Learning to better time manage as life shifts.

It's interesting to me that for most of the history of this blog I think that the pictures have featured rabbits first, and everything else later, and yet lately things have been focusing on the garden, or other things. It's not that we haven't been thinking about the rabbits, and nearly as much as we ever have. It's just that we're doing a lot more as well. The garden has been a particular focus because we'd let it go last year much more than we should have, so the weeding has obviously been a priority. Right now we're also starting to figure out what we have too much of that we do want, and need to control. For instance, bee balm which you see above we have a LOT of. If you want some we can absolutely get you seeds or transplants of bee balm. That said, even with everything we've thinking about with the garden, and the chickens life still moves along with the rabbits.

Happy rabbits eating greens.

It's the time of year where the rabbits can be fed mostly, if not exclusively on greens from the yard. I've been putting as much greenery in the hutches as I can, though I probably shouldn't have started with the favorites and moved to the less favorite as I have. Favorites right now are plantain and raspberry/blackberry plants. They eat the raspberry and blackberry stems and all, barely anything was left of the stems even except the woody center. I'm being very careful about what goes into the hutches this year because of a couple of reasons. First is last year when I accidentally poisoned a hutch of babies, and caused the deaths of a couple, the other is a friend with rabbits who has recently started having kits die off on her, sounding like poisoning. Being careful seems to work out, and the greens save money And make the rabbits happy at once, double win. 

Bunnyday: Introducing Sunshine, babies, and a new hutch.

Today I'm beginning with Sunshine since I promised we'd meet her, but there's a lot going on rabbit wise. So let's get on with it so we can get to everything! Above and Below the Cut are Sunshine. She is Dawn's sister that we got from Michelle Chandler since she is downsizing her herd.
Sunshine is an experienced mother who we hope will have a slightly more even temperament than Dawn who, while she's a great mother tends to pass on her nervousness. Sunshine seems to really enjoy the cooling stone that we have in her hutch, and has been spending most of her time there after the traditional rabbit exploring the new space period. One thing we quickly noticed about Sunshine is how differently her face is shaped.


Right is Dawn, due to the slight angle differences it may be difficult to tell, but her face is wider than her sisters. A solid broad head, and a thick front of the head. I don't know what the standard for showing Cremes says, but the Lady of the House and I agree that the broader head is probably a better thing for health in the long run.

Conformation wise Dawn and Sunshine are very similar other than the head. As you can see from the photo of Sunshine Top and Dawn Right, they are both very blocky in how they're built. Dawn is a bit broader abeam due to being just about to give birth, possibly as I'm writing this. As you can tell though it really is mostly the head that is different between the sisters.

Then there's Dorado.

Sadly for his studly pride, Dorado looks terrible right now. He is blowing his coat all over the place, and thus looks patchy as can be, he also wouldn't pose for a conformation shot for me. However, we can show off his meaty block head and Dorado Special (TM) flop ears that sometimes pass on to his offspring. For all of his strangely shaped head, he is a solidly built well conformed rabbit otherwise. He also has a huge benefit neither Dawn nor Sunshine have, and that's temperament. Dorado love people, being petted, and more being petted. He is our ambassador rabbit when people come by and want to pet one of the rabbits. If we have babies they're obviously happy to interact, but of the adults Dorado is the happiest to be around people and turns into a bunny shaped puddle when you pet him, only to hop up, upset when you stop.

But, as I said, conformation discussion is actually the least of what's going on right now.

First of all, and I don't have photos for this due to concerns for my safety, Twilight has given birth as of this morning. I only found 3 kits, all healthy. We don't know if that's because there's only three or if I caught her mid birth which is unlikely. If it's just three we'll live with it, and just hope she isn't retaining dead kits. That is a slight concern for us because she's been taking flying leaps up and down from the second level in apparent joy, and we're just hoping she didn't hurt anything doing so. Those of you who have been following along are probably going, "But wait, her babies were in with her last Thursday!" And you're correct! I sort of slipped up some on timing which led to a bit of a scramble to get the new growing out hutch Below done.

I'm actually fairly proud of this monstrosity in no small part because I got it together purely with work on Saturday and going in 2 hours late to work on Monday. Thanks to this I'm a bit sore, and I got all of the babies into their new hutch Monday morning before Twilight decided she needed to dismember them.

This new hutch is an example of learning from experience every time, this time it's 7 feet long to allow a bit of overhang on each side to keep the food covered and prevent as much moisture from getting in. As you can see from the photo Right I incorporated a second level to allow the rabbits more room to move around and have a good time. The back wall is made of 2x4s, not so much because they're ideal or what I wanted to do, but because I didn't have the time to pull apart the 3 pallets it would have taken to get the wood for that. The second level is made of pallet bits, but not gotten by carefully pulling the pallets apart, I took a circular saw and cut the planks out at each support member since I didn't need long boards. The funny part is, even with the mad rush due to being an idiot and having to get everything done Now Now Now, this is still my best hutch. There are ways it would have been better if I'd had an extra 3 hours to pull pallets apart, but even with the hurry I did things as correctly as I can when doing it on my own. The babies seem fairly happy in it, but I'm already seeing ways to improve, and in the future hopefully I'll have two hutches for this many babies, so expect to see another hutch springing up in the next six weeks before the round of babies currently being born needs to be put into grow out hutches.

My newest creation, IT LIVES!!!! Muahaha . . ahem.

It's a new week, and life continues to move on. The stresses of last week while not entirely gone have been mitigated, and we're getting back on track with our lives. Not entirely coincidentally it's stopped raining for a couple days, and while it may be hot it has allowed us to get back down to business with the rabbits.
Specifically, rabbit hutch creation which leads to happy rabbits. As you can see, barring being painted and the angle braces I'm going to put on around the legs when ever I have a few minutes and some scrap wood, the working prototype of the new model of breeder hutches is up and functional. Above is actually some rabbits in said hutch. The ladder to the left of the hutch in the photo Left gives a nice size comparison for you. As with everything, there were learning experiences involved in building the hutch. For one, make sure when you do measurements, make sure in getting the ideal measurements on one side you don't throw off the other side so much you have to do significant modification to make it work. The side with wire on it had to have 2 extra 2x4s cut and added in to give the wire something to be stapled in to because the front of the hutch is over 3' tall. I figured this would allow the rabbits to be able to utilize the second level I made for them better, and I'm sure it will when they start going up there. Just in the future I will have to make certain I don't make it so tall the wire is floating in the wind.

 On the up side, there is plenty and more than plenty of room. The smallest portion, the nesting area is clearly big enough for Twilight to fit in as you can see Right. I made the nesting area smaller and tighter to make the mothers more comfortable with it since smaller seems to be just as good if not better according to them. I made the small side hatch so I can get in to check on the babies easily. The first night the hutch was finished it got its first test, we had a clever pest visit last night, a raccoon. The Lady of the House heard thumping around down from the rabbits and grumbling about "They're just being playful late at night" I went on out to check in a towel and unlaced boots. I promptly came back up for the dog, pants, and a rifle after seeing a raccoon on the tree next to the hutch, running up and away. Everyone's ok, and it's good to know the hiding spot serves its purpose of making them feel safe, but I'm not happy to see a raccoon for the first time since moving in.

Speaking of pests, let's move on to the squash which seem to be the epicenter of a bugsplosion. We've finally resorted to stronger options than hand picking because we don't want to lose the plants! We're still hand picking and killing the beetles ourselves, but as you can see Left we also got our hands on yellow sticky straps, and that's the result of a day of them being up. They seem to be fairly effective, though not 100%. We also got Neem Oil to try to act as a bit of pest control. It interferes with bugs ability to feed thus killing them off and protecting your plants. It hasn't yet stopped them from mating as you can see Left in the lovely squash flower. We're still doing regular checks and bug killing rampages. I seem to mostly specialize in killing mating pairs. What that actually means is, I'm bad at sneaking up on them and catching them on their own the way the Lady of the House is.



I also found a bug that looked a lot like a Japanese Beetle  but with vastly different markings than a Japanese Beetles. I had intended to take photos of it and then kill it on principle, but it flew off as I was snapping the last photo. Anyone know what this is? I haven't had time to look it up yet due to work + life. I still am fairly happy with having gotten the photos because it's kind of cool looking.

Last, but most certainly not least, especially not in their dinosaurian minds, chickens. It's hard to really get a sense of scale from the photos, but they've grown a lot since we got them. We did in fact identify the method they were using to get out, and so they're in when we want them to be in, and are only out when we're around to observe and protect them. The social structure is interesting to observe as the head bird I've been calling Haystack Below Left stays head bird, and the challengers rotate. There is a whole lot to say about the chickens, but for now I'm going to leave it at, they eat lots, they poop lots, and they make a lot of noise. The Lady of the House is really enjoying having them for their chickenness alone as well as collecting their feathers for art and craft purposes.

I hope everyone is doing well in this mid summer, and as a friend says, "Stay out of the hot sun."

Mid way through a busy week with lots of good things happening!

Our ever curious older litter greets the day, and the white baby has an eye to adventure it seems. That one always has been the most curious and most out going. But, they're no where near the only young rabbits to talk about and show you today!

Constructing the new hutch.

Among all of the other things going on, every time I have a spare hour when it's not raining, I work on the new hutch. By other things going on I mean 4 does who will be giving birth in the next week or so, plants growing, preparing for the Hilltown Seed Saving Network seedling swap on Saturday, and failing to dig enough new beds fast enough. But, the new hutch is important and progress is being made, and for once we're getting progress photos!

Step one for building any hutch is the base, and that's the frame holding the wire. To minimize how much disgusting build up we end up with we attach the wire to the bottom of the floor rectangle. The first hutches we did this using staples, and for about 3 months this was fine. Since then we've moved on to small blocks of 2x4 waste nailed regularly around the bottom of the frame to hold the wire on. It works well, and while there is some give it isn't so much as to be a problem, and the wire doesn't pop off. Something I've learned from experience is don't drive any of the nails on the blocks holding the wire in fully until you have the whole bottom stretched and properly in place. Trying to pull things apart is more of a pain in the ass than it is to go around securing the screen.

Unfortunately what we didn't get photos of is the attaching the various cross supports step of the process, which is a gigantic pain in the ass, and a big object lesson in measure twice, cut once. I remembered to do that for all of the more complex angled cuts for the verticals, but the photo Left shows where I didn't. You'll note the somewhat scattered layout of the pallet bits that are making up the second level. That is because I completely botched measuring the length the wood blocking off the nesting area needed to be, by exactly the width of the support structure. Fortunately I was able to find a place to put those errant bits of wood, but it definitely made me feel like a bit of an idiot. Sometimes the right thing to do is put down your tools, and walk away because you're just not paying enough attention. That's what I did with covering that shelf.
Speaking of the second level that's another set of photos that didn't come out. Unfortunately I was the one taking those instead of the Lady of the House and they were too dark to salvage for the blog. We will get more photos of that at another point, but the concept is a second level over the planned nesting area.  You can get a good look at the inside of the nesting area Right. It is a narrow tunnel running the depth of the hutch with a narrow entrance up at the front. One of the things we've learned is that the private areas actually have a bit more space than the rabbits really want most of the time, so this is smaller, and is in concept designed to simulate a breeding tunnel. The design complication with that is, it's now too small for us to reasonably get in to check on the kits, especially without putting our faces right at "please chomp on my face" level for Twilight who this larger hutch is intended for. To compensate for that, I'm going to be putting a lift door to get into the nesting area on the facing side in the photo Right. Convenience is really important for us to keep in mind at all times when designing a hutch because we do have to make sure cleaning isn't so onerous that we don't have time to do it.
Left is a photo demonstrating why you should make damn sure you're not getting hideously warped lumber for your projects. Notice that the top of the back is nice and flush with the edge of the top 2x4, and notice how the bottom has a bit of pallet flush with the edge of the 2x4 so I could secure the board in place. I grabbed wood quickly at the lumber yard, and ended up with one good board and one bad. The good one is ending up being used for the door that people will be seeing, and the bad one is going on the back. It'll do fine, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and it definitely bugged me as I was putting it on.

 Speaking of the door, Right is a good progress photo of it. There will be one more 1x12 fitted into the door, and the rest of it will be wire so we can see in. One of the big things I've been learning is lightening doors is really important BUT (big but) the weight to strength ratio has to be good enough they don't play the games one of the doors on the growing out hutch does where you have to use a lot of force to open or close it. I'm figuring using real angle bracing on the inside, and heavy hinges on a light weight frame should help. We'll see where that actually goes with this hutch. Another major difference with this hutch and the doors is the central structural support. It'll make moving around inside the hutch a little more of a pain for humans, but I think it'll make the doors less likely to stick, jam, and warp. All a learning experience. As you can see it isn't done yet, but I'm making good progress day by day.

This new hutch isn't being built near any of the older hutches, and is actually in the edge of the woods line. It's there for a specific reason. Last summer Umbra got heat sterility. Initially we'd thought the house would provide good enough sun shelter, and that turned out to just be flat out incorrect. So this year we're moving the hutches into the edge of the woods where they get good shade, and a cooler micro climate since they're right by moving water. I don't have specific temperature measurements but it is noticeably cooler. The biggest challenge with this is getting the hutches positioned so they are stable on the rough ground which will mostly consist of me kicking and hammering areas flat. The second is carrying the hutches. The Lady of the House isn't strong enough to get a fully built hutch far. To deal with this, I'm asking friends who are up semi regularly to help move the hutches. Hopefully we'll be able to get photos of the operation. So for today, enjoy our woodland morning, and Tuesday we will check back in on the bunnies and the aftermath of the seedling swap.