Learning Experiences, and Growing Out Hutches

We've had a couple of learning experiences over the last two days. Fortunately none of them have been devastating like some of our earlier learning experiences. As you can see in this photo our driveway is still here, and with minimal damage. We had some sudden and very hard rain on Tuesday night. Fortunately the lady of the house managed to get home in time to put down 2x4s angled towards the edges of the driveway every 30 - 40 feet or so to slow the water down and prevent major erosion.

Heat Considerations

This post somehow disappeared between Wednesday during the day and the morning today when I logged on. This is a quick reconstruction of the post.

Over the past couple days we have had some high heats sooner than expected for the area. Given that rabbits can die from heat with the temperatures as cool as 80, we were concerned. The normal method of dealing with this issue is to put frozen 2 liter bottles of water in the hutch that they use to stay cool. Unfortunately that only really works for 4 - 6 hours. Given that on Tuesdays the soonest one of us gets home is after 10 hours, that doesn't work. Yesterday we brought the rabbits inside quickly to prevent them from having health issues.

The Rain Keeps Coming

Which has been of great inconvenience to me. Dawn's babies are rapidly approaching the age when they will be getting weaned from their mother. While I do have a spare hutch to put them in, I don't have a full sized growing out hutch made which is what I want them to be in. It isn't built simply because it won't stop raining long enough for me to mow the lawn, much less construct a new hutch. Below you can see our hutches right next to our house. Unfortunately due to the constant rain mixed with when I'm working I haven't even gotten to paint them yet. Of course this weekend when I will be working the whole time it will be gorgeous. That said, the babies are doing quite well.

Behavior, Rain, and Other Environments

As you all know, this weekend the Lady of the House and I went to Nauticon to sell her art. While we were away the baby rabbits grew apace, as did the lawn due to the combination of regular rain and a sunny weekend. On our return we found the babies substantially larger in both cases, and very alert and mobile in the case of Dawn's babies. Below you can see all six of them wondering why we have so cruelly woken them up. I should say, all six of them are in the picture, actually seeing all six is difficult.

Active Babies, and Going to Nauticon

I'm getting this post done as the Lady of the House finishes last minute artist con prep for going to Nauticon to sell her art. We managed to get quite a number of good pictures of babies of the nearly newborn and older both for this post. That said, it is harder to get pictures now of both litters. For Dawn's litter it is because they are moving around quite a lot now. For Sunny's litter it is because they move more than Dawn's did at that age, and because of Mama Sunny's baleful attentions. The picture Below is an example of her being calm. When I am weighing her babies I have to do it quickly because she gets upset and indicates that she Will do something about my presence if I harass her babies too long.

Kits Open Their Eyes, A New Birth, And The First Luna Moth

An eventful last week all around including assisting with graduation at the school the Lady of the House works at. On the homesteading front, the lady of the house has been working on growing herbs, and for the most part they are doing well, though we just can't seem to keep the Dill alive. The babies are growing well though, and Dawn's babies opened their eyes over the weekend. They are getting very active and inquisitive.  As you can see below, even the smallest of the litter is very active, and looking like a baby rabbit now.

Baby Growth, and the Bear

We've had a lot going on this week in the homesteading department, the baby rabbits being the obvious major part of that. The other part of what has been going on is that on Saturday we got a bunch of herbs, some vegetables, and some grape vines and planted them. I don't have pictures of what we planted, nor do I even remember exactly what all we planted since that was mostly the Lady of the House's project. I just know we've got a good number of cooking herbs growing, and 4 grape vines planted in the side of the hill. The babies are getting tough to take good photos of because of how much they move.

Dawn's First Litter: Details

As I posted yesterday Dawn's first litter was born! I didn't go into much detail about what was going on with them, and didn't have much in the way of good pictures. Today I hope to remedy those two lacks. Yesterday at about 9:55 AM I got home from bringing the Lady of the House to work and found that there were noises coming from the private section of Dawn's hutch, which she nearly never uses. I went to check, and found her hovering over the nest. By petting her and putting out hay for her I got her to let me see the babies. I took out and counted all 8 of the babies at that point, and got pictures of her cleaning herself off. There was a fair amount of blood on her, which I'm assuming is normal for giving birth. She efficiently cleaned it off which I'm guessing means I arrived JUST as she finished giving birth. The babies at that point were completely naked, and very warm. When I weighed one a little later that one ended up being 66 grams, which is quite large for just born baby rabbits, even meat breed rabbits apparently tend to start off in the 45 gram range. Dawn has been very accommodating to let us look at and handle the babies without issue. She also appears to have been feeding them.

We've got babies!

 To the left you can see one of the babies from the first litter This little one is 66 grams, and rather active for all that he or she doesn't have eyes open yet! I came home from dropping the Lady of the House off at work, and found Dawn in the nesting area looking a little stunned, and when I got her to move, a pile of baby bunnies covered by an awful lot of fur. Dawn herself was amenable to me checking in on the babies, and didn't bite me, or make any advances at me when I did go in and check.

Below the cut are some pictures of Dawn cleaning herself off from the blood from the birth, and a few more pictures of the same baby. I didn't want to bother too many of them in this weather.

No Baby Bunnies Yet

I was holding off on writing a post in hopes of getting photos this morning of baby rabbits in the nest. Unfortunately that isn't yet the case, or at least wasn't when the Lady of the House and I left this morning for work. Instead, Dawn is still rotund and grumpy, and the nest is still empty.  So instead of pictures of pink baby bunnies, and likely a bleeding hand from trying to move Dawn, here is Dawn in all of her joyful glory. Below the cut are pictures of the nest.