Craziness

Well, my sister went out to check on the rabbits only to find one of Jazz's babies had crawled into Olivia's area where she sliced his nose open.

My sister brought him inside where we kept him an hour or so and when the bleeding scabbed over, we put some triple antibiotic ointment on it.

While he was inside, my younger sister held him and watched the puppies as my brother and I went out to the rabbit area.

We took Piper out of her hutch and moved her temporarily into a spare cage.  I then took Kayla and put her, along with her 4 babies and 2 of Olivia's babies whom Olivia had rejected.

Kayla's a very good rabbit and she was fine with taking in the extra 2 as her own.  (that included the baby from the last post which I had brought inside)

My brother helped me move Scarlet into an old and empty cage.  We then moved Olivia and her 2 babies of whom she still excepts as her own into Scarlet's cage.  Then I came inside and got the baby my sister had been holding and put him back with his mother.

While it was a lot of work moving them like that, it will keep all the babies safe and hopefully prevent any more 'mishaps'. 

Rejected

I was out tending all my rabbits when I got to my Lion head females, Olivia and Kayla. 

I noticed one of Olivia's babies slip into Kayla's section.  He hopped around with all of her babies for a few moments, while I fed Kayla, then I picked him up and put him back with his siblings and Olivia.

I begin filling up water bottles with my sister when we hear grunting, screaming, and banging coming from Olivia's hutch.  I open it up to find she doesn't recognize her baby with Kayla's scent now on it so she's chasing it around trying to snap it's neck.

My sister got a long branch full of leaves to distract Olivia while I quickly pulled the baby out. 

So...as of right now we have a rejected baby who still needs to be weaned and therefore will be living in the house with us; where we will bottle feed it and make sure he's safe. 

Piper's Era

As I'm sure many of you could guess, Piper officially has zero babies to tend.  She killed the remaining 2 last night.   Her time as a breeder of mine is completely over.

 

If you think that's hasty of me...let me weigh the options for you.  Here are 5 pros and 5 cons as to why Piper needs to find a new home.

Pro: She's a female

Con: She has a horrible attitude.

Pro: She's a Rex. Rex's are known as really good meat rabbits

Con: She doesn't trust me

Pro: She's of breeding age

Con: She's only been bred once and killed her entire litter before they even hit 10 days old

Pro: I own her, so she's readily available for breeding

Con: She's a horrid mother who I cannot trust to take care of her litters

Pro: She's extremely healthy

Con: She isn't doing what she should be by breeding, so now she's just taking up a cage, space, and costing me money by the amount of feed she eats and time I spend tending her, etc.

So from my point of view, it's not worth it to keep Piper around any longer.  Tomorrow I'm going to take pictures of her and put her up on craigslist. 

21 Day Old Puppies!

So, as of today the puppies are exactly 3 weeks old! Their mother has a few fleas and because of this, the puppies seem to now have some as well.  Consequently, I took them all outside and powdered each one down with some Diatomaceous earth.

 

I put them into this closed in area and for a little bit the mom was in there and nursed them.

 

 

 

The lighting was really good and so I was able to get a few really cute shots of the puppies!

 

This puppy is the only one we were able to make a final decision as to his name.  He is now Hunter.

(he's nursing)

If we do keep a female from this litter, she's the one we'll be keeping.

...And this is Toby!

They're all waddling around everywhere now!

Toby, looking as cute as can be.

 

After all that, the puppies were really tired, so they came inside a few hours later and nursed then fell asleep...

 

The two little girls!

 

So as you can see, today was a big day for the puppies...they got to go outside and play for a few hours!  They really seemed to have a lot of fun and hopefully this will mean sleep is in store for their mother tonight.

 

 

Big Bug

My grandmother came over today and when she was leaving she spotted this pair of moths on the stone outside.

 

 

I know nothing about moths, but my guess is that this is the male and then this next picture is the female...

 

 

They appeared to be mating as they were both attached to each other...

 

 

 

(It's really blurry, but you can see they are attached)

 

Then to give you an idea as to how big these moths were, here is a picture of them next to my thumb...

 

 

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting.  I know we don't see many moths this size around here, especially ones that are mating!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cow Fun

I know, you're thinking "Cow Fun? What type of weirdness is this?" Well...I'll tell you. So, we have some friends who live on a farm and they wanted to go away a few days to get some vacation time in before the summer ends.

They only needed someone to take care of them just one day, so my mom and I did it.  They have 4 cows.  3 are bulls, and then they have the female who needed to be milked in the morning and evening. 

We also had to milk a goat, but that was only in the morning.  So it was really straight forward and fairly easy.  I love goats, so I milked her.  Then both my mom and I hooked the cow up to a milking machine.  Everything went well and extremely easily.

After we had done the milking, we fed and watered all the animals, made sure they were all okay and left.  We then come back that evening to milk the cow again.

We get there and the cow is really far out in one of the pastures.  So my mom sends me down with a halter and lead and I go walk out to the cow.  She was laying down and did NOT want to go to the barn.  I got the halter on and eventually got her to stand up. 

Every five feet or so the whole walk back to the barn the cow would stop and yank her head back.  So...it took a little bit of time, but we finally made it back to the barn.  Through that entire process some neighbors had been out on their porch and watched me struggle to coax this cow up to the barn.

We eventually ended up milking the cow and it wasn't a big deal...until we wanted her to go back out.  Now that she was inside the barn, she wanted to stay there.  After a long while of prodding, pushing, and bribing with food, we managed to get the cow back outside.

The point of this story? Well, it's just showing that the farm life involves large animals that we do not need to be afraid of.  Yes, they may have their own personalities, some nicer than others, but no animal is too large for us to handle.  And you know what? I had a great time hanging out in the barn milking the animals. If you don't own a farm, you should definitely try it sometime...it's a lot of fun!

New Dilemma's

This past week has been filled with lots of new rabbit dilemma's and changes.  Basically, it's all revolving around my newest additions. 

Piper had given birth to 7 babies...she ate 3 of them and pulled another away from the rest so it died of hypothermia. 

Jazz stopped feeding 1 out of her 9 babies.  It was one of the caramel colored ones.  She pulled it away to let it cool down.  I found it in the morning and took it inside where my mother held it as I began making some of the formula for it to eat. While I was making the formula, the baby died.

So...Jazz isn't doing a bad job, but Piper has been absolutely awful.  I can't move her remaining 3 over to Jazz because Jazz already had to let one die to be able to feed the others.  So, once Piper's babies hit 6 weeks, (or, sadly if they die first) I'm going to sell Piper. 

Then there are my Lion heads.  One of Olivia's babies went through a small hole in the nesting box and got in with Kayla's babies.  Kayla attacked it and ripped back all the flesh on it's side, exposing all it's organs.  The most human thing in that situation was to put the baby down so it would no longer be in any pain. 

On the bright side though, I was able to sell 16 rabbit's this past week.  They are all at their new homes except 2, which will be going sometime next week.