Winter Rabbit tips

In winter there is more to deal with than just frozen drinking water.
It is important to give bunnies a draft free living area,
plenty of extra hay or straw bedding inside a nesting box for warmth on cold nights, give extra food too so they have energy to stay warm.

If you are planning on breeding your does in late fall or early winter make sure you have an inside cage for her to move into at least 7-10 days before kindling...if that isn't possible then you may want to put a heavy layer of hay or straw on cage floor, and put a brood lamp under the nestbox (at least 20+" away from hay lined floor...I use a 125 watt bulb in the fall for newborns, at least for first 3 weeks. I attatch the brood spot light to the inside of a plastic crate-then i put plexi glass over top of it to prevent shorting in case of mom's urine going through cage floor..

some breeders breed well into winter and take the nestbox in house right after being born. they take the nestbox out to the mom's cage and let her nurse them in the morning, then put the nestbox back in house, again they offer nestbox to mom in evening for another meal...

here in VT we can get -25'F for several days in a row and i prefer not to have bunnies under 4-5 weeks old during this time of winter. It seems to me i recall that young bunnies can not regulate their body temperatures till at least 3 weeks old.

check back for more on this topic...

to be continued...

bunnys & more bunnies mean cages & more cages!

Well we have had some busy german and giant angora here the past few months ... We bred some spectacular bunnies to produce some more show & breeding buns for our rabbitry to retain. When breeding with the intention of producing excellent show & breeding prospects to add to our own "keepers" we hang onto a lot the new bunnies till they are 4-8 months old in order to see how they are developing and so we dont sell the "pick of the litters" cause we let them go too young to get a chance to see what we were "really" selling. (this does happen sometimes...)

So as you can imagine, this means more cages need to be built, the barn re-arranged to handle these additonal cages, buying and storing more grain & more hay & more litter boxes..

Yea most of our buns use litterboxes in their cages..we put wood pellet litter in bottom and full up the pans with fresh hay daily... they sit in there and eat hay & poop! they sleep in them too... It is important to keep them cleaned daily ...

We also have had to make more hay racks to hang in the new cages, buy more feed hoppers and more water bottles and crocks for winter water too...

I love working out in the barn building cages and caring for the bunnies. It is so peacefull and nurturing.

We give the bunnies lots of attention and they know when the treats are coming around & hang on their doors till they get theirs!

5 week old litter (above)

What kind of treats do we give? cheerios, bananas, carrots, orange slices, beet greens, green beans, any stuff like that out of our huge organic gardens...the also love the dried papaya and pinapple slices sold at the co-op (no sugar added thank you)...

Ive got an order of drop pans on the way for the all wire cages im building now for us and for some customer orders...cant wait for them to come so we can seperate some of the weaned buns from their moms...

18 day old german kit-sooo cute!

Thanks for stopping by...