It's not this easy is it?

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Well, as everyone here knows, I don't raise rabbits.

But I *do* have cats, and those cats have litter boxes, as does my one (and currently only) rabbit. Said cat litter boxes are scooped/changed regularly, as is the rabbit litter box.

I just cannot imagine the level, frankly, of filth in the "12 inches of straw" on the floor of her rabbit house if she has does, bucks, and babies coming and going for four or five months without cleaning the place out at all. :eek: It sounds completely unsanitary. We're not just talking about urinary and fecal products; we're evidently also talking about the excreta of birth, too, which include blood.

She may have been lucky with regard to diseases like coccidia and other airborne and rabbit-to-rabbit transmitted bacteria and viruses, too. Additionally, her breeding is entirely uncontrolled; this is probably OK for people raising "meat mutts," but for those who want to show some of their rabbits, this just wouldn't work. In the fiber world, Angora coats would never survive these conditions.

She also had two bucks living together in the rabbit house. Again, very nice that her bucks didn't compete with one another to be King Buck! That could have been a terrible scene.

She didn't know whether or how many babies her does had, whether there were dead babies (or moms!) or not, etc.

I'm not persuaded that this was the best solution for the rabbits themselves and their health. I'm stunned that she had done this for five years at the time she wrote the article. Having read this board since August, it's amazing to find a rabbit keeper as nonchalant as she about filth, potential disease, dead babies, etc. With so many bunnies she couldn't count them, how would she ever know if a doe seized during labor (for example)?

Something is either (a) very lucky about her set-up or (b) incomplete about her write-up. My basic turn-offs are the filth and the lack of follow-up on babies and moms. :(
 
Okay, so I'm not the crazy clean lady! lol

I read this and thought the same thing. 5 months?! Seriously?

I'll read some more. I'd love to have a couple rabbit houses, with one buck each. Or keep my bucks in the aviaries that they are in now and use them for breeding. I've got three bucks with three does in three very large areas right now and everyone is so happy together! The snuggle and groom each other. It's made me consider colony living.
 
dayna":34x3i8rz said:
Okay, so I'm not the crazy clean lady! lol

I read this and thought the same thing. 5 months?! Seriously?

I'll read some more. I'd love to have a couple rabbit houses, with one buck each. Or keep my bucks in the aviaries that they are in now and use them for breeding. I've got three bucks with three does in three very large areas right now and everyone is so happy together! The snuggle and groom each other. It's made me consider colony living.

No, you're not "the crazy clean lady," not by a long shot. I had to make myself read her whole article as soon as it became clear the 12 inches of straw were just going to...sit...there. :sick: I know how much poo Parsley Graybuns produces in one day. Multiplying it by lots of does and two bucks and then later by dozens of little ones, it just became a nauseating concept. Four or five months. Yes, that's what she said.

If you have three happy rabbit couples, each couple in their own living area, fine. :D Each buck has a "wife" and is happy. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that happy rabbits are more resistant to illness than unhappy rabbits, because coccidia (the one I feel she's really tempting fate with) doesn't care if a rabbit is happy or not. But your rabbits' quality of life (QOL) seems to be pretty high, as does their sanitation level. You know which does are expecting, and when they kindle, you know how many live births they delivered and how many (if any) babies didn't make it. You don't wait a few months down the road and clear everything out at once--yucky straw, possible dead little baby bodies, placental sacs, a dead doe or two, the whole nine yards. :sick: I just can't get past that aspect of things, no matter what. I'd have to correspond/talk with her directly myself or even visit this loathsome place to see it in person and understand why it's so "wonderful." Very puzzling to me.
 
The first problem is:
Rabbits can easily chew threw Chicken Wire.
I'm surprised that there is no mention of any rabbit escapes
where rabbits could have decimated the entire area.
The mention in the very beginning of: How the Cottontail rabbits
got along so well, Cottontails do not fair well in captivity!
Then she mentions the breeds of her Rabbits. I find that her story
is not consistent with what she professes. Perhaps she is fudging
or not exactly telling the truth about everything.
I really do wish it would be SO easy to house rabbits in a single
large enclosure, toss in some feed and water daily, and just go back
every now and then to harvest the happily rollicking and frolicking
HEALTHY food for your table and probable just about every neighbor
who would have them! The truth is: I don't believe a word of it!
But, I do wish it was TRUE!
Ottersatin. :eek:ldtimer:
 
I had a colony similar to hers as a child.

But it certainly wasn't all rainbows and butterflies :chase1: far from it.

My bucks would try and kill each other through the wire and act like dogs pacing a fence line waiting to get at each other, growling, posturing and spraying all the while - very entertaining and reminiscent if 'rabbit cock fighting' there wasn't a chance in Hades that I'd ever let them try and co-habitate.

The majority of my rabbits were other people's rejects so their attitudes were not the best but once I was left with mother-daughter-sister does there was peace.

I'm glad her fertility seems so great but I wonder how 'heathy' is it for a doe to have 12 litters a year?

I actually didn't have very good production with my colony, and my girls only had 2-4 litters a year and usually they were small but it could have just been my hodge lodge collection of buns..

I leaned the hard way to ALWAYS check the nest boxes for stilborns after a DOA kit exploded like a rotten egg and basically murdered its littermates and their mom after they licked themselves clean of the toxic waste.

I have my growers in a cemented 10 x 10 colony room. There are anywhere between 8 and 60 bunnies of varying ages in there and it is cleaned DAILY and scrubbed twice a week. I cannot fathom her waiting 5 months to clean and I doubt her bunnies are 'healthy' or at least meet my definition of the term :(
 
5 mos? I topped off straw every other day and never let it go past 7-10 days before I took it all out. Bucks were removed as they matured.

Even on a heavy breed back schedule I've never had more than 4-5 litters. And that's pushing it. They refuse to breed after a while.
 
I've had my little colony going for a year now and I couldn't be happier with it. There is a thread about it from last year but I don't know how to link to it.

post108015.html ***Link provided by MSD***

It's a 5x10' colony/cage outside, three wood walls lined with chicken wire and hardware cloth with the fourth wall open covered with 1x1 cage wire. The bottom is lined with patio slabs which allow drainage but no dig outs. Fred and Morgan have been in there for a year now and she has had about seven litters now, ranging in number from 2-8 and only lost two kits to the elements, one got out of the nest box during the night and froze and one got it's head stuck in the chicken wire and froze (lesson learned!).

I put one small square bale of straw in the colony and they spread it around and really seem to enjoy playing in it. Every two weeks I clean out the straw, throw it in with the chickens and put a fresh bale of straw in with the rabbits. This has worked out well so far, the rabbits get a fresh layer of bedding every two weeks and the chickens think they've died and gone to heaving with a pile of rabbit-poopy straw to dig around in for treasures, plus it puts a layer of straw in the chicken run and keeps them off the mud.

I"m guessing I've processed about 30-35 fryers from this colony and they have all been healthy, no snot that I've noticed, livers and lungs have been healthy at processing time and no nestbox eye that I've noticed. They usually crowd around my feet when I go in there and totally get in the way when I'm cleaning out the straw. I usually have to swat their bunny butts a bit with the broom to get them out of the way as they insist on close supervision of my work. I go and sit in the colony from time to time for relaxation while they play around my feet and nibble at my jeans. They are friendly but they really don't like to be picked up which is fine, they're not pets.

Morgan had a litter last winter just when we had a couple of cold nights about -25c. She had a litter of three and one got out of the nest and froze as mentioned above. I have read that two kits aren't enough to keep themselves warm but she buried them deep in the nestbox packed with fur and straw so I decided to leave them and see what happened. Turns out they were fine. I can't overestimate how well insulated the nests are. I can dig down into the nest almost as deep as my elbow and it's cold until I reach the kits, then it's hot. Amazing!

Anyway, I realize I only have one buck and one doe at the moment but my colony is a lot less work than the cages and I'm so happy seeing them bouncing around in the straw. I am aware of the birth of every litter and check them twice a day, specially in the winter, to make sure they're ok. I know a colony isn't for everybody but t has worked out real well for me.
 

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Well, ill factor in my colony....


I have 4 rabbits. Used to have 5. The 5th one is in the freezer now. As puberty was approaching this little guy, I realized : not only do I own 2 bucks, but I have no place to put an excess buck.
Well, this quickly became apparent when I noticed the smaller buck had a fairly bad scratch on his back.
He was butchered 3 days later. It became somewhat infected, but really only with body oils. It was disgusting. But, aside from a small spot on his meat (which was easily cut away) he was still edible. His pelt was a bit ruined, but then again, it wouldn't look perfect had the infected spot not been there.
I feel bad that it came to him being butchered, but no one wanted to buy him, and we had no place to put him.


Aside from the buck issue, so far I love the colony. Haven't cleaned it out yet for 2 months. It's been frozen, and its hard to scoop frozen stuff. Weeeellll... It's starting to smell. And I'm not looking forward to trying to scoop frozen wood chips. But it's been a bit warm so maybe I'm able to do it while its warm. Either that, or add 2 more inches of wood chips. But that's just going to make more issues for me come spring. And with babies on the way... Ugh. I think Ill do it today as I think about it.
So cleaning so far is my biggest issue, and I brought that onto myself since I chose woodchips vs hay. But the woodchips were free, soo...

Come summer ill probably be doing some scooping of it every week to 2 weeks. Just kinda keep it tidy. In the summer ill be free ranging them as well though, so it shouldn't be too stinky (hopefully.)
 

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