EDIT - POPPLES! PICS :) Daphne is pulling fur!

[Comet007]

I came down to check on her and just after I got there she started haystaching, and frantically digging everywhere except where the nest box is! I finally pulled the basket out of the nest box and put it in the corner she seemed to like best and she eventually jumped in and started digging.

She didn't make a nest in the way Velma did. Then she lay down and looked like she was shaking and her head was moving up and down. It almost looked like a seizure except her eyes still looked alert. After a while I brought her water bottle to her and she drank quite a bit.

After she rested for a bit she jumped out of the box and started pulling fur. She did that a few times - in and out pulling fur. Then she gathered the fur and took a couple trips into the nest with it.

Right now she is in the basket lining it with fur.

Now she's cleaning babies!!

 

[Zass]

Whooo! Congratulations!How many babies? I'm gonna guess 8 and...10

 

[MR_ND]

Congratulations! How many so far? I'm going to guess 9. lol

 

[Comet007]

Eleven! Ten warm wiggly kits and one dead at birth. I was with her for almost three hours, just left. When she was cleaning one I saw her flick her paw hard toward the back, then later we saw the dead kit, so that must have been what she was doing.

 

[skip]

Eleven kits! That's huge! Way to go, Daphne.

 

[Comet007]

I had decided a bit before ten to go check the girls again, even though DH had checked them around 6:30. Daphne started doing the haystache right after I got there - she kept coming to the door and looking at me like I was supposed to do something.


She was running around her cage, scratching in corners, so I reluctantly brought the basket up, and she started making her nest - she was positioned like this for quite a bit, which was hilarious to watch!


After she got it going we thought she might get it if we put the basket back into the Sani-nest - but she just looked high and low, literally, for the basket! She seriously was looking up through the ceiling of her cage! :lol: :lol: We figured out pretty quick that she was NOT going to use the Sani-nest.


She pulled quite a bit of fur. She would pull fur, then go lay in the basket and pant and rest - doing that shaking thing again, then come out and pull more fur. Sometimes she would just plop down to rest where she was.


Earlier when I was starting this thread to tell you guys she was pulling fur my husband suddenly said that he saw a baby in there with her - hence the abrupt ending and me not checking on the autocorrect at the time. You can see a couple kits in this picture:


-- Sat May 17, 2014 2:24 pm --

Then finally we have... our first popples!



I ended up putting the basket back into the Sani-nest after a while because she kept jumping in right on top of the babies! She had originally left the nest and was eating and drinking, and I could see the kits were still uncovered, so we removed the dead kit and covered the rest with the fur and a little hay. Then she would finish snacking, and jump back into the nest from the side where the kits were, and lay down! After a minute she would get back out to eat and drink more - she seemed ravenous - then she would do it again! It seemed like really strange behavior, so we just put the basket in the Sani-nest.

I really hope that it's not a problem that we did that - she went over to the floor that's directly over the kits and sniffed at them. I'm sure she can smell them as well as hear their little noises, so hopefully she will go in there to care for them. We will be watching closely. Does anyone think it will be a problem that we moved the nest?

It was really wonderful that I was right there from the beginning for our first rabbit litter, and DH was there for most of it too. Very cool, since I really expected them to both deliver in the wee hours and we would just arrive after the fact. I'm going to try really hard to not go down every half hour!

 

[Sagebrush]

Good luck!! I couldn't help going out to see the babies when they where first born almost every hour. It ONLY took me bout 4 hours before I let them be and gave Angel a rest. She did love the scratches every time I came to the cage door though :lol:.

 

[Comet007]

Yeah, Daphne doesn't seem to mind - she always seems to approve when I clean things up in her cage. :lol: Shaggy, on the other hand, is getting quite jealous. He is used to getting the majority of my time whenever I am in the bunny barn!

 

[amandainohio24]

Congratulations on the new popples!

 

[Zass]

Anything from Velma yet?

 

[Comet007]

Anything from Velma yet?

Nope, and we just checked her a few minutes ago. She's probably waiting until we go to bed so we don't take so many pictures of her lol!

We did take a closer look at the buns, though. I actually had them all on a scale and wanted a picture of the group - but I got so interested in what I think are the three red kits, and then the runt, that I never got the whole group picture, AND I forgot to look at the weight! Oh well, my goal was to get their weights on day 3 when we attempt to determine the sex of the kits anyway!

From what I can tell, we have:
3 broken blacks with nice blanket patterns (1 was the stillborn kit)
3 broken blacks with less patterning like their mama
3 reds (my best guess anyway, no idea if they are broken, I need to look closer)
2 that are a lighter pink - could be REW (25% chance that Shaggy carries it, Daphne does for sure) or maybe a broken Red, or ?? - I need to look closer when I'm not feeling so rushed (by DH) to get them back in the nest!

So by my understanding - the fact that there are some black rabbits means that Shaggy carries the recessive self gene, which means we could get some torts? If so, could some of the "black" rabbits actually end up being dark broken torts?

I think the one in the middle that I separated a bit is a red - does that look right? My first thought for some reason was tort, but then I thought red, which made me realize that I don't know what those look like when they are born!! What do you guys think?


Here's the runt - it didn't react like the others when I picked it up, so it probably won't make it, by my best guess. There's one other one who is somewhere between the runt and the rest as far as activity level.


**edited because I put the runt picture in the wrong place! Oops.

 

[Ramjet]

Congrats on the litter. Good luck getting them all to dinner weight!


Those cages look really nice.

 

[Zass]

*edited cause the pics were moved*
Torts look more like reds than blacks at birth, but their ears will be noticeably darker than reds.

 

[Comet007]

I think that bottom kit is a red.
Torts look more like reds than blacks at birth. Their ears are noticeably darker than reds.

I think the bottom one looks red too! There are three that look like that, I just chose the largest to put in the center hoping it would show the color the best.

I wonder if you're crossing two of my thoughts - I thought at first that the (hopefully) red ones were torts - so I get that they can look similar at birth. Good to know about the ears being darker, though! Funny that my brain went to tort first, when our buck is red! Too focused on the black does today!

My other comment about the blacks was because I didn't know if Shaggy carries the recessive self gene, which we would need in order to get some torts in some of the buns who also carry the non extension gene. Just confirming that the presence of broken black kits mean that he must carry the recessive self gene. I think I'm sure, but I have baby rabbit brain right now. Anyway, I can see how it might seem the two thoughts were connected, as one followed the other in the two paragraphs!

 

[ek.blair]

Congrats on the nice litter!! They are gorgeous!! aren't they just so fun to sit and watch!? I love talking to my girls too, letting them know what good moms they are being

 

[Comet007]

They are loads of fun to watch! I don't think I'd want to do it every time (3 hours on my feet = not good for pain levels), but I am SO glad that I got to see the whole thing start to finish with our first litter!

I am thinking about bringing the kits in for the night because of the one runt that wasn't moving around much. I would hate for it to die in the middle of the night and get eaten by it's mama! I'm sure we will eventually have to deal with that, just not right now! DH agrees, because he wants to give it a chance to live - oddly my instinct is to cull it! Weird when it took me a while in my research to start understanding when and why people cull babies. I look at the little one, and see that it's barely moving around - (not clamoring for it's buddies when I pick it up, just lay down in my palm), all I can think is that it is going to slowly starve to death essentially. I would rather not have it suffer like that - but DH (who hasn't done ANY reading about rabbits) wants to give it a chance. I can't really argue with that. He kind of looked at me funny when I asked if he thought we should cull it!

 

[Zass]

My own rabbits have never ever eaten a baby. Usually when those runts drop off they are just pushed out of the way by other kits, probably just because they are no longer warm.

 

[Comet007]

Good to know! Maybe I am just a nervous first time rabbit-Mom! :rotfl: It might be best if I just leave them out there - but I don't sleep well as it is, I don't want to be woken up thinking about this! Plus so far Velma is not following the spreadsheet lol! I will decide in the next hour or so - we're going to check Velma one last time right at dark.

 

[Ramjet]

Good to know! Maybe I am just a nervous first time rabbit-Mom! :rotfl: It might be best if I just leave them out there - but I don't sleep well as it is, I don't want to be woken up thinking about this! Plus so far Velma is not following the spreadsheet lol! I will decide in the next hour or so - we're going to check Velma one last time right at dark.

I'd give it a good 48 hours before culling .... Check to see if it is getting milk. If it is , give it a chance to survive , if it isn't .... do the deed.

First time moms are something else , they often fail to follow the spreadsheet. I have one (From a great mother in her first litter) that had them on the wire and didn't pull fur for ~3 days. Then she seemed to figure it out. Out of 11 she lost 6. Four of which just disappeared , they were hanging onto her teats and getting dragged out of the nest box then ending up on the ground so not really her fault there.
She's redundant in my breeding program as she's a lilac as is her mother and she's a great mother , never lost a kit. Thing is , she's a well built , sociable doe with flawless fur .... I'm tempted to give her another go at it but space is a real issue.

I can only have 2 grow out litters and two in the oven at any given time due to cage space (with no place to add cages). I've got some tough decisions for my next two pairings.

 

[Comet007]

Good to know! Maybe I am just a nervous first time rabbit-Mom! :rotfl: It might be best if I just leave them out there - but I don't sleep well as it is, I don't want to be woken up thinking about this! Plus so far Velma is not following the spreadsheet lol! I will decide in the next hour or so - we're going to check Velma one last time right at dark.

I'd give it a good 48 hours before culling .... Check to see if it is getting milk. If it is , give it a chance to survive , if it isn't .... do the deed.

First time moms are something else , they often fail to follow the spreadsheet. I have one (From a great mother in her first litter) that had them on the wire and didn't pull fur for ~3 days. Then she seemed to figure it out. Out of 11 she lost 6. Four of which just disappeared , they were hanging onto her teats and getting dragged out of the nest box then ending up on the ground so not really her fault there.
She's redundant in my breeding program as she's a lilac as is her mother and she's a great mother , never lost a kit. Thing is , she's a well built , sociable doe with flawless fur .... I'm tempted to give her another go at it but space is a real issue.

I can only have 2 grow out litters and two in the oven at any given time due to cage space (with no place to add cages). I've got some tough decisions for my next two pairings.

Sorry, I didn't say that very clearly - I meant that I was going to decide whether to keep them inside overnight in the next hour or so (in response to Zass reassuring me that Daph might not eat it even if it died), not that I was going to decide about culling it. I can see where that was confusing!

We did decide to keep them in overnight - they were snug and warm. DH took them back out to mama first thing this morning, in case she's ready to nurse. He said that Daphne immediately poked her head down into the hole (we put the nest down in the Sani-nest, even though she delivered up in the cage) and sniffed at the nest, then started pulling more fur! I'm taking that as an excellent sign that she's wanting to keep those babies warm!

I checked on the tiny one around one this morning, and it was really acting like it had a lot of energy, just like its litter mates, so it seemed to be doing well! We resisted looking again this morning and just put them all out there, as I felt pretty good about all of them in the wee hours. The nest sure generates a lot of heat! You can feel it as soon as your hand gets close.

As for Velma, she wasn't very far off on the spreadsheet, but I'm going to give her her own thread!