Busy Ceilidh

This morning I found Ceilidh putting the finishing touches on her nest. She's been building it for the last couple of days and I'm pretty sure she'll be having her kits shortly as in within the hour. What is cluing me in that the baby bunny arrival is imminent is how she is gathering the hay for the nest. After gathering the hay in her mouth she'll reach down and pull some fur. Usually when Ceilidh starts mixing the fur in with the hay, she's ready to kindle. She sort of weaves the hay and fur together and that is what I'll find covering the kits. Right underneath the kits it is all pure white fur and under that is nice, comfy hay bedding. She has a system and it really works well, she rarely looses a kit.

Sure enough, as I puttered around, feeding and watering everyone else, I peeked over and found Ceilidh in the nest box cleaning a little squirmy pink mound that passes as a newborn in the rabbit world. Once she is all finished, I'll go investigate and see how many she had and if there are any stillborns, I'll remove them.

That's Chamomile sitting on top of the nest box. From the start, Chamomile, or Camy for short, supervised the whole operation from atop the nest box. She started watching a couple of days ago when Ceilidh started mucking around in the nest box. She seems very interested but she doesn't get in the way. Camy is a young doe I'm growing out to be part of my colony. I hope she is picking up tips and helpful hints from Ceilidh. I'm thinking young does in a colony will be more successful with first litters than single does in a cage sometimes are. I think it helps them to observe an experienced doe get ready for babies. Just another reason why I really like the indoor colony idea.