Well, its kind of quiet on the quarterly rabbit report for 2017.. the three new does are now out of quarantine as is the new buck.

So the three new girls have all just been breed, so we should have a major boom in baby rabbit kits end of may, first week of June

My oldest and biggest girl had the winter off and I was concerned that she was not breeding again.. I had breed her three times and nothing! I figured I would sadly need to replace her with one of the younger girls.. but as she is a totally awesome mom, I decided to try her with a new buck

She made a nest big enough to hold her normal 8 to 12 kits.. I coo’d to her and carefully opened the nest up and smiled at the fat bellied babies..

all 2 of them LOL  She was re-bred right back and hopefully she will have a proper sized litter for her age on the next one.. none the less she showed me something important. I was going to cull the other older doe as well because she was not breeding (she is huge an I am waiting for hair pulling and kits) but if she does not go this week, I am going to put her with the new buck as well and give her one more kick at the can as they say.

The old buck though, he is going to freezer camp, because it would appear that despite him being in a good health and a very active breeder, I think he is the reason for no new kits.

Which means that my prime breeder buck this year is a  Champion (bred for meat) Solid Black Purebred Black New Zealand imported from Florida by a friend of mine. She changed her mind on what she wanted to do for crossing for her meat rabbits and offered him to me.

He is smaller then my wonderful Grimaud Frère / Hypharm in France bred does from the local Lapin Rabbity so I expect what I would ideally like to do is find my best growing buck from the cross and hold him back for a future breeder as he would be totally unrelated to all my new girls

I will be building a few new rabbit grow out pens this spring, most likely two more of my 16 square foot hutches, but split them into two sides at 8 square feet floor space. We will see..