hands off colony

ok i know this can be a touchy topic but i just thought this would be good to have a thread on for those who really are into this possible way of it.

so the first thing i ever read about a rabbit colony was in "the homesteaders handbook to raising small livestock" by jerome belanger (copyright 1974, rodale publishing).. i will quote a short bit here from the book to give a clear example:
"In one particular case, an area 16 by 16 feet was marked off and dug out to a depth of two feet. At the corners, 12-foot posts were placed, two others were set at the middle of one side for a doorway, and center posts were set on the other three sides.
Bales of hay were stacked tightly in the depression, two bales thick. the baling twine was removed after the hay was in position. Poultry mesh was stapled to the posts, a hinged door set in place, and the entire thing was covered with black plastic for waterproofing. A large water trough was made from an eaves trough, and some oats, bone meal, and mineral was tossed on the hay."

1 bred doe was put in the colony, after she kindled she was pulled out and rebred and stuck back in. after that the only thing done was watering and feeding ("grain and kitchen and garden waste") and the colony was basically ignored for 6 months. and supposedly the family of seven took out as many fryers as it wanted and ate and sold plenty. "they had rabbit nearly every day,"


so i have a few things i think could be done to make a really hands off colony thats not this setup but lets start with this..

i would add for the sake of clarity and ease that we say this colony is 16 by 16 ft, inside a barn that is say 20 by 20 ft so you have storage room etc. the barn has a concrete/cement floor and lots of great windows for light and air flow.
your posts for the colony are like the quote but the cement is the bottom, not dug down. its wired with cattle panels, 1x1 inch cage wire from the cement to above the hay "ground level", and then fenced taller ((height? wire? i'm not sure)).
the hay would be square bales packed in such as the quote with twine pulled out, but lets say its three bales thick.
watering is a gravity fed system with nipples tubed down one side of the colony. and feeding could be your choice, personally i think pvc large homemade J feeder style would work good for this.

now say you want to start things going faster so you start with two does that have been kept together their whole life, breed the first doe to a buck and the second doe to a different buck... they get popped in the colony, la la-la la-la fast forward the litters are 6wks old, pull out the does and breed first doe to yet a different buck and the second doe to still another buck, and pop em back in the colony.
so now you have two litters from two different bucks and two litters on the way from two other bucks. so your gene pool should be pretty good. now starts the hands off. i imagine i would use a fishing net to catch ones for eating.


so.. thoughts on:
1) the colony setup
2) the doe first breedings to different bucks idea
3) how do you think this would progress? the good, the bad, the ugly.. whatever possibilities you think would be
4) how long do you think this could go for before you would want/need to pull everything out and redo the haying and possible wire repairs
5) perhaps you have a cage setup still, would you possibly pull out does sometimes and breed to your cage bucks

cant wait to see what everyones thoughts are

This would be best done in a dry climate and with lots of ventilation. The open design of the outdoor hay pen may have avoided some problems. Hay does not absorb moisture well and when it does get damp either from humidity or being peed on it can mold with deadly results. Within 24hrs of eating moldy hay the bowel can become necrotic and you have no chance of saving them. Cocci and other illnesses can also thrive in damp conditions. Concrete can cause moisture buildup under hay and other items. It was always a problem in the stable and we started writing off the bottom layer of hay until we found some heavy duty plastic platforms to raise the hay off the floor. Sometimes even bags of feed sitting on the concrete would mold on the bottom. Just putting containers of ice out in our colonies with horse stall wood pellets attracted enough moisture to cause health issues. Droppings can also mold if left sitting in a wet spot.

Usually for long term, low effort animal buildings and pens people put in an absorbent bedding or mix of beddings with the hay or other forage that is fed. We did a thin layer of pine pellets, an inch of pine shavings, lined the side walls with hay bales, and in winter spread a layer of straw and left 2 straw bales cut open for them to burrow in. The bedding soaks up urine and dries out droppings that you then turn in with leftover food and other items such as straw sort of like making compost. When it's done you basically have compost although it tends to be heavier in browns in order to keep it dry and healthy. You can just cart it out here and there for use as filler soil and at least part of a compost mix for gardens. Straight droppings from cages mixed with the stuff from the colony can balance the browns without having to compost it twice. If you kept removing, adding, and turning you can go on indefinitely. Many people though like to start over with a clean floor every few years.

With several partially or unrelated litters to start with you wouldn't have to ever bring in new blood. It comes down to observing and culling the rabbits with problems so only the best survive. You are playing the part of mother nature by removing anything that gets sick, doesn't stay in good condition under those circumstances, or doesn't produce enough offspring to continue the line.

opcorn:
Sorry -- too new to rabbits (and colony rearing) to add anything helpful.
Though I would say that deep litter is known to be anti-coccidial.

Let me start by saying I must need more coffee because I am confused. The rabbits are supposed to eat the hay they are peeing and pooping on??? :shock:

I would never do this in a million years. Waste hay does add to the litter in the colony and helps to keep the floor covered with something clean, but the fresh hay is in a hay rack and the rabbits eat from that. They have crocks for grain and water. Greens are placed on top of the litter, but as I said, there is always a thin layer of clean waste hay (the stemmy parts of alfalfa) so the greens stay relatively clean.

I would consider Belanger's method an open invitation to problems. It sounds as though Belanger was writing about someone else's experience rather than his own. It could be that this system worked okay for a time and that he got his information before there were problems. Again, perhaps the system worked better than I would expect, but I would not want to expose the rabbits to risk by testing it.

What I did for chickens and using the deep litter method was to put down plastic rabbit cage pans and put the fresh food there. It would work for hay too. Keeps it away from the bedding until they are done with it and need more food. Then it gets mixed in.

MaggieJ":39pzdl3t said:

Let me start by saying I must need more coffee because I am confused. The rabbits are supposed to eat the hay they are peeing and pooping on??? :shock:
they could eat it. the hay is put in it seems rather for them to eat/dig down into for tunnels. rather than the much more work of filling with dirt. the book didnt say anything about feeding out hay but i dont see why you couldnt feed fresh hay as well as feed.

I would never do this in a million years. Waste hay does add to the litter in the colony and helps to keep the floor covered with something clean, but the fresh hay is in a hay rack and the rabbits eat from that. They have crocks for grain and water. Greens are placed on top of the litter, but as I said, there is always a thin layer of clean waste hay (the stemmy parts of alfalfa) so the greens stay relatively clean.

I would consider Belanger's method an open invitation to problems. It sounds as though Belanger was writing about someone else's experience rather than his own. It could be that this system worked okay for a time and that he got his information before there were problems. Again, perhaps the system worked better than I would expect, but I would not want to expose the rabbits to risk by testing it.
yes he was writing about someone else. dont have the book out right this moment but i think it said it was an article he read and he just wanted to include it in the book for people to see that there is people who do that but he writes all about how he does it with cages/hutches etc.

Click to expand...

__________ Fri May 09, 2014 9:45 pm __________

the reason started this thread was to see what non-colony and colony people each thought. colony people could say much more of what problems they imagine would come up from things they have had come up with their own setups. <br /><br /> __________ Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:46 pm __________ <br /><br /> Bumping this.

Some new thoughts i have had. Using the same setup as i explained in the original post, with the pen inside a barn.
1) this time we add drainage under the pen area. So its cement and drainage grates to let extra moisture escape.

2) this time we put down a layer of pine pellets (here theyre $5 / 40# bag at tsc) on the cement and some of that garden cloth over the grate to keep it from being filled with bedding. Then cover that with layers of soil, pine pellets, soil, pine pellets, soil,... Probably so standing outside it would be up to knee deep in the pen? Enough to dig in and all.

3) perhaps add a couple nests to the edges and add doors so could be accessible.

I tried this years ago, it works OK for a while, --
what I discovered, was..
My rabbits had hidden genetic flaws, and I had to be able to catch all new rabbits and cull any with problems before they could further inbreed.
catching rabbits in this situation is an extreme pain. I ended up building a separate little enclosure to feed hay and other feeds in with a slide door, so I could lock rabbits in to catch them.
Hay was not enough nutrition to get healthy rabbits [so I had to feed pellets, or other high energy feeds].
Bucks AND does, still fight sometimes with [disastrous results] even when they are raised together.
The whole thing will have to be cleaned out from time to time and re-done.
Straw worked better then hay, for the bedding / housing area, - as hay was more prone to mold, and was expensive. [I fed hay in a manger in the enclosure mentioned above]
- genetic selection for breed improvement was difficult when the age of the rabbit is not known. and-- coccidiosis is a big problem for young rabbits.
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