Bell's Babies

Bell's babies are all doing great! We are expecting them to open their eyes at the end of this week.  We have been told that one of the brokens is actually a broken lilac.  I love the pattern on this one the best, but the major problem is that the lilacs are not allowed to be shown yet. Hopefully they will pass their second round at the national convention in November.  They have to pass three rounds to be accepted by ARBA and are then showable.

All the rabbits are doing well we have a nice litter of two (black and broken black) that are about 7 weeks old.  We are hoping they turn out nice. 

I am thinking that Bell and Cami are both pregnant.  They are both eating everything in site and act like I never feed them. I noticed yesterday when I was giving the rabbits new water that Cami had a definite bulge on her side.  I am hoping that it a little baby. Will know around May 20.  Bell's nest box will go in the middle of next week and Cami's at the end. 

I was also excited to find out that we have more people wanting our rabbits.  I had a lady come up to me yesterday and want one from the litters that we don't even have born yet!  Hopefully we will have a lot to pick from this summer. 

It has been a long time since our last post.  We will try to be better.

We have had many exciting things happen with our rabbits.  Our black buck from our September litter, Midnight, and our heavy patterned doe from the same litter, Zebra, did awesome in our Nueces County Live Stock Show.  The buck took Grand Junior Fancy buck and our doe took Reserve Junior Fancy doe.  Our Broken Blue Doe Bell took Reserve Senior Fancy Breeder.  Our other rabbits did well earning blue ribbons.  We were very pleased with the results. 

We have some 6 week old kits right now from, Zebra. She is our doe that won reserve as a junior.  We have a nice solid and a blanket patterned broken black. Will post pictures soon of them.  They are very cute. 

We have bred Bell with an awesome blue buck, Storm, and are awaiting babies around May 18th.  We also picked up a chocolate doe, Cami, and have bred her to Elf, our chocolate buck.  She is due around May 20. 

We are also extremely excited that we were able to pick up a broken chocolate buck, Nutter Butter.  We can not wait until he it old enough to breed.  We will be breeding him with Cami in July for some more live stock show babies.

New babies

We just had our second litter today. We have 5 little babies. We were quite shocked that we have all solids, especially when the buck was a broken.

What's in here? Something is wiggling!

Lookie! Here they are! Five babies! Three big and two little ones. The smallest is the lightest; a lilac per chance??? Or blue??? We don't know yet.

Second littler to this rabbitry. Steel is one on the date mark mommy :-)

Close up of one of the dark solids:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Whoops!

The babies are doing great!  We are very anxious to know the sex of the babies. I checked them tonight to see if I could tell yet.  I "think" we have 1 doe and 3 bucks.  I am pretty sure our heavily patterned broken black is a doe and the rest are bucks.  After checking the babies, I went to check the trio to make sure what I am calling does/bucks are that.  I pulled Levi out and I could definitely tell he was a buck and the little bucks looked like that.  I then pulled Zoe out to check to make sure what a doe looks like.  Zoe's "parts" looked just like Levi's.  I was shocked.  I then pulled Bell out and checked her.  She is definitely a doe. I then pulled Zoe back out and checked again and she is definitely a HE!  Needless to say we do not need two bucks and a single doe.  Especially since we are adding a chocolate buck to the mix the first weekend of November.  I talked to the breeder that we got our rabbits from and she says that this sometimes happens because they are so small.  She is going to let us trade "her" out for Macy, a true doe.  The jokes are really flying around here now! 

19 days old

Well the babies are now 19 days old.  They are getting in and out of the nest box on their own and even on top of the nest box!  They are also starting to eat regular food and drink out of a crock.  They are growing like weeds! It is getting very hard to get good pictures of them since they are so inquisitive and not sitting still for long. 

Lesson Learned

Well I am proud to say that all the babies have learned their lesson.  The nest box is better than the big old cage to an 11 day old baby rabbit!  Not a single one has gotten out of the box after their first little adventure yesterday and this morning.

Our cute little babies

Jumping ship!

Babies are jumping ship right and left!  The major problem is that they can not get back in the nest box without help.  I found the lighter patterned broken black out of the nest box yesterday morning and then later in the evening the black was out.  This morning when I went in to feed Steel, I found the last two out of the nest box. They sit there like a deer in headlights.  They don't know what to do.  They are not big enough to get back into the nest box on their own, so I put them back in. When I put the babies back in they immediately snuggle in with their siblings and go to sleep. Most of the time they dig their way to the bottom of the pack, like they are thankful to be back in. They are so very cute!

Beautiful Babies!

Here are our beautiful babies.  We have 2 broken blacks, a broken blue, and a black.  Just love them all!

Out of the box

When I walked in this morning to feed Steel, I was in for a shock.  I found a little broken black baby out of the nest box. It looked kind of lost and was too small to get back in to the next box.  I felt so sorry for it. I picked it up and put it back in the nest box.  It immediately snuggled back in with its siblings and went to sleep.  I was not expecting one to be out so quickly.

Surprise

The babies are now 9 days old. I usually check them in the evening and tonight when I walked in to check on the babies I was in for a nice surprise.  They had their eyes open!  Of course, no one was cooperating for pictures group or individual tonight.  They all wanted to hide, face the wrong way, or act like little jumping beans. Hopefully in the next couple of days they will start cooperating and pose for a nice picture.  They are all just so cute!

8 days old

The babies are now 8 days old.  They are doing great and getting so big! It is amazing to me how much they have changed and grown in just a 8 days.  I can not believe the change.  Their fur has come in nicely and I can not decide which one I like the best. 

Wonderful Mama

Steel is being such a good mama! Last night I could tell the babies were messing around in the nest because I could see the hay moving.  Evidently Steel saw the hay too.  She watched it a minute and it continued to move.  She went over to the nest box and put her front two paws in and pushed on the moving hay.  It reminded me of when you would pat a baby to get them to settle down and go back to sleep.  She stopped and watched the hay.  It moved again, so she patted again.  After the second pat, all was quiet in the nest box. 

The same thing was going on again tonight.  One baby was actually outside of the little hole Steel dug in the nest box.  She saw the baby out and quickly pushed it back down into the hole.  The baby settled right down with the others and went to sleep.  I hope all our mamas turn out to be as good a mother as Steel is! I can't wait to breed her again.

Babies

The babies are doing great!  They are checked once a day in the evening.  The first one out was the biggest. It was the broken black with the most pattern.  This one has a awesome butterfly on its nose.  This is my favorite.  The next one out was the broken blue.  The kids love this one because it has a line of blue right down its back. After that came the lone black one. This one just curled up and went back to sleep.  Finally came the other broken black. This one has a lot of markings on the face and in the hip area.  This one also settled down quickly and snuggled in.  I am looking forward to when they get their fur.

Babies

I went in this afternoon to check on Steel and I found a baby on the wire.  The baby did not make it. Later on when I went to check the babies in the nest box I was expecting to have only 3, but to my great surprise I still had 4!  Steel had a fifth baby outside the nest box.  The other shocking thing was that this lost baby was a fourth broken.  Normally when you breed a broken to a solid you will get half solid and half broken.  This litter was very lopsided with 4 broken and a lone solid. 

I can tell the colors a lot better today.  We have 2 broken blacks, a broken blue and a black.

Nest Box

Nest box is in and we are waiting for babies.  We were told to expect them Friday or Saturday morning.  Steel rotates between messing around in her next box, laying down, and eating/drinking.  She is resting up for her big day.  We can't wait! Hopefully the babies will arrive early Friday morning.  Very anxious to see what colors we get.