Rabbits, Rabbits and More Rabbits!

AKA Boring Bunnies!

Well, that's what some people (who shall remain named Mumster) call them!

If chickens are gateway livestock, rabbits are pure crack.  Totally addictive and you simply can't have just one or two.  Even when you think "Just one more, I can stop at that!" you are soooooo lying.  

Like for an alcoholic,"One drink is one too many and a thousand are never enough."  

That's rabbits!

Amanda, Simon and Flower.  Flower is due to give us babies (called Kits) this week.

Now, a bit of back story to put today's rabbits in their proper place and order ...

We - mum, myself, two younger brothers and my grandparents - (granddad being an ex-pat Brit, specifically a Geordie), lived in Merry Olde in 1989-1990 and at that time found it to be the most expensive place to live in the WORLD!!!  And, as only Mum and I were totally happy there, we all eventually up sticks and moved back to the States.

As I said, mum and I were gutted to have to leave, but life swamped us at that point and England ultimately became a memory we chatted about over tea. My oldest brother (who got to England before any of us), has remained in York to this very day. 

But then, last year, I took the money from the sale of my camper (the one we lived in when the divorce came through) along with my tax refund to take Mum and my three kids to England for the summer.  For seven full weeks we landed upon my poor eldest brother - he really was a star and handled the invasion far better than expected. We (especially my children) had the best time of our lives. The best time ever! It was flippin' FANTASTIC!!!

Strange Free Range Fruit.  Devin and Amanda in the park in York.

Best of all, we discovered that instead of being staggeringly expensive, England had become a cheaper to live in place than where we were then living in Oak Hill, Florida.  In fact, upon some proper research (Thank you google!), it turns out  - as of last summer - it was 25% - 36% cheaper to live in England than in the USofA.

Well Hell, we decided right then then and there to up sticks and move back to England. 

That is actually very common in my family, the moving of huge distances just because we want to.  How fantastical DULL it must be to not think things like, "Huh, I think a 4,000 mile move with an aged mother, three kids, two dogs and an ancient cat will be FUN!"

Waiting for the train to take us to Scarborough for a day out.  The day out was fantastic!

So, while I negotiated with the Ex to say okeedokee to the move, I - perceiving absolutely NO reason he would be against it - sold up practically everything I owned.  Including almost $4,000 worth of purebred Rex rabbits, cages and equipment (see how I always get back to rabbits?), the pontoon boat, kayaks and odds and bits.  The rabbits all went to a lovely young lady who got them at a really great price as I not only wanted them to go together, but to go to a good home as well.

I also ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth ****

After 5 weeks spent in a cool climate, being able to go outside and play, Simon was able to run up hills.  All four of us walked miles every day just for the fun of it.  

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Amanda and Simon at the local park.  EVERY park was full of different kinds of equipment but this was a favorite.  The thing Amanda is on spun like a top and made me ill just to watch but judging by the squeals, was mega fun to play on.

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The kids looking like we had raided a charity shop due to the unexpected coldness of our day out.  Funny thing that, we just had done!  Having grown up in Florida we all had a bit of trouble with cool days but nothing that couldn't be fixed with a jacket or fuzzy cap.

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Amanda fell in love with all the flowers everywhere we looked and she planned great things to be done in her section of the family allotment.  Memaw rented the allotment for us when we still thought we were going to be free to move but so far, only she has done anything on it and most of that has just been hard work and way too much of it for someone her age.

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High tea on the High Street.  They decided, on their own, to use this days pocket money to have their treat which so tickled me that after I joined in, I paid the bill for them.  That free-ed them up to buy a quarter pound each of Sherbet Lemons, arguably the worlds finest sweet!

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No mater how hard it is, or how long it takes, how can I look back upon such happiness and ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth ****  Failing to TRY would be the failure, not trying and failing.

Which believe it or not - actually brings us back to rabbits!  (I love rabbits, me.)

As a way to make Amanda feel better about not being able to move to where she wanted to be, I promised to get her replacement rabbits.  As we had sold 17 adult rabbits and about 19 youngsters, I did try to be sane and say we would get a FEW replacements, and we get them for the reason we always have rabbits - because rabbits taste FANTASTIC!

This is the meal Amanda made for all of us this week.  Jamaican jerked rooster grilled with potatoes over a real wood charcoal fire and a green salad.  She also made Italian lime ice for afters.  Devin is at the head of the table looking VERY happy with his portion and Simon took advantage (not on purpose, just the way kids sometimes do) of my being too ill to notice and came to dinner with no shirt on.  

They have wonderful hides, as well, and I have sold many of them at my on line store - see it at 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MovingOnWithThings?ref=hdr_shop_menu. 

Plus the genetics involved in rabbit breeding are endlessly interesting when breeding them for desired traits.  Rabbits offer a bottomless well of interest and fun really.

Less than three weeks into this house I had found cages on CL in one place, plus some really cheap Mini Rex rabbits at another, so I paid for both with some of the little bit left in the savings account and got them settled in.

Then, in my constant search for FREE animals, I found Mini Rexes free to good home.  Despite having NO cages to put them in, I lept upon that offer, was told to come get them, and Amanda and I hopped into our big white Chevy pickup (family name Frosty Truck) and away we went to see what we might find.

One of the new bunnies, now named Teegan, in the new shed.  

What we found was a million dollar plus estate, a lovely woman pregnant with her 6th baby, and some breath-catchingly beautiful, no expense spared on breeding stock, rabbits. Over and over we were told, "Here, you can have this one ... and this one........and oh yeah, this one can go, and here's her sister ... nah, we don't need this one either........and....."

OMG - nine stunning bunnies, one preggers with a buck that didn't come home with us, but gave us an extra added bloodline bonus in those future babies. For a rabbit fancier it was like going straight to Heaven!

And isn't it great to have friends?  I got on to Gladys and asked to borrow cages, went next day to pick them up.  How funny to find 4 H spare cages that I had either owned in the past or had actually built!  I laughed and laughed at that God wink!

As the space I had built was totally full with the FIRST batch of rabbits (total crap they are, but really sweet natured), I raided my piles of salvaged wood, roofing metal, the container of MUCH used nails and several bundles of hot wire wire to construct a long, open-fronted shed, then hung the cages up inside and settled in the new stars. All, I might add with justifiable pride, in slightly less than nine hours!

Shed with cages hung up.  The bunnies moved in and then, because this is Florida, I then had to hang a line of blankets up to block the afternoon sun from shining on the rabbits.  Bunnies handle cold without blinking but heat?  Not very well at all.

And in answer to your question, "Why on EARTH would you get a MINI breed of rabbits when you want to eat them?"  I can now leap upon my pet hobby horse which is the natural feeding of livestock and raising your own feed, plus which animals do best - the large or small breeds?

So far, I am leaning to the small breed side.  Mini Pigs are safer around kids and so much easier to keep and fatten faster than large breeds.  When we get a cow it will be one of the smaller heritage breeds. Who, after all, needs six gallons of milk a day (other than my Mum. I swear she must bathe in the stuff). I will let you know about the mini rex rabbits, but I've raised Florida Whites for meat in the past and they were real little meat bricks.

Two of the bounty of free bunnies.  Not yet named but very pretty.

The theory goes:  Rabbits reach over half their adult size in 12 to 20 weeks and then growth slows down.  LOTS!  

If the adult weight is 10 to 12 pounds, something like a big breed New Zealand rabbit will reach its butcher weight of five pounds in roughly four months.  There are breeds that get even bigger faster, but we are talking here about back yard rabbits, not production lines.

If an adult Mini Rex weight is five to seven pounds, we should get a 2.5 to 3-pound, butcher-ready fryer in roughly four months.

But as Mini breeds tend to reach breeding age a bit faster, with a bit of constructive selective breeding I should be able to get a blood line able to produce a 3 to 4 -pound fryer rabbit, raised on a forage and home-produced diet, in 12 to 16 weeks.

The new shed with blankets hung up for extra shade.  As we feed lots of hay, everything looks rather shaggy but at least the bunnies are all happy.

Better still, as the adult rabbits are SO MUCH SMALLER than the meat breeds, maintaining the herd (yes, a group of rabbits is called a herd) will cost MUCH less than having a herd of larger rabbits. Cost in this case is dealing with effort and time, rather than actual money.  But this would hold true even dealing with real money if we kept them on pellets and never transitioned them to forage feed. 

Once they all transition onto what I plan to feed them (banana leaves will feature heavily, especially as the bananas are doing so well, as will spineless prickly pear cactus now that I have managed to keep the dogs off of them long enough for them to establish) we will enjoy much rabbit fun, much rabbit meat, and all for the low low price of absolutely FREE!

Have I mentioned before that FREE is my favorite price?

Being that we are planning a move once again once, we now have seven does due to deliver this month and lots of bunnies thereafter. Life is funny like that!

This is Sugar who is using rabbit body language to say PET ME.  She is as sweet as her name but, if you compare her fur and shape closely to Teegan, you will see the difference breeding makes.  Sugar is a low quality sweet bunny that hopefully will produce better quality kits when crossed with a well bred buck.  

But here's the best part of having the pigs, tractors, chickens, rabbits, ducks, livestock guard dogs, established permiculture and vegetable garden with a lovely little house ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth ****

I do so love a win/win for everyone! It builds such good karma.