A New Website -- A Story to be told

I wanted to be able to talk about my adventure in raising rabbits. It has almost been a year and alot has happened in that time. Some heart break but a lot of joy as well. Some people might think i am a bit crazy, some may think i am ridiculous, some may not agree with my choices and some may think I am stupid and cruel but just maybe someone will think that I am smart and hopefully someone who is like me may stumble upon my page and gain some advice and insight.

Last year I got the crazy idea of having the "Easter Bunny" be at our home when the kids woke up. I didn't really think i wanted to own a bunny at the time because I have a cat and I didn't want another animal running around the inside of my house chewing the place up. So i though....can i rent one? This led to me hoping on to craigslist and finding that there were alot of New Zealand and Californian Rabbits for $20. Not to rent but to own. The next key words that were in their posts were "meat" rabbits. At first i was shocked....who would eat rabbit? Why would you want to eat the "Easter" bunny. Of course this led to researching.

I ended up researching the breeds, the benefits of meat rabbits, how popular the breeds are since they seemed to be a popular breed on Craigslist. This changed my mind from renting to buying some rabbits with the crazy idea of breeding them and maybe making some side money. I should note that at this time I am 7 months pregnant...all my decisions were spur of the moment (, thoughtfully planned) and hormonally charged. I marketed the idea to my husband that we could fill the freezer with whatever babies we didn't sell (figuring that we would be able to sell all the babies and it wouldn't come down to that). He agreed. No argument, No questions (smart man...remember i am pregnant...and he never got out of the house in the middle of the night for food cravings...so i deserved this idea).

A week before Easter we got two Californian X (Giant Flemish) brothers. The Rabbitry we got them from only had boys but we could pick up the girls from a litter in 5 weeks. We hid "Bill Gates" and "Steve Jobs" in the laundry room. It was easy for 11 week old kits to live in a large dock crate while we made pens. It was also easy to hide the cages till the big reveal for Easter.

Easter came and the day poured buckets so Easter Hunting was indoors and they didn't even notice. When they finally did notice the bunnies there wasn't much excitement for them. I was a little sad that the excitement wasn't bigger but then I don't get excited about surprises. I get excited about my ideas and how to plan them and make them come true. Bill and Steve moved into their new pens and started getting bigger.

Eventually Cutie Pie and Rainbow Dash were old enough to move in. I wanted to call them AMD and Intel but the kids veto'd me. They were even cuter and smaller than the brothers (their Giant Flemish side came out and the boys got big and heavy fairly quickly). We started pumping out the cages. I told my husband the boys were getting to an age that they couldn't be together. They were going to start getting territorial and start to fight. The girls moved into their double wide and they got matching singles.

June rolls around and the girls are finally old enough to have their own litter. We didn't want them having their litters at the same time so we staggered the conception. We took the advice of letting them be mounted about 3-5 times before calling it quits. This first round for them would determine which Buck we were going to keep. We wanted the Buck that made the largest litter. Well we didn't get to find out. We had our first tragedy.

Cutie Pie had her litter. We actually miscaculated the days and didnt get her into the nursary in time. She had her litter in the cage with her sister. There was some territorial fighting with the mommy in labour. When we woke up in the morning Mommy and sister were hanging out on one side. The kits on the other side but one of the babies was just hanging on. It was missing a piece of its ear for unknown reasons and it looked much smaller than the other kits as well as it wasn't near the nest. Mommy maybe dragged it away. I don't think it was stuck during delivery as it seemed to be the smallest but for what ever reason it wasn't with the rest. It got very cold and eventually died.

....... Part 2 will continue the story. Laptop is low on batteries. It is 1:30 in the morning and i need to get all the kids up for a full day of errnads, school and more.