Property purchase, rabbit update

Big news! Near the end of 2019, my dream of being a property owner finally came true! I purchased a 2.2 acre property in Vacaville. It is currently raw land, and we're in the early stages of permits, plan approvals, etc. I'll have a manufactured house put on the property, and the tentative completion date is next fall. I have big plans but right now it's all tentative. Once we're further along the process, I plan to look for a permaculture-minded consultant to help me plan everything out. I will definitely have a nice ultra-secure area for the chickens, lots of space for the dogs to run around, a small orchard and produce garden, and lots of decorative plantings.

I dispatched all my rabbits a few months back. In the end, the pros (healthy meat, good compost, fairly easy dispatch and very easy butchering) did not outweight the cons (not particularly tasty meat, pain to clean up after, not enjoyable to watch/hang out with like the chickens). I have a lot of intact rabbits in the freezer right now, so when the weather is nicer, I'll have to defrost them and do a butchering party.

One last adorable baby bunny photo.

New red rex buck

Last week I dispatched my first buck and brought home a new one, since I needed new genetics for the next generation of does. I found a local breeder selling rex kits of all different colors. It was so difficult to choose one! I had planned on bringing home a red one, as I have been exceptionally fond of the red kit in the current litter. I had also considered a lilac, to bring brown and dilute color genes into my rabbitry. The breeder also had a few torts and an opal (dilute). In the end I went with a red after all, choosing the larger and darker one of the two reds.

Picture from Craig's List ad

Meeting him in person

Getting used to his new home

The buck was calm the entire time we hung out together, even when I held him. He was curious of his new surroundings when I put him in his pen, but scared of me the next time I came by. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before he's mellow again.

I told the breeder that I would likely be back for some more rex rabbits in the future. For now I plan to breed him to my keeper female kits from the current litter, and their babies will all have one rex gene.

Working and softening rabbit hides

I've been using this rabbit "stake" to soften the hides from the kits we dispatched in December, plus a backlog of stiff, dried hides from whole rabbits I'd purchased some years back.

I had heard that some people work their hides over the back of a chair but I wasn't having any luck with that, and doing it with my fingers (as the person who taught me about processing rabbits does) was a nightmare. Chase discovered this tool in a book. I was surprised, as I'd already read a lot about working hides online and had never come across this.

It was a revelation. The pointed edge is much more effective at scraping and stretching than anything I'd tried before. I can sit comfortably in a chair with my thighs over the base to keep it steady, and use minimal arm movement.

Now that I finally have an effective tool, I'm learning more about the proper dampness of the hide to soften it permanently. I'd definitely been working with the hides too wet when I first tried a few years ago - I would stretch them and then they would stiffen completely as they finished drying. Lately I've been erring on the other side with too dry. I've been using a squirt bottle and damp towels to soften just the hide and not the fur itself, and experimenting with various degrees of dampness. I'm doing one at a time instead of a big batch.

Here's a hide that dried out soon after I started working on it:

Here's the same hide a few days later, after I'd re-moistened it and was able to work it thoroughly:

24 hours later it had still stiffened a bit more more than I expected, but is still suitable for my primary goal (dog toys).

So far I've done seven and only one has come close to perfect. I'm guessing it will take 30 or so to really get this down.

Rabbit kits at 2.5-3 weeks old

I was having difficulty getting good, clear pictures this time, but they're still hella cute!

Rabbit kits at 2 weeks old

Here's a photo of the kits at 10 days old, with eyes starting to open:

And today, 15 days old, with eyes and ears fully open and the nesting box taken away:

Individual photos. The blue and red markings in their ears allow me to differentiate the four pairs of identically colored kits.

Third litter of baby rabbits

Ten kits were born on 12/12/18! For the first few days, all ten looked healthy and fed, though three were a bit smaller than the rest. Then one of the smaller kits was clearly getting pushed away by the rest. I didn't see the early signs because it was on days that I was extra busy and didn't do individual checks. Once I saw him, I tried forced feeding (holding the doe on her back and placing the kit on her belly), but he didn't suckle enough to get milk out. So I brought the five largest kits indoors for the night and left the other half to eat with less competition. This morning, the healthy four had extra large bellies but the runt had passed away. (My dog got to eat the runt with her breakfast. Circle of life.)

There are more fur colors in this litter! One pale red or light brown:

Two white:

Two medium brown/agouti:

And the others are black or close to it. Pictures taken at five days old.

First rabbit litter dispatched and butchered

My lovely friends Chase and Andrew joined me for rabbit harvesting day. The litter was 11.5 weeks old. Chase decided to keep the baby that had been consistently most curious and least fearful, and in her opinion was the cutest as well.

She named him Comfit. He has his own pen for now and she'll collect him when she has all the supplies set up.

The other bunnies were destined for the table. I attempted to dispatch the first two with the captive bolt gun but they were not immediately killed as I expected. We had to follow up the gun with hanging them to slit their throats. I later asked for help online and then emailed the company and was told that my placement was a little too much toward the eyes rather than ears. So I will try again with the bolt gun next time. In the meantime, since we weren't getting quick, humane kills, I switched to the broomstick method with a heavy metal pipe that was lying around because this is the country. That worked very well for the remaining four buns.

Emotionally speaking, it was easier to dispatch the rabbits than I'd expected. They were mostly calm and comfortable with me cradling them until the final moment. I was glad that I'd spent so much time handling them as they were growing up.

The butcher station was great except that it wobbled because the supporting legs aren't totally straight and we weren't on even ground. I can fix that later.

Garden & livestock check in

The young rabbits are almost old enough to start mating with each other (10 weeks), so it was time to separate the boys and girls. I moved all the does (mom and two babies) to a new pen.

Mama had spent the previous week with the buck, so I'm expecting another litter around December 10th. (Butchering day for this litter is December 2nd.)

A couple of my hens are getting too much action from the roosters and their backs and shoulders have gotten stripped. It's been going on for a long time, so while the two juvenile roosters who have been in the pen with them for 6-7 weeks are definitely to blame for some of it, the older rooster must have played a part as well. I had been just monitoring but it's bad enough now that I ordered a couple of coats for them. Then I'll monitor again and see if I need to get rid of the two extra roos. (Probably. But one is adorable and the other was supposed to replace the older rooster when he was injured. I'd prefer to keep them if things can work out.)

They got a new straw bale to play with and spread out for me.

Recently I opened the nesting box to collect eggs and scared the Black Sex Link into leaving. She had been about to lay an egg, so it plopped out a moment later on the ground. Finally I know who is laying these amazing giant eggs!

Two huge yolks from her eggs on the bottom and right, and one yolk from someone else's medium sized egg. Wow.

My baby fig tree has five little figs on it, but only one has ripened. With very little pest pressure, I was able to leave it on the tree until it was completely ripe. The first one from my own tree! It was delicious.

My little mandarin tree also had five fruits. One fell off early the other day. It wasn't completely ripe but it was still yummy. Lucky me.

Some day I will have true bounties of fruits...

Bunny ears marked again, 31 days old

10/15/18, 31 days old
Second attempt at sexing.
I now think the black furred kit I'd labeled with red marker is male, and the agouti kit with previously orange, now red marks is female. The good news is that that would still be two good-natured females I can keep from this litter. I'm still not 100% sure on my sexing. Some of the genitalia are obviously male or female, but a couple were ambiguous.