Good Grief! Has it been that long since I updated this blog. WOW! Ok, so our Buck Snowball is a fiesty little man and he was able to impregnate both of our New Zealand Does several times so far. Unfortunately our attempt with the little mix breed Pebbles failed as she is apparently too old or something. She has yet to become pregnant amongst several attempts. So our Oreo had the first litter and to our horror she ate off almost all of the arms and legs off of the 9 babies YUCK!! She ended up kicking them out of the nest and I guess they froze to death cause my husband found them all dead the next day. We were so horrified by this we went and started searching the internet to find out what was up with her and found out that first time mothers often eat their first litters. ewwww.
So Speckles has her litter and everything seems to be perfect with them. She doesn't eat their limbs off and they all seem healthy. The next day though luckily I went out in the wee hours of the morning to check on them before the kids because she had eat the entire outside skin off of one of the babies and its innards and bloody skeleton was lying in the cage. AHHHHHH!! We figured maybe there was something wrong with that baby cause she didn't do anything to the others. They all grew up to be woping 4.8- 5.2lb rabbits at 12 weeks.
It was a really Hot July this year and even though the rabbitry is shaded with a roof, we still had to run fans in there. Also my children were taking empty soda bottles and filling them with water and freezing them for the bunnies to lay on to stay cool several times a day. Unfortunately we didn't think to remove the mama Speckles from the cage with the babies. The babies laid all over her and apparently she began to get heat stroke and was unable to cool herself from all the babies on top of her. She died that afternoon. My children found her when they were bringing out the second batch of ice water bottles. The kids were so devastated. We had a small funeral for her that evening. We are still trying to figure out the best way to keep our rabbits cool on those hot summer months. The Winters here are pretty mild for the most part but we still have the trouble with their water dispensers freezing. I can honestly say that Rabbit breeding is NOT an easy endeavor by no means. We did end up keeping one of her girl babies and the kids named her Sparkles in memory of her momma.
