2015 Baby Bunnies - Week 4

It feels like I just put out the "week 3" post.  I was late with it, so that's probably why.  The rabbits were born on a Saturday so I'm only a day late with this update.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

I don't know why they sit in their hay to eat.

Their ears aren't quite to that lop state yet.

 

They're going through a lot of food and water.  We have to fill the feeder and waterer twice a day and dump the droppings from the tray at least once a day.  I imagine it's only going to get worse going forward.

2015 Baby Bunnies - Week 3

I was home over the weekend so I'm late getting this out.  The baby rabbits hit the 3 week mark on Saturday.  Boy are they getting big.  They're eating food and hay now.  They still spend most of their time in the box on the side of the hutch, but they do occasionally come out and invade their momma's space.

2015 Baby Bunnies - Week 2.5

Just wanted to note a little progress made today...

The black bunny had one eye still sealed shut.  Two days ago, we noticed it was a little crusty, so I held a damp cloth to it until the crustiness softened and then brushed it away.  The eye didn't open immediately.  Checked back today, and it was still closed.

I started googling and read about something called "nest box eye."  It's an infection that can happen by leaving the nesting material in the box too long and bacteria begins to grow under the moist, warm eyelid.  By 14 days, baby bunnies should have their eyes open.  Today is day 18 which is considered way too long and may indicate a problem.

So, following some advice I read, I took a warm teabag out to the bunny and held it on the closed eye for a few moments.  Then I gently wiped around the eye with a damp paper towel, tugging ever so carefully on the eyelid and, voila!  Eye opened.  Once it was opened, there was no redness the eye looked clear and the baby seemed as happy and chipper as before!

Now to go clean out that nesting material...

2015 Baby Bunnies - Week 2

The baby rabbits are growing like crazy. 

They started opening their eyes a day or two before they turned two weeks old.

They aren't crazy about being held, but they tolerate it.  We try to handle them every day to get them used to people.

We lost a rabbit today.

My wife and daughter went out to check on the baby rabbits this afternoon.  I was checking for chicken eggs when they called me over.  My wife said that there was only 1 black rabbit (there had been two).  I looked all through the nest and it wasn't there.  We literally lost it.  We checked the ground around the hutch and it was nowhere to be found.  My daughter was visibly upset, but she stayed calm.  The only thing we could figure was that the momma rabbit ate the baby.  I've read that rabbits sometimes do that when they get scared. 

I went to get my camera and made a grim discovery.  I walked up the steps to the back porch and the baby rabbit was laying right there.  We aren't sure when it happened, but we're pretty sure that the dog put it there.  What we'll never know, and can only speculate about, is how the dog got the rabbit. 

I picked up the rabbit and called the dog over.  She looked at it.  Then I put it down.  She sniffed it and poked it with her foot.  Then she looked at me.  She didn't run off with it, or try to play "keep away" like she does with her toys.  I think she brought it to us for help.  That still doesn't explain how she got it.  We could come up with only two explanations.  It crawled out of the nest, through the bars, fell to the ground and died.  Or it died in the nest and the momma rabbit disposed of it by putting it through the cage bars.  Either way it must have ended up on the ground outside of the hutch, where the dog found it. 

I'm not sure how all 3 of us came out the back door and didn't see it.  The dog must've put it there after we were in the yard.  None of us saw her do it though.  I wish she could talk and tell us what happened.

2015 Baby Bunnies - Week 1

The rabbits turned 1 week old today.  They still spend all of their time huddled in the nest.

Aww.

There are 4 brown & grey ones and two black ones.  They won't have their eyes open for another week or two.

The momma rabbit has been much more calm this time around.  She generally lets us handle the babies without trying to bite our hands like last time.

2015 Seed Starting Update

In years past I've started almost all of my seeds at once.  This year I decided that I would stagger starting them.  I'm hoping that this will spread out my harvest.  I don't want to have all of my tomatoes die at the same time like they did last year.  I started my first seeds on February 11.  I started additional seeds on the 18th and 25th.  I'm going to start more tomorrow (and continue each week until I until I put plants in the ground). 

Now is probably a good time to mention that last year I printed out a diagram of my garden and planned exactly what would go where.  That way I knew exactly what seeds to start and where the plants would end up.  It worked well.   I haven't done that this year.  I'm going back to my old seat-of-the-pants method of "starting a lot of seeds and planting where there's room". 

Anyway, what's the point of this post?  The first group of seeds that I started got big.  So I had to pot them up the other day.

I threw grow lights on top so they wouldn't strain for light.

I really should have labelled this stuff...

I found a container of soil in my yard and brought it into my garage to thaw out.  I filled the small pots with soil and moved the seedling (peat pod included) into the larger pot.

I moved the newly potted seedlings under my shop lights.

 Below is a wider shot of the area.  I'm still waiting for more seedlings to appear in the Jiffy Greenhouse.