Ramblings of a Christian Mom

You are here: Home / Archives for rabbits

Updates….Bunnies and Life

As usual, I had good intentions to keeping up the blog but time gets away from me!

Winter is now here and outdoors chores are slowing down but I still can’t see to keep up with everything that needs to get done inside the house. We’ve had a few cold cold days, but we’ve also had several days that were mild enough that the snow was sticky, so the kids have had fun making snowmen and forts. Last year, it was so cold that the snow was always powdery so the kids are really grateful for some fun snow this year!

Zach is 9 months old now. He’s got 7 teeth and is standing on his own fairly steadily. He tries to take a step but hasn’t landed it yet. I won’t be surprised if he’s walking by Christmas. Excuse the blurry photo and dusty floor…I was rushing to take the picture. And well, #reallife.

 

 

We’ve started to decorate for winter and Christmas a bit.

And I’ve been learning a lot more with raising the rabbits. We’ve had a few successes and a few failures. We had our first below-freezing litter, which didn’t make it. I’m not sure what happened exactly. Mama didn’t pull a ton of fur at first but I thought it was enough because they did fine for the first couple of days. But one morning I came out to find that she’d suddenly pulled a lot more, but they were uncovered and cold in the nest box. I’m guessing that she was trying to warm them up and couldn’t. The nest had lots of hay and straw but I think for future winter litters I will put cardboard down in the box to make sure that the bottom is better insulated.

We did our first major harvest of rabbits…9 over the past weekend. I tried making bunny belly jerky (a.k.a. bunny bacon) in the dehydrator, which turned out well! I’m happy that I’ve found a way to make even better use of the rabbits. I’ve also saved their pelts, feet, and tails, to try to use later.

 

I had a bit of a fright yesterday morning..I walked in to the rabbits to see tons of fur and panicked for a moment, thinking that I had forgotten to put in a nest box at the right time. Then I noticed that I was looking at Snowflake in Bessie’s cage. The wall between them had been held up with zip ties. I knew it was temporary but I kept them up just a bit too long. Overnight one of the chewed through and knocked the wall down. They got into one another’s cages and fought. Thankfully, both seem to be OK and I’ve learned yet another lesson.

Right now, we have one litter growing out. Bessie has 5 babies that were born mid-October. I’ve finally been able to breed Snowflake, and Agatha and Bessie have also been re-bred. All three litters are due in early to mid-December.

And that’s about it for now!

 

 

Homestead Update – Learning New Skills and Tornadoes

It feels very strange to think of our little corner of the Earth to be a homestead, but it’s slowly becoming that!

The past few weeks have been busy. We didn’t get a garden in this year because there was too much other work that needed to be done, but we’ve now got an area cleared up and planning on a large garden for the spring.

I did manage to get some produce cheap locally, though! A small orchard a few minutes away sells windfall apples for about $12 for a sack that weighs 40-50 lbs. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I bought two sacks..and less than halfway through processing them I was wishing I hadn’t been so ambitious.  When I was all finished, however, I was glad to have it!

Because they were windfall, a lot of the apples were either spoiled or had bad spots that had to be cut off, so a lot of the time was spent sorting them into piles for compost, sauce, or slicing to freeze for baking.

I threw some frozen berries into the sauce mixture and canned some berry-applesauce that is so yummy.

The same weekend, the grocery store had large bags of beets and carrots for cheap…so of course I had to get a bag of each. I wasn’t really sure what to do with the carrots because we don’t have a pressure canner, so I made up a quick brine, made pickled beets with as many beets as I could fit in the instant pot, and made a few jars of dilly pickled carrots in the few more jars needed to fill up a canner bath batch by just adding a pinch of dill to the carrot jars. They’re good!

I had made pickled beets before on my own, and applesauce with a friend, but this was my first time making it all on my own with proper canning. I had just made fridge pickles before. So I’m slowly adding to my “homesteady” skills.

It was also time to process a few rabbits. I’m still not very efficient or tidy with the job but I managed to get the 3 rabbits I wanted to harvest into the fridge. The larger of them eventually went into the freezer, and I made the two smaller ones into a curry for supper. Sorry for the blurry photo, but it was delicious! I had only butchered one rabbit before, and this was the first time I dispatched one on my own.

 

And our baby bunnies are doing great! Out of the litter of 11, one was born dead and a runt died the next day, but the other 9 have been growing and doing great. They’ll be hopping out of the nest in the next day or two.

 

And finally…tornadoes. We live in an area that almost never gets tornadoes. The rare time they happen…years apart…they’re typically an EF-1. The last time Ontario had an EF-3 tornado was in 2011.

Well, we had some weather on Friday. It turns out that 6 tornadoes touched down, from within a few hours away from us, to within less than an hour from us. One of the hit very close to my husband’s work. And unfortunately, they hit in the city. Several neighbourhoods were destroyed by the stronger 2 tornadoes (EF 2 and 3, I believe), people were hurt, and one person was killed. The major power station for electricity was severely damaged and while they were able to re-route power to get it back on for most people yesterday, it will be a long recovery for the areas hardest hit. Please keep those affected in your prayers. One of the neighbourhoods damaged is where I lived for several years growing up, which makes it seem to hit just that much closer to home.

Swago game and baby bunnies!

Yes, another Swagbucks post. Bear with me! These posts help me support my family, and I promise that I have something really cute to show you at the bottom of the post!

Swagbucks is offering big payouts during on their September Swago Board, which runs from September 10th through September 17th at 9am PT! Swago is just like bingo, but in this case you’re filling out squares as you earn points on their site for doing things you already do online. If you’re thinking of trying Swagbucks, this is a great chance to learn all about how the site works and earn bonus points while doing it, meaning you can get more gift cards faster. Here are a few tips:

  • Each square on your Swago Board will contain an action item to complete, such as getting a search win, completing a survey, or just visiting one of our popular stores!  Doing so will fill in squares on your board.
  • You have until 12pm PT/3pm ET on Monday, September 17th to mark off as many squares as possible so use your time wisely.
  • Each activity you successfully complete on your Swago Board will give you anywhere from 1-20 spins on the Spin & Win Wheel. PLUS, when you submit your board for a bonus you’ll get additional spins. The number of spins will depend on the pattern you complete. The wheel has all sorts of great prizes that you can win, and each spin is a winner!

The Spin & Win Wheel will be available all throughout Swago and you have until 11:59pm PT on Monday, September 17th to use all your spins.

Click here right now and click “Join” to get started! If you don’t already have a Swagbucks account, you’ll be able to quickly sign up; PLUS, if you earn 300 SB before the first of October, you’ll get a bonus 300 SB!

 

Now, for the cute stuff…we have more baby bunnies!

After a bit of an eventful start to our raising meat rabbits, we finally have our first intentional litter! One doe was supposed to kindle (have babies) a couple of weeks ago and never did, so I’m assuming our buck was heat sterile, but another doe just had 11 babies finally, on day 32 of her pregnancy. 1 unfortunately didn’t make it..I found it in the morning, in the nest box but uncovered and away from the others, still in the sac with placenta attached. I tried to save it but couldn’t. But aside from one looking a little runty compared to the others, the other 10 look to be doing well!

I guess we’re homesteaders now

So, we did a thing.

We (hubby) built cages and we got rabbits. Meat rabbits. Yes, I know that the idea of eating bunnies puts off a lot of people but after lots of research we learned that they are one of the easier, quieter, and quickest producing meat livestock to raise. And they can survive our winters, which is a big plus, considering how long our winters can be.

We thought we would ease into the rabbit thing slowly, with a breeding trio. Ha! Yea right!

It started off innocently enough. We went to pick out 3 rabbits from a guy nearby who raises them. And he even offered us a 4th rabbit at no extra cost..he just wanted to decrease his herd numbers a bit. Bonus! We started off with 4 rabbits. We got them the 15th of July, I believe.

37261504_10160649550100424_2571682058699014144_o

The first couple of nights were fine. Then we realized that one of the does was actually a buck (the little grey one.) The guy we got them from was nice enough to let us exchange one, so we got a small black doe in his place.

Then on the 18th, I found a nest of 5 kits. Turns out one of the does was bred and we didn’t know it! I had had some suspicions and we were going to build some nest boxes that day, but it turns out we were a day too late. Even though she is (as far as we know) a first time mom, Maggie is doing great and has kept all of her kits alive so far. So we were up to 9 rabbits.

37399508_10160657459950424_316509961246998528_o

Then we had a predator attack. I went out to the rabbit tractors one morning and discovered some trenched dug under. In the first tractor, the littlest doe was missing, and I figured she had just managed to burrow out and squeeze through the wire bottom of the tractor, which we used large opening wire for to allow lots of grass to come up. Down to 8 rabbits. Annoying, but OK.

Then I checked the other tractor, which had our buck in it. More trenches around the edges dug up. Blood. And a 3-armed rabbit. Dang. We’re guessing a raccoon first went after the does but couldn’t get after them. However, the little doe was able to escape through the hole the coon dug up. Then the coon went after the buck in another tractor and snagged his arm and ripped it off at the shoulder. At first I didn’t know how bad it was and I tried to just clean him up but it was too severe of an injury and we decided it was best to cull him. Thankfully, the mama doe and her kits were left alone and were fine.

So, we had our first dispatch (hubby’s job) and butcher (my job) of a rabbit. Down to 7 rabbits. And now, no buck. Which makes it hard to breed rabbits.

Then at supper time, I spotted the little black doe in the yard! After almost 2 hours of trying to tempt her with treats and scare her out from under the porch, we were back up to 8 rabbits.

And we had stew the next day.

37408433_10160667159060424_5621934503371997184_n

We found another lady nearby who had rabbits for sale and got another buck and made a new friend who has been really patient with our many questions, and even gave us a bit of a tour of her farm. So, we’re back up to 9 rabbits.

37404757_10160666194005424_65580727520985088_o

Hubby built raised cages for them instead of their tractors, and moved them into a garage-in-a-box. He will put cage floor wire on the bottom of the tractors and put them up on cinder blocks for grow-outs so that they can still be used.

The baby kits are doing great and getting big. The kids have helped name some of the breeders so we have Maggie (the doe with kits, the grey one in the top picture of this post), Snowflake (the one beside Maggie), Benjamin Bunny, and Dippy, the little black doe that you can just barely see in the end cage in the photo below.

37609509_10160673386155424_1841304496144121856_n

So we have had rabbits for a week now. And hopefully now everything will go a little bit more smoothly…for at least a little while.

37612824_10160673386295424_2441775867978842112_n

 

Thank You!

Thank you for visiting Ramblings of a Christian Mom. I hope you come back soon!

Recent Posts

Subscribe before you leave!

* indicates required