Still no babies

It's been almost three months since our rabbits have been together. They were supposedly a little over six months old. Rabbits this size generally take between six and nine months to reach sexual maturity. This means that pretty soon, we should start to see some evidence of breeding rabbits. Toby is definitely much more interested in the girls, but they don't seem to reciprocate his behavior. I now understand the phrase, "chasing some tail."

The girls are still displaying nesting behavior, including Farina, who is actually old enough to breed. She should be right around ten months old right now. She's ripped out all of this hair to line her hutch, which may be a good sign.

Farina's new home

A while back we acquired this adorable little angora rabbit. I really wanted an angora so that I could use some of the fur for spinning yarn. She's such a sweetheart, but we really couldn't keep her in such a small cage. Instead, we shaved her (the poor thing was covered in matted fur), and put her in with the other rabbits. The lady we purchased her from had her in about a 1.5 foot by 1 foot wire-floored cage, and her bottom was completely matted and tangled. Now, she has about 75 square feet of space, and plenty of company. At first, she was terrified of her new cage mates (the females were being a little bit territorial), but now she's meshed in just fine. We've seen her snuggling up to Toby, and exploring quite a bit.

Miura's Nest

Even though we can't feel "marbles" in Miura's tummy (a sure-fire way to detect rabbit pregnancy), she's showing plenty of signs that she's getting ready to give birth. A rabbit's gestation period is only 31 days, and she's been with Toby since mid-August. We're definitely not sure of it, but she's nesting, which is a good sign.



We've seen Toby attempting to mate with her, but we're not sure as to whether or not he's actually done the act. He's still a little young, so we've definitely got high hopes---- it'll happen eventually. Either way, Miura is pulling out the hair on her chest to line her nest, and pulling in a bunch of hay and grass too, both signs that baby bunnies, known as kits, might be on the way.

Knocked Up???

Quite possibly! The past few days have shown a more "stimulated" Toby as he has been going after the girls pretty ragularly. Additionally, we have begun to see Miura pulling out clumps of her hair recently (an excellent sign of rabbit pregancy) and placing them in what looks like a nesting area inside one of the hutches!

In the next day or two we will be going inside the pen to feel both of the girls. With any luck we will find the little marbles we have been hoping for!

WARNING:

This video contains scenes of a mating male and female rabbit.

Toby and Miura

Hutches

Today, following a field trip to Manasota Beach with Tine's Conservation Biology class (where we met an invasive species iguana hunter), we began building the hutches for our rabbit pen.

Mr. Dennis provided us with some old plywood (in perfect condition) that he had out in the tool shed. There are around a dozen sheets, which we plan on utilizing for the chicken coops and nesting boxes, in addition to the rabbit hutches.

Taylor had an absolute blast playing around with the power tools. We had a rough idea as to what we were doing, but a lot of it was experimenting to figure out the basics.

All of the cut pieces came out very well. We still haven't actually assembled everything (we need some different size pieces of wood to brace the corners), but it should all be finished tomorrow.

Camping out

So last night was a wonderful cool evening. I got out of class at 10 pm, and Taylor decided that we should camp out in the backyard next to the rabbits. We've been curious as to what sorts of critters might visit in the night.

We chose the bigger of our two tents because this one has a screen door that we could use to peer through at the bunnies.

From what we could tell, there weren't very many critters visiting throughout the night, except for some rain drops. I think the tent will stay up a few more days, so perhaps we'll try it again.

Garden Creepy Crawlies

One of my favorite things about gardening is that it forces us to get out to the backyard at least once or twice a day. Oftentimes we get to see things we never would have otherwise noticed. We've probably seen a half dozen black racer snakes, and yesterday stumbled upon this beautiful corn snake.



We've decided to hold on for it for a little while. Neither Taylor nor I are particularly keen on having a pet snake, especially a wild-caught one, but we think it will be interesting to watch for a little while, and to feed. It's very active, not calm like most snakes I've handled, but it isn't terribly aggressive. We'll probably keep it for a week or two, and then return it to it's natural home.

On a side note, we are somewhat concerned with the snakes around here getting into our rabbit pens. There are not any snakes large enough to harm the adults (save for invasive Burmese pythons, but I'm not sure we need to worry about that in our particular locale) but a corn snake could probably go after a young rabbit kit. Even if it couldn't swallow it, it surely could strangle them. Our cage is mostly animal-proof, but a snake could slip in through the chicken wire fairly easily. I wonder if an adult rabbit would prevent a snake from getting to the young?

Bunny pen

So, we got our new rabbits, and they're doing great. We kept them for a day in some tupperware storage bins, which were way to tiny for the guys, and got a quick start on their pen. This 75 square foot pen made for some very happy bunnies (especially Toby, who couldn't believe his luck with the ladies).


We've made some modifications since these pictures were taken. We've reinforced the sides, top, and put smaller poultry mesh around the perimeter. Once we have baby rabbits, we don't want them to slip out of the pen. The whole contraption seems pretty darn animal-proof

We throw a tarp over one half of the pen to help shelter them from the rain as well, and we're working on building little hutches for them to crawl into. The ladies will especially need this once they begin nesting, which we hope will occur in the next couple of weeks. We plan on having our first litters in about a month.

For those of you that have never seen rabbits raised like this (in a community, rather than individual hutches), it's kind of an experiment based on other's experiences that we've read about. Generally, rabbits don't do well in groups--- women fight, bucks fight, etc. However, in a larger space, and with individual "homes" such as the hutches we plan on implementing, things can work out well, and the rabbits can be much happier than in individual wire cages. So far we're seeing plenty of luck. They girl bunnies love hanging out with each other, and besides occasionally pestering the girls for some tail, Toby is doing just fine in with the ladies. Our only concern at the moment is mosquitoes, and we're trying to find a solution for that.