With the Chippewa County Fair right around the corner, I thought this might be a good time to discuss preparations for the fair!

As all 4H families know, we all plan to be prepared well ahead of time and not have the last minute rush, but we all know this continues to happen.  With livestock entries however, there was some forethought back in May for the Animal ID deadline.  Any animals not documented and sent in by this deadline are not eligible for the MN State Fair or for the Blue Ribbon Auction held during the county fair.  This means that back in May we went through all the possibilities of who might be in good shape to show at the fair and then with the closer deadline narrow that list down to the max number of rabbits a 4Her can bring.  For our county, this is 6 rabbits total. 

Now, as the fair approaches we are making sure the 6 entered rabbits are in good shape.  This includes:

• Checking and trimming nails
• Working with the rabbit for posing and handling
• Checking teeth
• General cleaning of the coat (matte free, no urine stains, no poo)
  
• Checking ears
• Checking overall health of the rabbit
• Increase feed if needed or add a top dressing to the daily feed
  

This time period also includes a review and study of rabbit care and showmanship information.  One of the best sites we have found for some independent study - http://quizlet.com/6080372/4-h-rabbit-showmanship-flash-cards/

Then there is the gathering of grooming supplies, food and water crocks and bottles and the ever important first aid kit.  Load everything up, along with some chairs and we're ready for the fair!

I have lost track of the number of times someone says this to me in a joke, "You start with 2 and next thing you know you have 30!"  My response is usually, "if only that were true."

You see the comment "breeding like rabbits" makes it sound like expanding your herd is an easy thing to do.  But in reality, when you think about nature, animals that have large litters quickly usually have a high mortality rate.  Same is true for rabbits.  The stories about our does becoming moms could fill many posts, just when we think we've seen it all (and we're relatively new to the rabbit world), something shocking happens.

For now, we'll look at just one example...
This past week, we waited and waited for our second cinnamon doe to show signs of a pending litter.  Seeing nothing happening all week, I decided it was probably another failure and we'd plan to re-breed this weekend.  Well the night of this decision, I headed down to the "barn" for my bed time check to hear a weird squeaking sound.  I opened the door and looked down to see baby cinnamons on the floor of Viola's cage.  Well, she had babies after all, but had them all on the wire.  They were cleaned up and fed, but starting to get cold.  She had pulled no fur for them in the nest box and because I thought there were no babies on the way I hadn't brought in more straw!  So, I called for my husband and had him grab a towel and we sat down in the bunny barn, putting the chilled babies on their momma to warm up and then fill in the nest box as best as we could.

Now the other part of this story is that while discovering these babies, Momma rabbit Viola became protective and didn't want me touching her babies.  However she ended up stepping on them while they lay on the wire.  It was a bad, bad night.  Shockingly they all made it through the night, but throughout the next day we continued to loose the kits and by Friday afternoon, all had died.  Whether the conditions of their arrival were too much to recover from, or they had more injuries than I knew, or Viola simply sat on them we'll never know.  But these events no longer surprise me.  Now it completely bums me out that we couldn't keep the litter going, but now all I can hope is that momma learned something and will know better next time.

Not all rabbits are good mothers...

So the next time you hear someone make it sound like breeding and raising rabbits is a piece of cake, just think "if only they knew..." 

I have to admit, when we purchased our first 2 rabbits I thought "How hard can this be?"  After all, I had a rabbit in high school, no big deal! 

Granted no one told us this would be easy, but I certainly never expected the challenges we started facing early on in our rabbit education.  The stories and experiences are something we'll continue to share here, in hopes of helping others as they start in on their own adventure, or maybe have someone else say "ya, that's happened to us too!  Glad it's not just us!"

To those thinking about entering the world of rabbits, it really is a fun project with kids and adults alike.  Who doesn't love a furry, fuzzy little critter that makes little to no noise!  However, you will learn things about bunnies that you never expected.  First and foremost - they poop.  They poop a lot!  Now, this is easy clean-up, but something to keep in mind.  They pee, yep, they do... and with urine means ammonia and in an enclosed area this could peel the paint right off the walls. 

But, they can be litter box trained!  We have had a number of Holland Lops become family pets who have proven this to be the case!  We have found some patterns in their cage habits and that of their parents in determining who has the potential of being a good house bunny with prospect of being litter box trained.  Quite the experience!  But they can become cuddly fun little buddies!

If you're looking at entering the world of breeding and raising rabbits, you should know that rabbits don't always have the best motherly instincts.  Sometimes, this is simply gross.  The world of raising rabbits is a roller coaster.  You have great experiences and then you have very sad experiences. You have things happen that make no sense and that will shock you and then there are things that you can eventually find reason for. 

Many people believe the phrase "breed like rabbits" and think this means it's an easy thing to do.  But in nature, rabbits can breed often and have large litters because they have a high mortality rate.  Just this week we had the high of babies being born Easter morning!  Technically Ponder had 7 babies, but we really only consider that she had 5 because 2 were on the wire and cold when we did chores at 7 that morning.  We were thrilled at having 5 babies.  And then 2 days later we're down to 2 babies, as this morning 3 were on the wire.  We will never know if they were crawling out to find mom and that's were they landed, or if they were still latched on to mom when she jumped out of the box.  Nevertheless, we are down to 2 babies.  This is typical, at least for us.  So we constantly try to figure out ways to help prevent this.  (If you have suggestions, please send them!)

Ending this with words of encouragement, because regardless of the sad or disturbing things that can happen, the joys are much greater.