Friends across the miles

I've been chatting with another like minded gal for a while now. Come to find out she's just a few hours away. Which is great considering we have so much in common and our views are very similar. We have been bouncing ideas off of each other for a while now. Makes trying new things so much easier. Well yesterday the DH and I went for a drive and we got to meet up with her and her DH finally.

I had a rabbit that she was interested in for wool. I had gotten it from a friend because she moved. So anyhow the Jersey Woolly got a new home and his wool will become many different things as she learns and experiments with him. So he was the basis for our adventure yesterday.

Let's just say it was an adventure as I forgot to write a part of the directions down and we ended up in Athens, OH instead of southern Ohio. I told my husband that I thought there was a map in the door, which I was correct. He found a route that would get us where we needed to be. Boy was it a beautiful drive.

Her and her DH have a very interesting rabbit run and hopefully in the spring we can adapt our rabbits to something similar. Her bunnies seemed pretty darn happy. They also have a pretty nice homestead and with all the improvements she told me they have done and plan on doing its going to be pretty darn great when they are finished.

Feeling very fortunate to have finally met my sweet friend and her family.

Happy Homesteading!

~ Farm GirlPin It

Lazy Day

Been a rainy day off and on. So we pretty much stayed in the house and just enjoyed our time as a family. Our daughter did go over and get a few of the bunnies and brought them over for play time. One of them has had an issue with its eye. I don't think that it ever opened, so I cleaned it with some warm water and mineral oil. Now it can see just fine.

I got to cuddle with this one for a bit. It is only 16 days old and such a chunk. Its a lot bigger than its sibling. These are the only two out of the whole bunch made it.

Look at that size difference! I'm trying to talk the DH into keeping on of them for our stock. I'm not sure if its working just yet.

This is the smallest baby buns foot. Isn't it so cute.. This bunnies fur feels like velvet. Well besides doing some house work and cooking this is pretty much all we did all day. Was nice to just veg out.

Hope everyone had a wonderful day.

~ Farmgirl

Pin It

Rabbitry News

Well its been very busy in the rabbitry here lately. Starting on April 8th we began having baby buns again. For three days it was a wait and see kind of thing. We ended up with a total of 31 new babies and have lost a few along the way. We had a momma not feeling so well due to an infection that I thought was cleared up but wasn't so she lost her whole litter. A few of our new moms lost at least one baby each. So we have a total of 25 new babies.

I'm already getting calls and requests for babies. This makes me very happy. Here's a few photos of our little ones. They are now a week and a half old. Wow time flies bye too quickly here lately.

Flora's

Ginny's

Pheobe's

This is Baps she's not understanding me talking to her...
 Totally a usual occurrence from her. 

We are about to breed our other rabbits for all our fair babies. It's already getting that time of the year. I enjoy our bunnies. We got into the rabbit business last February and it didn't take long to get attached to them.

I'm sure I will be posting news often.

~Farm Girl


 

Pin It

Bunny News

It's been sometime since I have updated on the bunny happenings around the farm. We've had a lot going on with them here this summer/fall. We've only been in the bunny business since February but it sure does seem like forever. I've learned so much already and learning more each and every day. We've had our ups and downs like any other farm with farm critters. You win some you loose some.

During the Drencho which caused the extended power outage we lost several of our bunnies due to heat. We just couldn't keep them cool enough. Heck, I think we were baking ourselves too. Any how we lost Sprite and Robin and nearly 20 babies at different stages. Some of which were our daughters fair projects. Luckily we have made great friends in the local rabbit business and we got replacements which turned out to be back ups.

That was summer it's fall now. We've not had much luck with litters living. We lost two full litters right off the bat last week but, I'm so glad to say that we did get two litters that are almost a week old. Check them out. I need new pictures as they have a nice coat of fur now.

Jinny N Reese's babies (6 or 7 of them)

Bab's N Snowball's babies (9 of them)

We have finally added a new breed to our rabbitary. We now have Californians. Another excellent choice for our local 4-Hers. The majority of our rabbits are White New Zelands, then we have a male and female red NZ, Grandpa as I call him (Cadbury) hes a Castor Rex and Jinny is a Rex mix. So meet our newest additions.

Phoebe

Flora and Bucky - they were on a date!

So that concludes our news right now. We are hoping that "date night" will grace us with a few more babies here in a few days. We shall see.

~ Farmgirl

Pin It

Rabbitry News - Speckles

A lil over 9 days ago Speckles gave birth to 9 lil ones. We bred her to a rex/new zealand red (Reese). Speckles is a broken new zealand white. I wasn't sure how she was going to do since her last litter at her previous owners was born on the wire and they all died. She is doing an excellent job now with her new litter. 

Morning they were born.

Six days old.

We got one solid black and the rest are broken. The light orange color is so pretty on them. More pictures to come in the future. I do believe she will be the one I breed for our "Easter" bunnies next year.

Hoppy Farming Everyone!

~ Farmgirl

 

Pin It

Rabbitry News - Bucks Moving Day (picture heavy)

We've been housing our bucks beside our home and on very hot days the urine smell was just getting to be too much. Because we entertain a lot outdoors I decided to move the bucks over by the does.
 Now I've heard that you must keep them in separate areas but after going to many different rabbitries to get new rabbits and seeing their set ups I decided that its okay to put them near each other. Everywhere we have been has them all group together just in separate cages. So putting them together didn't seem to cause any problems breeding or birthing. Were going to try it out for a while.

Here's my before pictures:

Buck cages #1 and #2

Buck cages #3 and #4

Buck cage #5

Doe and baby cages #1-10
Revamped no longer 10 cages. Right now its 7. Taking the dividers out because
they are not big enough for the larger rabbits.

Does cages #11 - 13

We had all the bucks by the house and the does were over across the creek partially shaded by the trees. It only makes sense to move them all together. So here's the big moving day.

So much easier to load them on the truck one by one

Manual labor but we got it done.

Back wall so to speak are the buck cages. Put them in an L shape.

We had that tall cage empty and because of its odd size I decided to make it a weaning cage.
It now houses 7 of Jinny's babies.

Another look at the cages. Only thing we moved around are the tables. They
now sit in the middle together not just thrown out there. 

I like that they are all together so it makes feeding and watering very easy and with the tables together makes a great work station. I have a few more things I want to do before we are finished that I'll get done soon. Plus we are building two more hutches very soon for our does. We are going to use the wire cages as weaning cages in the future. 

More updates in the near future as we expand and make our area pleasant to look at.

~ Farmgirl

Pin It

Maternity Ward Update

Well since today is Mother's Day I thought it would be appropriate to report on my momma bunnies.

First up is Robin and her three little bundles of joy. 

Someone is looking for a snack

Next up is Jinny's seven little bundles of joy!

They are putting on fur and seem to be doing very good.
Jinny is an EXCELLENT mommy!

Expecting Momma Sugar

She spent a lot of time in this position today.
I think she may be in labor. I didn't want to bother her.
As of  7 pm she still hadn't given birth.

Lastly we have Speckles

She's due but not until the end of the month. She is doing
very well also and I can't wait to see those babies. We bred
her to our mini rex/new zealand red.

I can't leave out Jaxson

He is our bunny protector. Almost anytime I look out at the
ladies or go over there he is very close if not sitting on the
chair watching over them. Sometimes he's even on top of their
cages looking down on them. The ladies seem to not mind him
being around. None of them have acted out while he has been around.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day Weekend.

~ Farm Girl

Pin It

Rabbitry News - Jinny

I have been expecting babies buns since Friday from Jinny and she hadn't showed any signs of going into labor. I was starting to wonder if she was even preggers. Yesterday morning I went out and checked on all of the bunnies. I talked to Jinny for a bit and gave her some attention along with her neighbors Robin and her babies, and Sugar. She still hadn't pulled any fur yet. After being with her for an hour I decided it was time to go in the house and get some house work done. Well between then and 5:30 pm she was a very busy gal. She pulled fur like there was no tomorrow and gave birth.

Jinny I believe is a Flemish Giant cross and we bred here to a New Zealand this time. I'm hoping for some good size buns. Regardless of what we get we sure are happy.

~ Farm GirlPin It

Momma Sprite Update

Our beautiful Sprite passed away 6 days after she gave birth to 13 babies. A few of them died right after birth and the rest have died a few each day. We were hand feeding them and the last two appeared to be doing very well but this morning they passed also. It sure wasn't for the lack of trying on my part because I have been up feeding them as I should of been. This morning my plans was to slip them in on another momma but that just didn't happen.

So here's a few pictures of Sprite and her babies. She was our first bunny to pass away.

Sprite

This was definately a new experience for us. Now we know that you can't save them all but also learned some technniques to help save some. 

During this past week we have added a few new bunnies to our rabbitry and we have a few litters on the way. I'll be posting more later this week. 

~ Farm Girl

Pin It

Momma Sprite

Sprite hiding behind her nest

After a lot of waiting and wondering if she was ever going to have those little buns she finally did sometime after dark it got to dark to go check on her. So from 11 pm last night till early this morning she had them. I was expecting to see maybe 6, after 6 both DH and I were shocked with each reach in. 12 in all and only one passed away. It was smaller than all the other ones. 11 kits to feed, oh WOW! 

You can see the wrinkles on its little buttix! So cute.

I'm happy she did a wonderful job now I hope it warms up and they do good. I'll post pictures later on in the week of them.

Have a wonderful week

~ Farm Girl

Pin It

Lesson learned

Never ever take someone else's word for it when it comes to sexing rabbits. Make it a point to double and even triple check the sex. Our Dolly ended up not being a Dolly and now I think he's mad at me because we have put him in with Clyde and things just didn't go so well.

So embarrassing! 

We got to checking and well things just didn't look right to say the least. So back to moving the new cage back across the creek and "Dolly" got a new name and a new home across the creek with the other bucks. Hopefully he will be happier with his kind. 

Meet Jim Bob! Don't ask DS named the poor guy.

So from now on I'm going to check and double check until I know for sure that he or she is infact he or she.We checked him this evening and he seemed to be fitting in well. 

Alls well here at Circle E Farm this evening

~ Farm Girl

 

Pin It

Another building day...

Seems like the only day that we get a chance to build anything is on Sunday anymore. Today is no exception DH and DS are out building yet another rabbit hutch. This time they are doing some modifications since we have some lovely chewers. LOL

First they revamped Jumpin' Jacks cage. We hate this cage very much its been a pain in our butts since we have brought it home. We thought we would be using it for back up only but that just hasn't been the case yet.

Added a support across the top then a support slightly off center so they could add the door. It had a wire door on it and it just made it next to impossible to get into it. Now we can open the door quickly if needed. 

Next up:

This pile of wood will soon turn into a duplex. Soon I hope we will have enough of them. We like the cages made this way instead of the ones bought from the store. Ours are much bigger and easier to clean I believe. But, you know how that goes everyone has their own opinions. See photos below.

Transporting it over across the creek.

These are the cages we bought over in Jackson. The set of 10 cages to the left is for weaning  and the set to the right is our ladies. They are the biggest of the all metal cages. Our hopes is to change the whole arrangement. That has to wait till we get enough supplies to build our building around our cages. 

The real work begins another duplex is being raised! Our new bunnies will be happy when we get them. Jordan and I did some work on some of the cages across the creek. We made a much bigger space for our baby bunnies as our New Zealands are getting mighty big. 

Hopefully I can talk the DH and DS to start on our garage in a box. We bought it months ago and it needs to be put together. maybe we will see progress soon.

Have a wonderful day

~Farm Girl ~

Pin It

Our newest bunnies

We made a trip to central Ohio over this past weekend to get some new bunnies for our rabbitry. While we were there we got one extra he was so pretty and DD just couldn't allow him to stay behind. He was no use to the owner because he was related to all her other rabbits. He's going to be just fine here I'm sure of that.

Four male New Zealands

Cosmo

Reese

Reese is such a sweet bunny. I'm hoping that he will fit in just fine with my other bunnies. He loves attention and gives such sweet kisses. We also had a friend that ran into a pickle with their bunnies and we agreed to take them in and give them nice forever homes. The kids are so in love with them all ready. Each of our bunnies gets lots and lots of attention from the kids and us.

Astro

Cadbury

Now we need to add some new ladies to our rabbitry. We are on the hunt for the perfect match for our bunnies. Hopefully we will have some new litters this week. Can't wait to see what we get or don't get.

Happy Farming

~ Farm Girl

Pin It