Another colony breeding question...

[RitzieAnn]

Hi guys! I haven't quite seen the answers I'm looking for (maybe I haven't looked hard enough) but, here we go, with another colony breeding question

I built a small coop for my bunnys. It's 7ft long, and about 4 or 4 1/2 feet wide (I don't remember exactly) The yard has a shelf now, for a fun little upper level, and there is a house area where I keep their food & Water.

I have 3 does & a neutered male in there right now. My buck is mixed, I have a 15lb Flemish, her daughter (Flemish/mut mix) and a Californian. I would like to breed the californian, but hopefully put her back into the colony & let her birth with them. She has had babies before, if that makes any difference.

Also, I can move their water outside, food too if necessary, so there would be more nesting room in the house.

Here is inside the coop door

And here is the coop as a whole. It's been finished now. The floor is finished, all the wire walls, and it has a roof over the whole thing. The shelf in their yard that I mentioned is on the long side closest to the camera (not above the bunny door)

I also have this WARE (I think) double bunny hutch that my Flemish used las spring to kit. I would prefer to keep them all together. These babies will be for meat, and I really enjoy having all the buns live together. I'm worried that if I remove her, then I won't be able to get her back in there with them after the babies.

And just for fun...

 

[Iggysbabysitter]

I like to keep all the rabbits together in the colony. Even the does who are not fond of eachother have settled down. Provide lots of coverage, so everybunny can escape the unwanted attentions of the others. I have tires, boxes, wood slats and stuff all over the place so they can dodge and hide. Right now it's the does getting away from the kits and the kits running from the buck. But this doesn't happen all day, just in spurts. Your space seems a little limited, but if you could add a little more shelf space or other storage space perhaps the colony wouldn't get too crowded with a litter of kits :/
I have a shed 7feet wide by 10feet long. To add living space and storage I have a metal bunkbed to hold my hay and grain bin(top bunk)and a row of nest boxes (bottom bunk), the adults prefer to live under the bed mostly; there is also 2 dog kennels holding hay and nests for my quail stacked by the door, the rest is open.
Re-introducing the doe after a month or 2 abscence will be very stressfull, perhaps moving some of the other rabbits out of the colony so she can mother the kits longer would be a good idea? Or let everybunny stay in the colony until the kits are 8-10 weeks and then pull them out to finish growing an another cage? This would keep the stress off your adults, and by 10 weeks the kits don't need mom so much.
That's just my 2 cents. Good luck with your colony

 

[RitzieAnn]

I could very easily add more levels in their yard area. I love the coop i built, and was estatic when everybunny started living together. I have an older doe (6+ yrs) that I just moved out. She is partially disabled. She was fine (the boss) but finally she's given up as the boss, so she's on her own now. She seems happy enough.

60mph winds took the coop off it's blocks though, so we will have to move it (it is now impossible to rake out the manure from under the yard area). We must wait until better weather though, because it's so heavy, and we will need sever people to help, and good footing in our yard (it's slippery) He wants to just build a new one (secure it on concrete cinder feet, instead of setting it on blocks like we did) so perhaps i can get him to 'allow' me to make it a bit larger. Thing I love most about my coop, is that I had to buy NONE of the wood. We had a few 2x4s laying around, and all the rest came from the scrap wood pile at my work! So it's hard for me to think of building another one. This just cost me a box of screws, chicken wire and some door hinges. lol

 

[Bramble Hedge]

Personally i would only take the doe out to the buck for a few hours over a few days returning her each day to the colony and then once she has been bred leave her to it in the colony (JMO)

 

[RitzieAnn]

Update

I ended up exposing all 3 does to a buck. Not sure which got pregnant, and who didn't, but I ended up with 11 babies, all born on the same day. I know at least some were from my daughter Flemish mix (she hadn't fully cleaned herself, so I could tell)

They are currently in a 6ft x 6ft chainlink dog run. I have the 2 other panels, and I'll be adding them, so the run will be 6x12 when the kits start coming out of the nest. I've got some small knitt chicken wire that will be going along the bottom to ensure the babies stay inside. Everything seems to be going very well. We lost 1 baby, but everybody else seems to be growing pretty well.

The buns are on minimal pellet food. They've got orchard mix hay that they're eating, and they have plenty of fresh clippings that I gather daily. To include blackberry bush a few times a week, some rose clippings, and a little bit of fresh alfalfa (not a lot, my plants are just getting established)