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!