The baby bunnies are 11 days old now and are doing well. They have grown so much! I have two Blue Otters and one Blue.
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Éowyn had a total of four babies. Unfortunately, the one I found yesterday morning died. The three remaining babies seem to be healthy and are doing well! They are so sweet. As far as I can tell, they all look like Blue Otters.
Quite an unexpected event occurred this morning. I found that Éowyn (my Blue Otter) had given birth to a little baby bunny! I found Rosie to be a male (Éowyn's son). I had no idea since I was sure that Rosie (now Ronald) was a female rabbit!
My poor mama bunny had no nest material whatsoever, so I quickly retrieved some timothy hay for her and she instantly started constructing a nest. Later I checked on her and she was giving birth to more babies. More updates on this litter to follow! Okay, seven months after my last post I'm back writing on this blog. The reason being is that I have changed my mind (as I quite often do) about my rabbit business. Yes, I will be continuing with breeding Mini Rex rabbits! I will now be focusing more on purebred and pedigreed rabbits in the future. I hope to purchase a rabbit tattooer soon. That will open up a whole new level of breeding for me (I'll be able to sell my rabbits for more money and also provide rabbits for 4Her's).
Though in the past I have written about other things on this blog, now it will be used solely for writing about my rabbits. The rabbits I currently have are Annie, Buttercup, Éowyn, Pippin and little Rosie (my newest born in mid-February). Glad to be back at it again :)! This is just amazing (to me)! I will start at the beginning….
As I mentioned in my first post on this blog, my rabbit, Éowyn, was due on February 21st. I happened to check on her early Thursday morning and discovered that she was making a nest in her cage which needed to be cleaned. So, at 2:30am, I cleaned her cage and gave her more nesting material (hay, towels, paper, cotton balls and cardboard). Later on I found that she had given birth to one stillborn baby. I did not find any more babies. I was very disappointed and was considering whether or not to rebreed her. Well, I'm so glad I didn't! I checked the nest that night and there were still no babies. Usually rabbits will give birth to their babies all within 15-30 minutes, so I thought for sure that she was done. I left the nest just as she had made it. This afternoon I went to clean Éowyn's cage again. I picked up the kennel that had her nest in it and the top fell off. To my utter surprise I found 3 baby bunnies inside!!! Upon examining the nest, I found two healthy babies and one "peanut". The peanuts always end up dying within a couple days because their so, so small compared to a normal newborn. It would be a miracle if it lived. As far as I can tell, one baby will look like Éowyn and two will look like Pippin. Wow! I'm so surprised and excited about this. I will post pictures later as the babies get cuter :)! Well, I have five rabbits left now. Hopefully, Annie, Chunk and Buttercup will sell soon. I may end up keeping Éowyn and Pippin. I just don't have the heart to give them away yet. I have considered breeding Éowyn again in the spring, but that will likely not happen. Otter went to his new home last Monday. Like Blueberry, he will have an indoor home. It will be a perfect place for him to live! On Sunday, Nimbus and Puffy left. We all really miss Nimbus. She had quite the personality and we grew very attached (even more so than Peregrin) to her while she lived inside with us for about two months. She was the sweetest bunny and got quite spoiled with attention and treats :)! Nimbus is definitely my favorite bunny. She and Puffy are at a great home! On November 5th it snowed for the first time this winter (you can see the pictures below)! We got a couple inches to enjoy until Saturday, when we woke up to the bare ground again :(. Right before it all melted, we had a really fun snowball war with a group of our friends. It has gotten pretty cold here! Right now (at 8:52pm) it is 23°F. This is probably one of the last times I will blog or update on this website. There's not much to write about in the winter and Minnesota Minis is coming to an end soon. We will miss having baby bunnies around in the spring time. My youngest brother just asked me, "Are you going to have any more baby bunnies?" When I told him probably not he said, "Ohhhh!" Thanks to all who have stopped by my website, purchased bunnies from me and to the people who have answered all my rabbit questions or helped out in other ways. Also thanks to my family (and friends) for all the rabbit handling they've done in the past few years :)! I really enjoyed raising Mini Rex rabbits and will be sad to no longer have them around….. Cara Halvorson Since I last wrote, Blueberry was sold to a family. He is now an indoor bunny and I'm really happy that he's at a great home :)! He's been at his new place for a few weeks now.
I have someone interested in Otter, so he may be getting a new home within a few days. YEA! Little Nimbus will be tattooed this week and then she'll (at least I think she's a girl at the moment) probably go to her new home sometime next weekend. She is so sweet and has been very socialized as she's been in the house almost her whole life. We'll all miss her a lot! The reason I named Nimbus the way I did, is because her grayish/bluish coat reminded me of a gray sky with clouds. Nimbus is the Latin word for "cloud". So now you know why she has that name :)! Here are links to my bunnies on craigslist all updated: Buttercup & Annie, Puffy, Otter & Chunk AND finally some photos of Nimbus(!): You can check out my craigslist posting: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/csw/grd/4113535505.html
As I sit down to write this, I am enjoying a delicious bowl of pumpkin soup that my mom made. It tastes so good on this cold and drizzly October day!
Well, I have decided that I am going to stop breeding and raising rabbits :(. I have really enjoyed this experience, but I don't have much time for them so I think its best that they go to homes where someone will have the time to properly care for them. Plus it will nice not to spend money on rabbit food anymore. Today I will be posting some of my rabbits on craigslist. Éowyn's baby is doing really well! I named him/her Nimbus. Currently, Éowyn and Nimbus are down in the basement. We've discovered that little Nimbus is quite the escape artist! Please check out the for sale page if you're interested! I'd really like to have the rabbits go as soon as possible. Hopefully by posting the them on craigslist, I'll get some more interest. An update on my rabbits:
Buttercup's two little ones died a few days after they were born. They each died on different days. I thought they were doing so well, so it was disappointing to find them dead! Éowyn on the other hand, looked as if she was going to have more babies the day she gave birth to her one. But no more babies came. However, what was really strange was that I found two deformed babies a full day later! At first I thought Éowyn had eaten her little one, since one of them was half-formed (yeah, I know that's really disgusting!). I was so relieved to find her baby still safely in it's nest!!!! I've had so many babies die this year, that each time I check on Éowyn's baby I expect to find it dead. But so far, it is doing very well and it has made it past it's first week of life thankfully! This little baby is already reserved for one of my friends who's been waiting and waiting all summer for one of my pedigreed purebred rabbits! We got two little kittens last weekend. They look a lot like my former cat, Milo, who disappeared about a month ago (a few days after he killed Honey.... I wonder if that had something to do with his disappearance....). Also my cat, Kitty, disappeared earlier this summer. So, while Milo was around I got an orange and white cat named Cody. Cody is a combination of Milo, Kitty and Smokey I've found. He purrs a ton like Milo, he gets in your way like Kitty and is super friendly like Smokey! Now I have Dodger and Dawkins and Cody's still around! |