pick up two little 9 week old Rex does. These will be the mothers of my meat rabbits. I chose the Rex as my choice rather than going with New Zealand Whites because as a two-person family, we really don’t need a super high production animal, and with the Rex breed, I can learn to tan hides as well, and have some really lovely furs. This is good, because I believe it’s important to waste as little as possible when a death is involved.

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Blackberry is a “black otter”, a color I didn’t know ever existed until I started looking at Rexes. I’m really pleased to have found her, because I fell completely in love with the color.

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Thistle is a blue, and is so lovely and plush! Unless you’ve petted a Rex, you have no idea of how incredible this fur feels. It’s completely unlike regular rabbit fur.

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They are living together as a colony in the Bunny Barn I built them. It has a thick layer of pea gravel, followed by hardware cloth to keep them digging out (and other critters digging in).

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The inside is spacious, enough room for a hay loft. The roof is a framework of wood, covered in more hardware cloth, with a used billboard tarp to make it waterproof. These tarps are pretty cool, being tremendously cheap as well are being fairly indestructible. You can’t choose what design is printed on it…mine is an advert for an island golf resort!

They have a litter box (which they are already using) because I want to collect their manure for the garden, and a hayrack made from an old magazine rack.

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There is a side door; it will lead eventually into the buck’s quarters. Only the foundation of this section is built so far. The chickens are enjoying peering in through this door to be scandalized by the new neighbors!

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There are big windows in the front, both so I can walk by and see inside, and so the bunnies will be able to jump up on a window ledge and see out themselves.

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They will have a great view of the chicken yard!

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Then, yesterday, we met another breeder in Stanwood and picked up our buck. He’s a bit older, about 6 months, and is a real sweetie.

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I think his name is going to be Sorrel (we name all our rabbits after garden plants.) Until his Bunny Barn wing is completed, he’s got a pretty fab apartment in the Roof Garden quail coop. I moved the white Bobwhite girls out to another coop, cleaned it out, and moved him in.

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He loved it, from the moment I moved him in. Probably, he’d never been out of a wire cage before…and no matter how nice a breeder tries to make a cage, it’s no substitute for a pen with enough room to run and jump and play. I decided a long time ago that if I got meat rabbits, I wouldn’t keep them in wire cages, but in a manner that lets them express their ‘rabbit-ness’ (as Joel Salatin puts it.)

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I put in a litter box for him, too. And if you’re wondering why their food is in/close to their litter box, it’s because rabbits like to poop and eat at the same time. His hay rack is made from the wire bottom of a hanging flower basket.

He likes his ‘nest box’.

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And even though he has all this room, and doesn’t really know us yet, he still is friendly enough to come over and say hello.

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It’ll be quite awhile before the does are ready to breed, but until then, I’m enjoying these little sweeties!