First Litter of 2010

Within all that fluffy fur and munched up soft straw are five little week old bunnies, also known as kits. I have to check the kits regularly to make sure all are getting enough to eat and are doing well. I take each one out and check then put them in a little box and go to the next one.

Here they are in the box after being checked. All have round tummies and seem to be doing great! Two grey, one black, one white and one tan. They're lively and alert. The little tan one seems to be smaller than the others but I hesitate to call him a runt because he is feeding well and is growing. He had a tough start in life.

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This is Caoimhe's (pronounced Keeva) second litter. The first litter was an incredible 12 kits. This time around, Caoimhe had a much more reasonable 6 kits. One was born DOA, that happens sometimes. The little tan one was found outside the nest. He was the first one born. No others had arrived yet. So I kept him warm and dry. The next day Caoimhe had the other 5. I popped the little tan guy in with the rest and everyone's been doing fine since.

I'm wondering if this early birthing of one is hereditary. Ceilidh (pronounced Kay-lee) did the same thing. She didn't do it all the time, just twice. But Ceilidh is Caoimhe's mom. It's not a big deal really when a kit is born earlier than the rest. But I figure it's got to be tougher on the doe and it does make it harder for the kit. When a kit is born before the rest, the mom doesn't pull fur to keep it warm and she doesn't feed it either. She waits till she drops the whole litter before going into 'mom mode'. I'll see how it goes but if Caoimhe does it again, I doubt if I will keep any of her offspring as working does. That would be sad because Ceilidh died last Autumn and after Caoimhe, that would be the last of her line in my rabbitry.

Again, With the Compost Worms

The trouble with taking pictures of worms is as soon as the light hits them, they disappear into the bin. I turn over a clump of bedding to find a mass of worms but by the time I grab the camera and focus, most of them are gone. They're fast little guys when they want to be. If you look very, very closely, you will see a few compost worms in the bin. And if you have amazing eyesight, you may even locate the little cocoon to the left near the green straw, it's orange.

The bin is doing very well now. It's almost time to replace the bedding and harvest the first castings of 2010. I had a bit of an issue in late fall. I had changed the bedding for but I didn't wring it out enough. I thought I did but obviously it was too wet. At first, because the top part of the bin was not too wet, all looked fine. After a while though, I started wondering were the worms were, the food I was giving them was not being eaten. So I dug deep and discovered a way-too-wet layer and very few worms. Even with the drainage holes, the bedding was soaking. So I added plain dry leaves and gently turned everything over so the wettest would be on top and dry out faster. I had little hope for the remaining worms. I considered just releasing them into my compost box and just re-start the worm bin in the Spring. But it was so cold by then I worried they'd all freeze before they could burrow deep enough down.

I was amazed at how fast those worms came back. It was noticeable in two or three weeks. After a month or so, food was disappearing at a good rate and worms abounded. It was a hard lesson to learn, though. Hard on me to see all my hard work drown and even harder on the worms. I think after I soak the new bedding, I'll actually lay it out for a bit to make sure it's not too wet. I have also made a habit to gently dig down right to the bottom every now and then to make sure the worms aren't learning to swim, it's hard to do the dog-paddle when you don't have legs.