It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the rabbits. They’re doing GREAT! Unfortunately we did lose Sookie’s entire litter of 7 to the cold – I can’t say I’m surprised, the weather has been especially nasty going from the teens to 60s then back down. All adults are doing well, however. Queenie’s two kits have been weaned and are doing great. The new rabbitry is at about 75% completion, we have a couple more cages to hang and have to get the waterers hung and working.
I had a new experience having to clip Faith’s teeth today. She broke her top teeth off when I moved her beside Sookie, and they haven’t grown back yet, causing her bottom teeth to go crazy. I clipped them today with wire snips and it was very easy, she wasn’t super happy about it, but I got it done.
All four of our breeder does are now bred. Sookie and Queenie were bred to Charming for our first NZxSF cross litter in a while, and then Powder and Faith were bred to Rain for a pure SF litter. Hopefully everyone took and we will have some Valentine’s Day litters on the ground soon.
We also went out on a limb and bought three meat mutts to tractor around 24/7 365 and breed for food. Our SF are great producers, however the demand for them is so great that we are hardly putting any in our freezer, so we decided to buy a pretty little trio and just let them do their thing. One doe is chin colored, the other is broken chocolate, and the buck is broken chin. Looking forward to some pretty babies. So far, we have named the buck Virgil, waiting to come up with names for the two does.
We will be keeping one of Queenie’s litter – FQ02 turned out to be a doe, so she will stick around. The buck will likely head to the freezer. I’ve been super negligent of taking their weights, sorry about that, things are still very busy around here. Look for more updates when the Valentine’s litters start hitting the ground 🙂
Have you had good results with the tractors? My husband and I can’t decide whether to build a tractor or a new hutch for our NZ. What are your thoughts?
I have done both tractors AND off-ground cages/hutches. I believe that it really depends what you’re wanting to do. I’ve found that it was just fine to tractor meat rabbits, however for quality control and to raise rabbits suitable for sale, I believe it’s best to keep them off the ground. We had a LOT of cocci issues in tractors, which can kill young rabbits (older, healthy rabbits can usually live with it just fine). Since we are at a new place, I decided to experiment and see if we would have the same issues tractoring here as we did at the old place. Rabbits are happy so far, this IS my first “colony” type setup, so we will see once babies are born and butchered, how they’re doing 🙂
I want to be encouraging and I am always interested in the learning and trying new things with rabbit cages and such. However, from what I have read and learned from people more experienced than I am, domestic rabbits do not have the resistance to many of the diseases, illnesses, and parasites that wild rabbits do. If wild rabbits have been in the area, then rabbits on the ground will get whatever they carried. I personally will not buy a rabbit that has been on the ground so I do not have any desire to put mine on the ground, but if I did, I would use food grade hydrogen peroxide in their water (which I already do) or colloidal silver to help them fight against cocci at least. I think I would also spread food grade diatomaceous earth around as well to reduce the parasites.
The chin is so purty!
Hey, I just realized that the broken also looks to be a chin.