Recent content by Hopalong Causually

I have tanned rabbit pelts with tanning chemicals purchased from a taxidermy supply company and then used them to cut zonker strips for tying fishing streamers. Works great. I prefer tanning New Zealand broken reds since I can get both white and red colored zonkers without having to dye them...

I have a two year old New Zealand doe that has just kindled her fourth litter. For the fourth consecutive time, she had nine kits. I'm thinking that maybe I should change her name to something related to that number. The curiosity is building in the litter size that I can expect to be...

This is part of a local ad I saw in the "Rabbits for Sale" category: "...the mother is a Nether-land Dwarf or a Mini Rex and the Father is a Flemish Giant...."

My most productive doe is a broken red NZ. I was hoping to get a future breeder broken doe from her out of her latest litter. There are two really nice brokens that I hoped would not be both bucks. They are now over five weeks old so I thought I'd take a close look at both of them. It...

Well, today was day 31 and she was right on time. Unfortunately, she did nearly the exact same thing again. Kindled only two. She, again, failed to clean off the amniotic sack on one and it was dead when my eighth check of the day found it. The other one she nearly totally consumed. I'm now...

I have only had two experiences fostering kits. Unlike Pastor Dave's practice of using gloves, I did nothing other than place the foster kits in the nest with their new litter mates. Maybe my doe was exceptional in accepting new kits, but she treated the new ones as her own in every way. In...

Update time. The youngest doe kindled three overnight a month ago but none survived till morning. She appeared to do EVERYTHING wrong. I re-bred her and she now appears to be carrying about 20 kits and is due next week. She is mega-huge. She tried to throw herself down on her side today, as...

I've been curious about a possible genetic link to litter size myself. I have one older doe that averages less than 2 kits per litter over four breedings. She's due to kindle tomorrow and, I dare say that, her results in this attempt will play a deciding role in how much more feed I want to...

Set up a record player (yeah, that dates me) in the rabbitry and play Captain and Tenille's "Muskrat Love" 24 hours/day for a week. Stop playing the music and put them together within an hour. The song will either put them in the mood, or stopping playing it will make them so happy it's over...

Doing an on-line search for "rabbit cage supplies" should give you many options.They may not be the most economical sources, but Bass Equipment and Klubertanz Equipment Co. probably have any kind of wire you could possibly want. I built all my hutches from wire from Klubertanz and am well...

Without question, I got into this rabbit raising hobby to grow some of my own meat and KNOW where it came from. What I didn't expect is the extent to which the dadburned things grow on you. I don't have a great deal of trouble butchering at the conclusion of grow-out time, but my breeders have...

Bunnylady convinced me to give this doe one more chance. Other things on my mind are that: 1) she has great size that I would like to retain for future meat rabbits, 2) my other breeders are getting along in age and replacement of them in the herd is requiring consideration, 3) she is now...

I was thinking along those lines too, Bunnylady. This is a New Zealand Red and she is HUGE. Not just fat but long and wide. She weighed 13 pounds about two months before I cut her rations almost in half and bred her. She pulled a ton of hair, made a beautiful nest and did everything properly...

The actual breeding followed the book: four fall-offs in about an hour, the first occurring within 20 seconds of introducing them.

The sire is three years old but he and another doe just produced a litter of nine. He appears to be fine. I might give her ONE more try. With the cost of feed and my limited cage space, her stock is dropping fast.