Lots of Little Ones

While we have had more loss here than we would have liked, we have also had a lot of birth. Delilah had her babies. She birthed seven babies on the 4th. All seven have survived and she is proving to be a good mother! 

Lots of chicks. Just lots. 

Our Muscovy, Helga, successfully hatched 3 chicks. She laid close to 20 eggs so three hatching is not a good turn out, but as these are the first fowl ever successfully hatched on Mediocre Acres were are excited! And as a side note, our four breeding Muscovy are named Helga, Rowena, Godrick and Salazar. (Any Harry Potter fans out there?!)

She was not a fan of me getting close to take pictures! 

Since we messed up in breed selection for Julia's poultry 4-H project we have tried to salvage the project by buying her a Silkie chick. They are bantam chickens so they will be a more manageable size for her. She is very excited. She has also decided she would like to take on a dairy goat project. We are so proud of her increased interest of what is going on here. 

When Silkie (ya, that's what she named it) grows up s/he will look like this:

They are such goofy chickens!

More Babies

Besides baby goats, we got our next round of pigs. Because it is spring and they all happen to be female, we went with flower names. The black one is Orchid, the white one in the foreground is Iris, and the white one behind her is Poppy. They should be due for harvest in September. They are already unpersonable. I have a saying: Pigs, they're not like Babe.

.Mercy had babies on March 4th. She originally had nine and six survived. Mercy is our most successful mother rabbit. She makes very good nests and cares for her babies attentively. Until they are about 5 weeks old, then we have to remove them because she, well, is ready for some alone time! 

They start getting cute about 2 1/2 weeks old. Their ears perk up and and their eyes start to open. 

One of the babies in the litter is a runt. He was roughly half the size of the other babies. He furred later than the others, his eyes opened last, and now, even after 3 1/2 weeks he is still very small. 

He will not really be fit to eat because he will be so small. We were originally going to sell him to someone as a pet, but the kids were worried that the new owner might not care for him properly. Gramie and Grandpa to the rescue!! They will be visiting in 7 weeks and they have agreed to take him as a pet. He even as a name: Amos Moses. 

At first I thought this was my parents way of telling me they had joined the Amish Church. While I have a lot of respect for the Plain People, I don't see my dad giving up his computer and buying a buggy. I was assured this was not the case but apparently a singer by the name of Jerry Reed sang a song about a Cajun crocodile hunter names Amos Moses. What this has to do with a little runty rabbit, I don't know, but my heard of goats have marijuana themes names, so who am I to judge? 

Here is the song if you were interested! 

Wendy Muckey: Rabbit Breeder

If you would have asked we 3 months ago if Mediocre Acres would be producing meat rabbits I would have emphatically told you NO!! We were doing a colony setting and our rabbits were just not breeding (so we thought). We just kept feeding them, and they just kept hopping around. No one was producing anything.

We were also having issues with the dogs getting to the rabbits. They killed both Elliot's pet rabbits and one of the breeder bucks. Then one day on October, Elliot came in with a baby bunny and said, "Don't worry, mom, Wilma didn't kill it!" Unfortunately, later it died. And at that point I knew breeding had been successful...but now we had no buck. 

Before we knew it we had 3 litters, but still no buck. After researching I realized that first time rabbit moms are usually bad and a lot of their babies die. Also, given that they were breeding in the summer, they had an even lower chance of survival. Now that the weather was changing, and the moms had a few litters to practice, we could really get an efficient meat breeding program going. Without even trying, we ended up with 12 babies (1 of which we still have to catch) and we believe there is another litter under the shed. 

As a compromise, I decided to build a grow-out pen, and individual hutches for each of the breeders. While they cannot hop around as much and they have wire under their feet, they are not killed by the dogs. If I was a rabbit I would think that wsa a fair trade. (We bought a New Zealand cross buck to round out the breeding set.) Leigh thinks the dimensions are ridiculously large for a breeding set up, but I am comfortable with the grow out pen of 10'x3'x2' and hutches of 4'x3'x2'. 

I never realized that I would have loved breeding rabbits so much. Leigh asked me if I thought I would like it when it came to harvest time. I don't see it as any different than harvesting the chickens and pigs. As a matter of fact, the rabbits spend less time on our farm than either of the other two kinds of animals, and the offspring all look the same. I enjoy producing safe, toxin free food for my family. 

We decided our breeders needed names. I decided to combine my new love of rabbit breeding with my other love of family history. I named the buck Sylvester after my great great grandfather who immigrated from Portugal. Doe #12 is named Delilah after Leigh's ggg grandmother's twin sister. Unfortunately, Leigh's ggg grandmother's name was Ulilah. Doe #2 is named Clarissa after Leigh's gggg grandmother, and Doe #3 is named Mercy after my tenth great grandmother.

Mercy Sprague was one of my favorite relatives and this is why:

In march 1651/52 Mercy was before the court to "answare for mixed dauncing". She was cleared of this charge with an admonishment(PCR III-5) At court held 3 March 1662/3 Joseph Rodgers "complaineth against Rebeckah and Alice Pierce" asking for damages of 20 pounds for saying that he and Mercy Tubbs were seen lying under a blanket. However, Joseph did not appear when the case was called and was non-suited. Therefore it seems that the gossip was factual. At the next session of court 1 Jun 1663 "the court being informed that Joseph Rodgers Namasakeesett hath frequently and from time kept companie with Merceye, the wife of William Tubbs, in a way and after such manor as hath given att least to suspect that there hath been laciuiouse (lasciviuos) actes committed by them, the Court...hath required him to remove his dwelling...and that att anytime he shall bee taken ... in companie of the said Merceye Tubbs...he shall (be) surely whipt." (PCR IV-42) 

     Not daunted, the couple persisted. So at October Court "Wee present Josepth Rodgers and Merceye Tubbs for that were both lying together on a bed, under a rugg, before the fier. And also the same Mercey Tubbs for that att another time she carried unseemly in the prescence of Josepth Rodgers." The jury gave a verdict of true presentment (guilty). Joseph and Mercy were each heavily fined. Mercy apparently left home at this time. Shortly after this time William Paybody (Peabody) granted William a divorce, but the court overruled him 8 Jun 1664 fining Paybody for" making a writing regaurding William Tubbs marriage vows". (PCR IV-66) At the same court session William published, with regaurd to Mercy, that he was "disowning all debts that shee shall make unto any from this time forward." (PCR IV-66) John Arthur was in court 1 Aug 1665 "for entertaining the wife of one Talmon and the wife of William Tubbs" (PCR IV-104)

     William periodically petitioned for divorce until 3 Jun 1668 when his pleas were recognized and a notice sent to Mercy through the government of Rhode Island, where she was living, to return to William or lose all rights and claims against him. (PCR IV-187) Her negative reply was recieved by 7 Jul 1668 and the court that day gave William his divorce "Mercy have for 4 yaers and upward absented herself." (PCR IV-192)

And you thought our court systems were bogged down! Aren't you glad every person caught lying under a rug in front of the fire is not hauled into court?! Ya, me too! 

Well anyway, Sylvester and Delilah mated yesterday. We should have babies on the 31st. We will be mating Sylvester and Clarissa on February 1st and Sylvester and Mercy on March 1st. Our plan is to breed each doe once every 3 months. While they can be breed almost immediately after giving birth...that's a whole lot of babies we have to feed and harvest! We're going to go slow in the beginning. 

Bouncing Baby Bunnies

We have meat rabbits. Well, we have rabbits...of a breed that is conducive to eating. We have 3 Californian does. We had 2 New Zealand bucks till Wilma and Seamus killed them a few weeks ago. We had plans of giving the does away because they were not breeding and we were tired of unsuccessfully trying to breed them.

As a side note, we have a colony set up. So many people tell us that it is a waste of time and it is not the most efficient way of breeding rabbits. To them I say, I am not interested in efficiency. I am interested in HUMANELY raising rabbits. Rabbits need to be able to hop and stretch out fully. We kept a bunny in a cage for almost a year, then introduced her into the colony setting. The change in the rabbit was amazing. When we got the New Zealands and plopped them into the colony they did not even know how to hop...and they were 18 months old. 

Granted the mortality rate of our rabbits is high, due to the dogs (we are working on that) but the lives they have are natural bunny lives. They dig and forage and hop and stretch. So, before you tell me how much more EFFICIENT cages are, live for 18 months in a cage unable to stand up or take a full step. 

Anyway we decided that if we could not do the rabbits in a colony successfully, we will not do rabbits. Then Elliot brought me THIS:

This is a 3 week old baby bunny he rescued from Wilma and Seamus. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do for it and it died. But this was the first I had seen of ANY babies.

I went outside and crept very quietly up to the pen, and we had babies!!! LOTS!! 2 large ones maybe 4 weeks old, and 4 small ones, about 3 weeks old. 

One of the "little" babies

One of the "big" babies

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I delayed doing my chores. I regret that now...very much. When I did go outside to feed and water the livestock, I found that the final doe had had her kits. 

First time mother rabbits are not good mothers. Sometimes they eat their babies, sometimes they have them and walk away. And sometimes they have them out in the open on a very cold fall morning. That is what our rabbit did. By they time I went outside, I found 6 dead baby rabbits, only a few hours old. I imagine all but 1 (he was deformed) were born alive but did not live long. I was collecting the bodies and I followed them back to the "nest". It was very poorly made and out in the open. I was pulling bodies out when I felt something move. As I pulled them out I found 2 babies still alive. 

They were freezing. They felt as though I had pulled them out of the refrigerator. I ran them into the house, handed them to Lea and said, "Keep these warm!" She immediately put them under her shirt while I madly Googled how to take care of orphaned baby bunnies. 

We set up a little box for them and braved Wal-Mart to buy Pedialyte and puppy formula.

I am happy to say they bunnies survived the night. 

They only eat 2-3 times a day. I got up and 1 am and fed them. I will probably do that for a few more days, then they can eat 3 times a day. Their eyes should be open in a week, and they are fully weaned by 3 weeks. (They should have hair by this time next week)

If these rabbits survive, we will keep them...and not as food. We will add them to the breeding stock.

We have also decided on a happy medium as far as colony raising goes. A week or so before the rabbits give birth, we will put them in a large cage. They will kindle in there, and as soon as the babies are close to being weaned, we will allow mom and babies back into the colony. So colony raising with a nursery! 

They will still be bad mom's the first few times, but it seems as though this might be the most EFFICIENT way to raise in a colony.