Bunnies, bunnies, everywhere!

It has been 10 days since the birth of the American Chinchilla Californian cross rabbits were born. They are doing FABULOUSLY!!! All three are alive and the are beginning to venture out of the nest. Their eyes are just beginning to open and their ears are starting to stand up. 

And only 3 days ago both AC does kindled. Six kits a piece and none stillborn that I saw! (Sometimes mom eats the stillborn ones) They are not nearly as cute at this stage, but I still love them! 

As excited as I was on Sunday, I tempered that excitement. This was the first kindling for both mothers. Sometimes the mothers will not return to the nest to feed the young after giving birth and the kits die of dehydration. Hand feeding this many kits is a lot of work with a very low success rate so we allow nature to take its course. 

I was very pleased on Monday morning when I went out and found both nests well fed and cozy! These mothers are all doing an extraordinary job so far. 

If all continues to go well we will have our first rabbit harvest the first weekend in June. 

It must be Spring!!

One of the things I love about living on a farm is that we become more in tune with the changing of the seasons. When we lived in a the city or the suburbs, we would take superficial notice of changes in the weather. We might mark the nearing of a holiday associated with a season. But here our behavior is directly altered by changes in the seasons.

In the summer we are tending the garden and combating monsoons. We are ensuring pens are not turning into swamps and finding ways to keep the animals cool. In the fall we are harvesting and preserving bountiful harvests...or researching why the crops failed! We are also in constant battle with the wind. Cleaning after storms, repairing roofs and timing trees destroyed by the insufferable wind. In the winter we are calm. We research, plan, repair and prepare. We cease breeding, halt outside projects and recover.

But then comes spring! Spring is a time for hard work because with spring comes BABIES!!! Baby everything. We hatch chicks and the rabbits breed. Some years we have seen goats kid and have also purchased piglets. Baby animals are one of the most rewarding things you can have on a farm.

This year is our first year hatching our own chicks. We took eggs laid by our hens and incubated them. Today we had out best hatch. Five of six eggs hatched to produce healthy chicks. We have hatched eggs we have ordered online. We have also hatch twos and threes of our own chicks, but today's hatch was very promising!

We were also excited to see that our Californian rabbit had babies too! Rabbit babies are always a surprise. Because we raise our rabbits in a colony setting, we allow nature to dictate the breeding. (Here is an article outlining some of the benefits to colony raising.) I have a day or so notice before the birth as the mom starts to build a nest, but because of the colony setting, there is little to no work for me in order for her to kindle.

We set up our colony last fall and have not had a breeding yet. This was to be expected as breeding season for rabbits starts mid February and continues into late summer. I have a Californian buck, an American Chinchilla buck, a Californian doe and two American chinchilla does. It seems that the Californian bred with the Chinchilla as 2 of the babies were while, but four were dark gray!

That is good news because the buck was unproven up to this point. He showed dominant traits, but I was concerned he was not fertile. Those fears can rest now!

New fears have popped up in that 50% of the kits were still born. We have 3 surviving kits that seem strong and healthy. I went in this morning and momma rabbit had just fed them, so I know she is doing her part. I am looking forward to the American chinchillas kindling, however, I am not expecting their first litters to do well. It takes a time or two for rabbits to become successful mothers.

Now that spring is here (work-wise if not by the calendar) I am starting to look around and realize how much work needs to be done. A second batch of meat chicks comes on Thursday, ducklings should be hatching in seven days (our first duckling hatch) and in five weeks we will be getting a third shipment of meat chickens, five turkeys, and five ducklings. Somewhere in the next few weeks we will also be getting a couple baby goats.

It is exciting and overwhelming all at once!

Homemade Coop

We had a desk we got...somewhere... We no longer needed it but it was still serviceable, so I turned it into something we can never have too many of: A COOP!!

I figured it would be a tri-level coop so I cut holes in the ceiling/floor. 

The cable holes in the back of the desk were patched with pieces of a coop that was destroyed in a wind storm. That door was perfectly usable.

Now they have a back window! 

I covered the top portion with chicken wire, but we have had issues with chickens hurting themselves on tips of chicken wire. This was an easy fix with some scrap wood and nails. (Normally, I like to use screws, but I didn't have any short enough and this was to be a project made from existing material on the farm.)

BAM! more secure than staples and safer for the birds! 

Coops need perches. I drilled holes in the sides of the desk and used PVC pipe cut a little longer than the width of the desk. I capped them with PVC caps (all stuff we have lying around the farm). I did not glue the caps on so I can remove the perches for cleaning as needed. 

If we have issues with the perches spinning, I can use silicone between the cap and the desk wall. It would make it permanent, but they can still be wiped down. 

We had to add a lock...one I took from a rabbit hutch we no longer use. 

There! All done!

Parfy gives it her seal of approval. 

After spending the night in it, it became clear that it was too small for a full size chicken, but it will be perfect for chicks that are too big for the brooder but not big enough to survive in the flock. I am pretty darn proud of this project. It took me only a few hours and cost us exactly $0! 

A Real Chicken Project

As we continue to develop and refine what Mediocre Acres is and what we need and want with the current property, one thing continues to come up: Poultry. We have discussed raising pigs and goats again. We have played with the idea of a Dexter cow. We have explored the possibility of expanding the rabbit colony. We have talked about kitchen gardens and market gardens. We have talked improving the structures on the property and everything falls by the wayside except poultry. 

There are a couple reasons for this. Number one is poultry is easy! A close second is it's inexpensive. Meat poultry grows out fast: 10 weeks from hatch to harvest. This year we have a goal to harvest between 50 and 75 meat chickens.

We have learned from past failures that ordering 50 in one run and raising them all at once is a recipe for disaster. We have done that twice and only about a half to two thirds make it to slaughter.

This year we are planning on ordering 15 ever five weeks from now through August. Our last harvest will be the second week in October. That enables us to take the winter off meat chickens as the heating and feeding expense is high in the winter. 

Today we got our first batch of 15 meat birds! 

I always forget how small they are. They grow so fast! 

And they are so stinking cute!

In addition to ordering meat chicks we have been collecting fertilized eggs from our own flock and hatching them in our incubators. We have been having pretty good luck too! 

A wide variety of chicks have hatched. Both our roosters are Rhode Island Reds so the are all red crosses. This one is most likely a RIR/cornish cross. Two others hatched with this one and they and the meat chicks are living quite happily in the shed. 

In about five weeks we hope to move the meat birds into outdoor chicken tractors. We hope to allow them to graze and in return allow them to fertilize the property. 

I am so looking forward to having this chicken project in full swing in about 10-12 weeks!