Rabbit-topia

 The last litter of bunnies is getting bigger by the minute. Our two does, Clover and Zinny, finally have this mothering thing down. We ended up with litters of 8 and 9 from the two girls. Our rabbit tractors (mobile cages) just weren't built with those numbers in mind, so we decided to circle them with a bunch of x-pens and set up what I like to call Rabbit-topia. It's a big open fenced in area where the bunnies can run around and nibble at grass all day. They get tucked safely back into their tractors every night.

 It's so nice to watch the bunnies getting a chance to act like bunnies instead of being confined to a tiny cage with a wire floor for the entirety of their 12 week existence. They run around and bounce and play with each other all day. They are much calmer and more curious about the world around them as well.

  With so many rabbits in one area, the fencing gets moved just about every day. As you can see in this pic, the chickens are very helpful in scratching at any piled up dropping to spread them and help fertilize the pasture.

  The only problem we've run into with this system is the goats. Of course they are curious about this new thing in their field. I've actually gone out more than once to find Josie IN the enclosure. Once she had bent the fencing, and there were escaped bunnies everywhere. I'm sure the neighbors got a chuckle out of watching me round up 10+ bunnies on the loose, but I managed it somehow.

 The most recent time Josie pushed her way into the bunny area, she was so mad that she couldn't get back out that I found her flipping bunnies with her horns. Not trying to hurt them, just venting her frustrations in some bizarro retelling of Little Bunny Foo Foo by scooping each bunny with her horns and tossing it onto it's back.

  Every morning the rabbits get a buffet style breakfast of pellets and alfalfa. From this group, we will probably pick out one more breeder doe, bringing out total to four.

  Right now we are doing some research on keeping our breeding females in a colony style setup on the group that would look similar to the setup above. The only big difference is that does like to dig burrows, so we will have to find a way to keep them from digging into the ground. With the high water table in this area, bunnies born underground would surely drown with the slightest rain.

Until then, we'll keep doing what we can to make sure our bunnies lead a happy life.