Colony Pictures

[kotapony]

I managed to get the colony ready for my adults last week - just haven't had a chance to get pictures posted. The move didn't seem to phase them at all, which is good. I was hoping to end up with slightly more space in the colony, but the way the panels and everything worked out it ended up at 6' x 15' for 90 square feet of space. With just the trio it ought to be enough. If it comes to it I can rig up a separate pen to finish growing out kits, but I'm hoping I won't have to. So, here's what I ended up with:



The morning after I moved the buns I checked on them first thing. Coming around the corner into the barn I catch a flash of white in the hay feeder. Oh, no, I thought. Nest building already. Seemed early, but I understand some does do that. Then it moved. Serious oh no - babies. But wait... Not only too early, they're not born furry anyway. And then I got close and realized. Chester the barn cat had found himself a nice bed.



The barn cats are not particularly vicious, and the adult buns are bigger than they are anyway so thankfully everyone was fine. I took a good look at where he might have gotten in at and added some more wire to keep him out, since I'm sure a kit would provide a tasty snack. The window into the colony is about 10' off the ground, but apparently he was climbing up onto the equipment stored in that section and then jumping up from there. So the window got covered in wire, and I added a little bit to the one corner where the kennel panels don't come quite flush to the wall.

I still need to add the chicken wire around the inside to keep kits in, and I'd like to raid the farm for some random things to add just to give them some stuff to climb/hide/play on. Nest boxes go in Monday, day 28. Fingers crossed there will be popples before long!

 

[MaggieJ]

Very, very nice! And yes, it should be lots of space. You may have to partition off a corner for the buck around kindling time, if he interferes with the process or if you want to space out pregnancies, but that would be easy to do. Or you could simply remove him to a cage for a time.

I especially like your hay feeders with attached feed hoppers. Did you build those or buy them?

 

[kotapony]

The feed hoppers I bought (they're just standard feeders) but the hay part I built. Those are just storage cubes like these: link. I had a ton of them left over from back when I had guinea pigs. I used them for cages then. They work really well and are super easy to throw together - takes about 5 minutes. I didn't have any plastic zip ties handy so I just used electrical tape. The holes are big enough for the buns to pull hay through from any side, I left one side open so the buns can sneak under and hide, and I ended up leaving a half height into the hay area as they like to sleep there too. I think that irritated them with the barn cat more than anything. How dare he sleep in their bed?

I've debated what to do with the buck. At some point I think I'll try leaving him in the colony to see if he can behave himself but I think for now I'm best to pull him when I put the nest boxes in. I still have the big water tub I'd kept them in till the colony was done, so that'll work for now. I was hoping he might behave himself but watching them even in the big space he's sure the does still need bred. One of the poor girls just laid there and growled at him till he wandered off to see if the other girl needed bred yet. He's not totally obnoxious about it, but he's interested enough he may well cause problems. Especially so given this is the first litter for both girls I agree I'm definitely ahead to keep him out of trouble for a couple weeks.

 

[akane]

I've made several similar hay feeders. I've probably got 200 of those panels from when I was taking in guinea pigs. I did one hay cube for the indoor cages out of the finer mesh panels they sell so they could only scatter hay out of the side I left open without it falling through the bars to the floor but then Amako decided to claim it as a sitting box rather than the cardboard boxes or plastic rabbit house so I gave up on throwing hay in it. The standard panels with the big squares they seem uninterested in sitting in without more shelter around them. I also bent some in to u shapes and tied them to the outside of cages for shoving hay down in because with the hay lofts on the inside of the cage 2 of the bucks were dragging out enough hay to go through a slice a day between them when the whole colony of about 10 adult rabbits doesn't even eat 2 slices completely before I check on them every other day. I usually don't give them hay every 4th or 6th day and make them clean up what they've scattered for the next 48hrs. I'm thinking of doing hay silos with 2 panels bent in a U set vertical for placing inside the indoor cages which would prevent hay getting tossed out of the cage and keep the rabbits from using the hay lofts as digging, sleeping, and peeing areas.

I would worry more about the rabbits injuring the cat than the other way around. Cats will take kits but does are quite aggressive toward cats. One of mine won't go within eye sight of a rabbit because she hopped in the pen with a mini rex doe who had just given birth. Lots of cat fur scattered around. It's only in the big 12x24' colony when we only had 2 does down that we lost anything to cats. I think they were sneaking past the adult rabbits who will only defend their immediate territory and ignore anything more than 4 or 5' away unless something they've never seen before really spooks them. Now that there are 10 full adults and often several litters of maturing rabbits who are just becoming territorial in the big colony we see no sign of cats in the rabbit pen. We found a feral one day but it hasn't returned. We did attract a weasel and they are a pain to deal with because anything about 2" or bigger they will fit through and they will kill anything close to their own size or smaller. I'm not sure chainlink would keep them out. Our stalls have solid wood with no gaps for about 4' and then bars which we ended up covering in wire all the way to the 20' ceiling to stop the weasel.