Rabbit Colony Update

I haven't talked about the rabbits in a while. That's their enclosure in the photo. On the left is their feeder hutch, then you can kind of see a piece of particle board propped against what used to be a straw bale but is now mostly disintegrated. Behind the gate you can see half a dog crate and maybe if your eyes are sharp you can see the other half a dog crate at the top of the hill just to the left of the gate. If you view large you can see all of this easily, plus the solar electric fence charger.

Right now we have fourteen rabbits that frolic in the enclosure. Four seniors (three does and a buck) plus ten kits that really need to be butchered before they start having babies of their own. We also have a litter (maybe two) underground and two of those teensy babies made their debut appearance yesterday. AND one of the does kindled (gave birth) yesterday but I'm not sure that litter will survive, because she built her nest under the lower dog crate but on top of the ground rather than in a burrow.

The rabbits hanging out around the feeder hutch. They have a little ramp to go up with boards across it for traction in case it's snowy or icy. They have a little "hay silo" inside made of 2x4 welded wire so they can pull the hay out but not climb in it and pee and poop all over it. The little bitty ones climb in there, though! The rabbits eat pellets from a couple of "J" feeders set back to back and fastened to some 2x6 board. That board beside the ramp serves no purpose. It was just propped there when I took the picture; I think it's left over from when I built the hutch.

There is a bag of wood shavings leaning against the feeder hutch. I scatter this on their poo piles beside their water dish. I'm not using the little bottle-with-a-metal-straw-and-ball waterers now, because it's too cold and those metal tubes freeze in a matter of minutes. They're drinking from a plastic casserole-sized dish (about 9x13x3) because it's what we had on hand when freezing temps first hit us. I swear, they just sit there and drink and poo, poo and drink. In the spring I'll shovel up the poo/wood shaving mixture and put it in the garden.

In the foreground you can see the particle board propped against the old straw bale. They have made a burrow under here. It's real muddy in this photo because we'd had a solid week of nothing but rain. Shortly after I took these pictures I took a straw bale to their enclosure and distributed about half of it around the colony and left half of it intact near the top of the hill. They like munching on it and climbing on it. I figure it will work its way down the hill as they scatter it.


Here are a couple of the senior does in the upper dog crate, and the buck on a straw bale grooming himself. This upper crate is where the original burrow is; it's the largest burrow and it's the one I caved in a while back when putting welded wire along the bottom of their fence. This is where the seniors prefer to hang out. They've done repairs to the burrow and this is where the two babies popped out of yesterday. I'm not sure if there are one or two litters down there right now. Time will tell.