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.
Hi, I just found your blog from over at the APN forums. I was wondering why you don't just start out your breeding with the two rabbits you have? Inbreeding of rabbits isn't like other types of animals. In fact, sometimes it is preferable. But then again, rabbit for dinner DOES sound good!
ReplyDeleteSorry for taking 2 weeks to get back to you, Chick. It's been crazy busy around here. I did breed brother to sister.There will be a rabbit update coming soon with the "rest of the story."
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