Here are the first litter of broken hybrid kits at about two weeks old. Didn’t they turn out adorable? Half of them are agouti, and half are broken agouti with a lot of white. They’re growing up fast!
Monthly Archives: November 2015
Standard Rex Bunnies at 3 Weeks
These bunnies are just about three weeks old now, and very cute. They’re starting to nibble on hay and are adept at jumping out of the nestbox to pester their mothers.
Ironically it seems that my opal doe gave me blues and my blue doe gave me opals.
You can see in the above photo two solid opal kits as well as a broken blue. The opals have the tan undercoat that peeks through the blue while the broken blue does not. There are also two black otter kits, a broken castor and a broken opal pictured above. These are Bluefin’s babies.
This is Opal’s litter. The solid castor kit seems to be a doe, which basically means I have to keep her. The Rex castor coat is just to die for. Also pictured are two broken blues, two broken black otters and a broken castor. Such cute!
Yacon for Rabbits
Last year I bought a small yacon plant, which is an edible Peruvian tuber. I’ve never tried it before, but I like unusual plants, especially edible ones. It grew very large over the summer and I’m sure there is now a nice crown of tubers in the pot ready to sample. From what I’ve read, they are crispy and sweet when eaten raw.
In the meantime, it’s not a frost tolerant plant as far as I know, so the foliage’s days are numbered. Since I was doing some tidying up in the garden today, I decided to snip off some of the larger stems and see what the rabbits thought of them. I had already read online that they were safe to feed, and the thick stems and leaves were very similar to sunflowers, which I know the bunnies love.
Turns out they were very enthusiastic about them, although somewhat less so that with sunflowers. I’m always glad to find a new crop that the bunnies approve of.
Planting Garlic Bulbils
For some reason fall planting garlic around here is insanely expensive, like $30 to $50 per pound. I really don’t understand why it costs so much, seeing as regular grocery store garlic can be had for pennies per pound. Maybe the varieties are super special? I don’t know.
Anyway, when I moved here there were a few garlic plants growing here and there, I didn’t know what they were until they started sending out scapes. I left them alone and they developed garlic bulbils, which I’d never seen before. They kind of look like tiny garlic bulbs, hence the name.
So I had a handful of bulbils and I thought I would give them a try. I popped them all into a pot around September, and they did very well. Sending up long green shoots and filling out the pot with plump, white garlic-scented roots.
Since we still haven’t had a killing frost here on the island, I wanted to get them in the ground to see how they’d do over winter and come spring. I was able to put in 45 young plants today along with a bunch of chamomile that had sprouted alongside them in the pot.
Not a bad upgrade from just a few wayward plants. I look forward to seeing how they taste compared the fancy kinds. Garlic is pretty much garlic, is it not?
American Kestrel in a Fresh, Clean Pen
I know it’s clean because I scrubbed it out myself. This beautiful little bird went immediately to her little perch in the sun to enjoy the rest of the evening. I left her a little black mouse to enjoy at a later time.
Fall Feeding of a Big Hawk
This lovely female Harris’ hawk is enjoying some quail on the glove. My glove. Kids went speeding by on tiny bikes and she didn’t even flinch. She is one cool bird.
Broken Rex Litters at Two Weeks
Broken castor Rex kit
These bunnies are growing fast!
I’ve noticed that at about one week of age, their intricate spotted patterns begin to coalesce into larger areas of color. I sort of expected this to happen because you just don’t see adult rabbits with such well-defined spots. That’s ok.
Solid castor Rex kit
Black otter Rex kit
Broken opal or blue otter Rex kit
Broken castor Rex kit
The colors are really starting to come in on these little guys, and I have a better idea of what we’ve got. Opal has a gorgeous solid castor, broken castor, broken black otter, and what may be broken opal. Bluefin’s litter contains broken opal, opal, what looks like broken blue otter, as well as a couple of black otters.
Opal Rex kit
Broken castor Rex kit
If I had my way I’d keep a half dozen of these beauties. Right now I’m very tempted to keep the full castor kit as the Rex castor fur is exactly like a luxurious beaver pelt.
Bluefin’s litter
Chickens in the Rain
While I was examining the latest rabbit litter, I decided to allow the chickens out for a brief adventure in the drizzling rain. They made quick work of grass snipping and worm removal from my now nearly-naked tomato bed.
Since these big girls can do a lot of damage in a short time, they aren’t often allowed to free range in the yard and instead I bring garden treats to them. This time they were only out for about an hour and managed to till the entire exposed bed and hopefully disturb any weed seeds that were getting too comfortable.
I’m planning to put a cover crop in this bed for the winter to keep the weeds down, but I haven’t decided on what yet. Since this bed is composed almost entirely of rabbit manure and coffee grounds from Starbucks, it doesn’t need a lot more nitrogen, but a big empty fertile bed like that is asking for trouble if left bare.
First Broken Hybrid Litter
Esther, my lovely Creme d’Argent doe kindled nine lovely bunnies this morning, on day 32 of her gestation. That’s right on time for her. She’s my best mom and nicest doe and my customers love the big, sweet and calm kits she throws.
This time, she was bred to my new broken castor Rex buck, Pine Tar. And so we have our first broken cross litter. Four of her kits came out with agouti coloration, which is expected because she often throws agouti and castor is just another name for agouti in the Rex breed.
She also threw five broken kits. These little guys have come out with a lot more white and a lot less color than the purebred broken Rexes that were born a couple of weeks ago. Most have very well-defined stripes down their back and a lot less markings on their faces. I’m interested to see how their fur texture turns out.
I’m really tempted to breed Samphire, my Californian doe to Pine Tar, so I can see what results. However, it seems like I have a lot of buyers for purebred Californian rabbits right now and her current litter only had two does in it along with six bucks. Not ideal odds when most people want a trio for breeding purposes.
Abernathy's Rabbitry 