Rabbit Update

The rabbit operation is in full swing.  Well, almost.

I now have the permanent rabbit cages built.  I have a steady residence of 3 does and one buck.  Of those, one doe and one buck are the original brother/sister pair.  I did attempt to diversify my bloodlines and bought another unrelated doe.  She turned out to be crazy, an attack rabbit. More on her later.  See a future post entitled "The Story of Lady B."

I started the build of the cages as soon as I could.  Little did I know this was somewhat urgent.  Just as I had a couple of the cages barely usable, I hear a loud "bang."  I look over and all four rabbits were sitting on the ground.  The floor of their hutch had rotted and had fallen out onto the ground with all of them still sitting on top.  It was really quite humorous to see all of them just sitting there looking at each other like they were still trying to figure out what had just happened!  After quite a frenzy with the help of my wife, we were able to round them all up and relocate them into the two cages I had completed.  I  built rather simple, but I think durable rabbit cages out of hardware cloth and inch and a half PVC.  Here is a picture of the cages once they were usable, but not quite finished:

To the picture above, I added plastic corrugated roofing material at an angle between the two levels to prevent bunnies from having droppings fall on their heads.  Also, the cage at the lower right in this picture didn't have it's feeder or water bottle, but you get the idea.  This design is simple, easy to build, durable, and portable.  I even left the PVC unglued just in case I wanted to bring the entire assembly into a shed (a future project) and reassemble.

New Zealand Whites continue to be difficult to find in the area.  I have been able to pick up two more does, but had to drive two hours away from home to get them.  That's ok, though.  I've met many good people and had many great experiences in the world of rabbits.

The doe has been bred to her brother for a couple of weeks now, and should be ready to kit soon.  One of the other does was bred yesterday and is due to kit May 15th.  I am planning on putting all rabbits out of the first kittle into the freezer.  The next kittle will go up for sale, and whatever doesn't sale will join their frigid brothers and sisters.  So if you happen to be in the market for some good meat rabbits (or pets, of course) around mid-June, let me know!

Starting the Garden

I feel so much better now that I have some plants in the ground.  I used 2x12's from the local home improvement store to make two raised beds.  The lumber cost around $40, which kinda hurt to shell out just to make some garden beds.  I decided to go that route after considering several options of using different types of scrap.  I decided that the number one thing to keep in mind the whole time is keeping the neighbors happy.  The minute they are not happy, it could be the end of the line for sustainability.  So, I decided to go with what I thought would be the best compromise between looks and cost.  $40 is not a bad price, and they don't look bad enough to complain about.  I added some cheap stepping stones in the middle, which I will continue to do as I add new beds.  I started with two for simplicity's sake.

The bed on the left is all the cold weather crops that have been in the ground for several weeks.  On the far side is broccoli, then some romaine lettuce.  A little bit closer, you'll see some cabbage and a couple of sprigs sticking up which is onion.

The bed on the right was just planted last week.  Unfortunately, the last couple of days has been a torrential downpour here locally.  My young squash, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumber were absolutely pounded.  I have gone through pulling leaves out from under the dirt, but I am concerned about many of them making through this test.  All of these were started from seed indoors, but many may have to be replaced with plants from the store. 

Both of these beds are 4x8.  I built the beds by first scalping the sod with a flat shovel and sitting it aside.  I then used a fork I found that has thicker tines than a pitchfork to stab into the soil and loosen it up.  After the soil was aerated well, I replaced the sod upside down. I then poured in some composted manure I purchased from a lady for a good price consisting of rabbit and several birds (I won't need to do this again, since I have built up my supply of rabbit manure).  I mixed all this up with a small borrowed roto-tiller and covered with cardboard to keep the weeds from growing back.  All of this sat for several weeks before the cold weather crops were planted and a couple of months for the warm weather bed. When I planted the cold weather crops, I left the cardboard down for weed control.  I cut holes in it and inserted the plants.  When planting the warm weather bed, I decided not to do this, as it seems to be blocking some of the water.  It will be interesting to see which one worked better by the end of the season.

There is definitely a difference between the two as of now.  The cabbage and lettuce are taking off, and there are quite a few heads of broccoli ready for harvest.  All plants in the other bed are struggling to survive.  This is a lesson learned: wait until plants are big enough to withstand Georgia thunderstorms before planting.

The First Rabbits

I had no idea that New Zealand White rabbits were so difficult to find in this area.  Couldn't find anything on Kijiji.com, Craigslist, local paper, or any other standard source I'm used to using.  I finally find the Georgia Market Buletin online.  Tons of rabbits available.  Only problem is, they tend to be 100+ miles away.  I finally find a guy who was advertizing for $15/each.  I made contact with him a couple of times and had some pretty in-depth and informative discussions on rabbits.  After a couple of weeks, he has some rabbits come available.  What beats it all is that even though he lives 30 miles away, he happens to be visiting about 2 miles away from my house that day.  HOME DELIVERY!  So I had a $20 on me, expecting to only get one since they were brother and sister.  Then his wife informed me that the price was $7/each!  So I just handed her the $20 and plan on having some rabbit for supper somewhere around the middle of Febuary.

The cage on the left in the pic that I included in the last blog post needed some work done to it, so I stuck them in the other one.  I found out real quick that the floor of that one had openings that were too small to allow the droppings to fall through, so that made the repairs to the other one urgent.  After repairing it, (it's really the better cage anyway) and moving the rabbits, I set my mind to fix the other one so it would be usable.  My first idea was to flip it over and cut the holes bigger so that the droppings could fall through.  It didn't take me long to decide that was not the time-prudent thing to do.  So I grabbed a hammer to remove the old hardware cloth, inteding to replace it and use it for something else.  After I found that too to be too much work, I just decided to leave it alone and go get a couple pullets to through in there.  Hey, you call it indecisiveness, I call it rolling with the punches!

So now I have one rabbit to breed and one rabbit for dinner.  Not a huge step toward my goal, but a step nonetheless.  I am still in need of another 2-3 rabbits, and hopfully will find them before May when this one will be ready to breed.  It's a slow start, but at least I am moving ever closer to that self-sufficient life of which I dream.