An Outdoor Colony

[Oxankle]

This is all very tentative, but I've seen it done and think I can do it. The fellow I remember had his pen made of ordinary chicken wire set on posts around the berm of a drainage ditch--in short he had a pen around a little hill.

Now I've a couple of questions:
First: has anyone tried making a pen of electronet? Pretty pricey, but it is easily moved and will deter predators. I have electric fences so electronet would not be a problem. Further, even if I use my horse panels as I intended I would have to put a low electric fence around the pen to keep predators away.

Second: If we do this outside, and for meat, would it be better to stick with the NZ whites or
Californians, or would the NZ Reds perhaps attract fewer predators???? I have no interest in pelts, so color is nothing to me.

 

[Anntann]

If it's around a hill, the buns will dig into the hill for their burrows, and probably be quite happy inside the fence.

electronet works. there are a couple of people on the yahoo colony forum who use it. They move the rabbits around from place to place on a pasture. Personally, I think that would be like herding cats, but... :lol:

predators will be attracted to the smell of rabbit. Although any flying predators will see white from a LONG way off. (like with chickens). whatever blends into your landscape will find it a bit easier to hide from hawks and the like. (put up a lot of cover for them...aframe tunnels made from pallets, or barrel halves, etc.)

 

[MaggieJ]

White rabbits would be particularly at risk from hawks and owls. Owls, especially, can decimate a colony very quickly.

 

[Oxankle]

I plan to have netting over my entire colony, only 20 x 20 feet covered by a net which I already have 25 x 25 feet. I can build the little suckers a berm quite easily so that their warren is high and dry. If I use the electronet I have to rethink the design. I could also make a larger electronet enclosure around my horse panel pen just to keep varmints at a distance. Seems to me that for family use one or two does in a 400 Sq foot enclosure would be plenty.

 

[MaggieJ]

It depends on how often you want to eat rabbit and how large your family is. I figure 30 kits per doe per year raised to butchering age is a reasonable expectation, barring major problems. If you have two does, that would be 60 fryers, dressing out to about 120-130 pounds of table ready meat, bone in.

 

[Oxankle]

Maggie: That means that there would be animals of varying ages in the pen at all times, plus a year or 16 months will wear out a doe bred so heavily and replacements must be kept. It also means that to keep crowding down the fryers will have to be butchered and moved out of the way on schedule; no keeping them around or the pen will be too crowded.

 

[MaggieJ]

You will have to watch for overcrowding if you do not butcher regularly when they reach about 5 pounds. You will not want to keep all the young does, just a few of the best. It would be a good idea to have a corner of the colony that could be used to separate the buck if the does need a rest.

In my small colony, just 8 feet square, I keep two mature does. Much of the time the colony is divided into two floor pens with a doe on each side. The buck commutes between the two pens and is occasionally pulled out altogether and put in a cage. It's not ideal and it requires monitoring, but it works pretty well.

 

[Oxankle]

I'm still a couple of weeks away from doing this; must get hay in and take care of some farm chores first, but I can see that a berm in the pen would permit them to stay dry in wet weather. On flat ground burrows would flood. Easy to pen the buck if he causes trouble, but perhaps he will not.

I am absolutely determined to do this on farm feed. Hay and grain perhaps. The price of milled feed has gone out of sight and would be impossible for poor people if we had a national crisis. It is up to the rest of us to figure out how to do this on a survival basis. I particularly like the "weed for feed" bit. I KNOW that rabbits like ceresia lespedeza, which is considered a pasture weed here but makes fine hay and is higher in protein than alfalfa. I have locust, willow, sycamore and elm, but winter feed is a problem. Alfalfa will grow here, but is not wildly productive. Yellow and white sweet clover will grow, but are not plentiful, growing only on the roadsides where cattle cannot get to them.

Has anyone fed Johnson grass, or Johnson grass hay? That is a pest here and grows anywhere it is not grazed down. Once started it is almost impossible to eradicate short of spraying with herbicide, but pigs will root out every trace of it.

 

[MaggieJ]

Willow, sycamore etc. can be dried for winter use. You will need a high-protein hay. I don't feed pellets, but I am able to buy alfalfa hay very reasonably. Spring to fall, I feed weeds and safe tree leaves, grass hay and grain. Late fall to spring, they get alfalfa hay, grain and small quantities of fresh foods. I grow grain grass in dishpans for instance and feed some root crops, safe vegetable trimmings etc.

I don't know much about Johnson grass for rabbits. I do have doubts about the safety of sweet clover, so you may want to research it a bit before feeding it to the buns.

 

[Oxankle]

Well; I am way ahead of myself. I dropped by a friend and picked up FIVE rabbits rather than the three I'd planned on, so I will have two does in the colony and a buck. Got busy today, dropped everything else and put the thing together. Four horse panels twenty feet each, a twenty foot square with a net over the top. I got insulators and fibreglass poles and put a two-strand hotwire around it at four and ten inches about five inches out from the panels. I left them eating weeds and grass at dark; tomorrow I will put in a waterer and a feed bunk for them so that if they run out of weeds, grasses and tree limbs they can have a bit of rabbit chow. They will not suffer for
water; rabbits can live on dew in the desert.

I was surprised to find that the price of feed has almost tripled since I last bought rabbit pellets. Also, the feed I bought has a prominent statement saying something like this: "To avoid intestinal problems with your rabbits, there is no corn in this product."

Does anyone know anything about corn and intestinal problems in rabbits?

 

[MaggieJ]

Sounds like you are off and running! I hope all goes smoothly for you. :clover:

You should definitely give them water. Rabbits in the desert may adjust to using dew, but your new rabbits are no doubt accustomed to having it available and its absence is an additional stress, added to the huge change in their living conditions. Feeding pellets increases the rabbit's need for water, too, since there is little moisture in pellets compared to greens and a higher salt content.

There is a lot of controversy about the suitability of corn for rabbits. If it is whole, it can cause impaction. If it is cracked, it is subject to moulds and myotoxins which can cause digestive problems. Corn is considerably lower in protein than other grains and many people object to genetically modified grain. A rabbit pellet that does not use corn in the mix is likely to prove popular with a lot of rabbit raisers and its not surprising the manufacturer is making prominent mention of it on the label.

 

[Oxankle]

Maggie; I have no intention of making them do without water; It will be there first thing in the morning, but in the meantime they are eating succulent grass and weeds. They will not perish overnight. Water is easy. How to design a feeder that I can service from outside the colony is a bigger problem.

One that does not waste feed, one that can be filled from outside, is rainproof and one that rats and mice cannot feed from at night.

 

[MaggieJ]

The feeder will certainly be a challenge... Anything I can think of that the rabbits can feed from, rats and mice will be able to use also. I suppose one could design something with a hatch that could be closed at night... That would reduce the amount the rodents could steal, since they are most active at night. You will need to make sure the rabbits have access to hay if the feeder is closed at night. Gets complicated, doesn't it?

 

[Oxankle]

Maggie; all sorts of complicated!!!

I put in a chicken feed bucket, one of those that hold several pounds and gravity feed it into a tray. To avoid mice I pulled it up off the ground and hung it there for the night.

Now I notice that the dumb bunnies are settling down against the pen wall as they did in their cages. They pick a spot and rest right up against the fence. A fatal mistake except for the hot wires four to six inches out and at four and 9 inches.

Does anyone else have this problem with the rabbits resting against the pen wire?

Also, what about waterers? I put a horse feed pan in the pen and filled it with water. Enough for a herd of rabbits. What are other people doing?

 

[akane]

Rodents will rapidly become active during the day if that's when the feed is available and you have blocked common predators from getting in your rabbit colony. We found it did absolutely no good to remove the feed from our chicken coop at night. We just started finding rats and mice during the day although many of the mice got eaten by chickens. The rats were not deterred. In one season the rats became so brave and numerous despite no food at night that they'd come running for feed during the day and go right over your feet with 5 or 6 visible at a time. I don't think you can keep rodents out of rabbit food in a colony. We also had mice and rats feeding from containers left up on top of hanging cages so height is no issue either. They jump fairly high (definitely as high as a rabbit can easily reach), can climb anything you set the feeder on, and like squirrels after a bird feeder they will go down the rope if all else fails. All you can do is leave plenty of traps around. We have some set outside the colonies 24/7 year round now and a bait station that doesn't let rabbits get inside sitting in the colonies because nothing else worked. I hate to use poison but our rats proved untrappable. We did snap traps in various designs and cases or plain, bucket traps, squirrel traps with trip pad, lever repeating live rat traps, electric traps, etc.. with every type of bait anyone has ever thought of using placed in every location outside and if safe inside the colony and didn't catch a single rat despite them running about everywhere and even when all other food was removed. We did catch mice but never any rats. After chicken issues for 2 years and then several litters of kits nearly wiped out by the rats we put out the poison and within 48hrs problem solved. Haven't seen a mouse or rat in over a year.

Rabbits will rest against objects. The biggest object around is your colony fence. It's pretty normal. I'm not sure you can prevent it but rabbits startle pretty easily and will quickly move away from the fence if something shows up on the other side of it. Occasionally the dog pops up on the other side of the solid wood stall and peaks through a tiny crack in the boards causing every rabbit in the area to take off flying. Even if they were pretty contentedly sleeping there and despite barely being able to see the dog. Unlike poultry who will lay there in a pile with body parts sticking through the wire or at least against it so coons and rats can rip heads and legs off through the wire at their leisure. I've only heard of problems with predators reaching through floor wire with rabbit hutches since the rabbits often have no means of escape then.

We use poultry waterers. Right now we have one 5gallon and two 1 gallons set up on heater bases and blocks with brick steps. We will probably get another 3-5gallon metal one instead of the 2 small ones so we can have 2 large waterers on heater bases come winter. Some use several dog bowls. We did use pans and buckets in winter for chickens because it was a cheap solution compared to the $30-$50 large chicken waterers but I find them too deep for kits who will wean early in a colony and need access to water when they aren't big enough to get over more than a few inch lip.

 

[Oxankle]

Akane:
A very helpful post. I too have had rat problems in the past, but as you did I learned that poison works. My favorite is the "One Bite" that consists of little blue pellets in a small plastic sack. I scatter those around the inside of my barn and have no rat or mouse problems. (I wonder if squirrels will eat those? Squirrels have cleaned out my pecan crop this year.) I use pieces of 4" corrugated tubing for this by bending it into a U, dropping in the bait and then laying the pipe down flat again against a wall or where the rodents run. Rainproof, simple, inexpensive and it works.

I will have to figure out what to do about water. The horse feed pans are fine for grown rabbits, but kits obviously could not water from them, and my pen is a long way from electricity--though not impossible. Burying a pan in the ground and providing a gravel "beach" for the kits is an option too. Fortunately, we have only short freeze periods here. I have seen an advertisement for freeze proof watering tanks that sit over a deep hole under them. Heat rising from the ground under the tanks keeps them from freezing. I've a bit of time to think about that.

What about shelters? So far I've not put in the dirt berms I want to have, but have put in low "barrel tops" with holes cut in the sides. Opinion?<br /><br />__________ Fri Sep 30, 2011 5:13 pm __________<br /><br />Well, I can add that rabbits like Black Locust leaves and stems. I cut a big handful off a tree today and took them to the rabbit pen. One of the does is pretty gentle and comes to the fence when I feed. She met me at the fence and was on the locust when it hit the ground. She likes it.

I suspected as much; the cattle eat it like candy.

 

[home*sweet*home]

White rabbits would be particularly at risk from hawks and owls. Owls, especially, can decimate a colony very quickly.

We have an outdoor colony and we have a hawk problem in the area so we have wire netting over the top.<br /><br />__________ Sat Oct 01, 2011 8:09 am __________<br /><br />

White rabbits would be particularly at risk from hawks and owls. Owls, especially, can decimate a colony very quickly.

We have an outdoor colony and we have a hawk problem in the area so we have wire netting over the top.