Mutations Radiation Fukushima Connection

[boomerscaboose]

I posted this following post on another rabbit forum but after noticing no replies and all the daisies and general tra-la-la there I realized that my post just mentioned raising rabbits for food probably caused people there to run away screaming. So I will try the same post on this site with my first post here:

We began raising rabbits about three and half years ago with the main motivation being self reliancy and food. Though we keep a journal for the rabbits (also goats and chickens) we did not always note if a doe did not concieve but rather after the due date had passed by a few days another attempt was made and almost always successful.

In fact, I'd estimate that we had nearly 100% success the first time around anyway.

I like to see three matings one day followed by the same the following day. If somebody is stubborn and I get tired of waiting we have opted to be good with two matings but never less than that to count it as a mating (and followed by the same the next day)

Unfortunately we had not made a possible connection to Fukushima until later on listening to a woman investigating the ONGOING Fukushima problem interviewed on http://www.wideawakenews.com who mentioned possible mutations showing up in short gestation species such as rabbits. So we did not take pictures or log as carefully the following.

We gave three rabbits to a friend. Two does and a buck. The buck had been successful on each of several breedings by us and one of the does had a previous litter before we gave it to our friend. The other doe was too young to breed at the time.

My friend also got two does and a buck from another breeder sixty miles away a month or so after recieving ours. After numerous attempts at breeding since late summer my friend has had only one successful breeding. We're ruled out any of the common considerations and even brought two of his does back to my place to observe the mating with two of my other bucks. No go.

We have had two successful litters but scale down during the fall and winter. One of our litters was only four babies from a doe who usually has eight.

Birth defects. Having none prior to this past summer we had a baby with rear legs splayed out to the sides with some problem with the rear hip joints apparently. We had another from a different litter with it's head normal size and it's body about a third the size of it's siblings.

We live near Forks, WA, home of Twilight theme and on the edge of a rainforest.

For those who don't know there have been radiation readings along the west coast 20-50 times normal readings and plutonium has been detected as far away as Boston. It had to fly over us to get there.

I wanted to compare notes with breeders to see if any of you are experiencing higher levels of birth defects or abnormalities with fertility or litter sizes.

Thanks,
Joel

 

[Miss M]

Wow, I knew the radiation had made it over here, but I didn't know it was that bad. I haven't had any problems here, but I'm off the beaten path, wind-wise.

 

[DumansArk]

:O

This is terrifying... Am also interested in who else has seen changes.

 

[Devon's Mom Lauren]

http://vesica.org/main/holistic-health/articles/1162-radiation-update-april-2011

this has a lot of info.. about halfway down the page is a list of food items that would be most affected. There is also a passage that states that a lot of the Northern States/ Southern provinces of Canada also received the fallout due to wind patterns etc. Higher radiation levels are naturally higher after a rain and it is the rain that would be doing the most contamination, so water sources from a deep well are a lot better to use than ground water for any drinking by anyone! As for mutations splay legs is a common occurrence in rabbits, but this refusing to breed and missed litters... I don't know it seems a lot of us have been experiencing this!

 

[Frosted Rabbits]

My last three attempts at breeding my girls has been unsuccessful-- my location IS in the windstream where the radiation would be carried...

 

[Secuono]

You mentioned they tried breeding during the summer, from all the posts on here, it seems for summer and several months after a buck may not be fertile at all.
Gotta add in how they live, in what, their health, food, water, any treats, etc etc can all affect all aspects of their lives.
Not saying it's not possible, but didn't this happen years ago? Or am I missing something...Note, I don't keep up w/the news.

 

[akane]

Many people have had problems this year it seems but most people experienced a really hot summer and even those on the east coast have the same problems. I barely got any litters July through Sept and the ones I did get were small and died for various reasons. Shortly after the weather turned cool all the problems stopped. Misses, small litters, unhealthy kits, lack of milk... It all went away soon after the heat wave finally broke. Nearly every doe has given a large healthy litter since the end of october. While it could be a cause of increased problems I think blaming things on radiation is a bit premature and jumping to conclusions with no real science behind it.

 

[currituckbun]

This is interesting and I am wondering if breeders of other small animals have also noted some changes. Has this been reported in your area at all. We have heard nothing out here, but we would not be as affected.

 

[boomerscaboose]

I wanted to post up some links here. My wife is all over this as far as research goes since Fukushima. Perhaps no science yet as far as rabbits, per se, but there is plenty of science indicating that we are now and will be experiencing higher radiation levels for some time to come. Of course, when our friendly govt just ups the acceptable numbers everything may just turn out fine, right?

http://fukushimaupdate.com/
http://fairewinds.com/
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&cp=15&gs_ ... 24&bih=633

Also, our weather this past summer was mild. Nothing to do with excessive heat. Many of the cases of inability to impregnate was after summer was over. Pretty temperate climate over Forks, WA 'cept for the dang blasted rain.

 

[Cattle Cait]

WHOA...Where have I been? What's this Fukushima radiation fallout?

Is this a reason we only got one surviving litter this year...?<br /><br />__________ Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:35 pm __________<br /><br />Maybe this happened during that stint where I didn't have TV...

 

[MamaSheepdog]

WHOA...Where have I been? What's this Fukushima radiation fallout?

Is this a reason we only got one surviving litter this year...?

__________ Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:35 pm __________

Maybe this happened during that stint where I didn't have TV...

Hu-u-u-ge earthquake in Japan earlier this year- remember all the emails of floating cars and stuff- or the dog that sensed it coming and wigged out? Well, the nuclear plants were affected by it, and cracked their reactors or whatever it is that unstable nuclear plants do... and now it is wafting over here in the clouds and raining down on people in it's path.

Personally, I think radiation fears are a tad hyped up- take a good look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. They are flourishing communities, not the barren nuclear wasteland it's supposed to be at all. Still, you don't see me at a cafe there eating bat-wing and wonton soup, either.

We dumped our satellite service a few months ago. Kids actually thanked us. We don't get a newspaper, either- internet is our only news source too nowadays! We're likin' it though.

 

[Cattle Cait]

Yea. I think I was unplugged from the public when this happened because it's not ringing a bell.

 

[Miss M]

Yea. I think I was unplugged from the public when this happened because it's not ringing a bell.

Yep, giant 9.0 earthquake followed by a giant tsunami that nearly wiped Fukushima province off the map. They tried valiantly to keep water on the reactor cores, even pumping sea water into them, but one by one, they melted down. They've got them shut down now, but only after the release of a good amount of radioactivity.

My understanding is that the release has been nowhere close to that of Chernobyl (because, unlike Chernobyl, they had containment structures, and those structures remained mostly intact), but the disaster continues to cause fresh problems, like another leak of radioactive water into the sea that was just discovered.

This happened in March, right before temps got hot, so we should be able to discern between heat problems and radioactivity problems at this point.

 

[boomerscaboose]

I wanted to steer this toward what is really happening here to clear up any misconceptions regarding the magnitude of Fukushima. This is way worse than Chernobyl. Chernobyl was one reactor meltdown and it is believed today that a million people have died due to complications. Chernobyl was much further away and we had in our northwest corner of Western Washington State baby chickens and ducks dropping dead in the year that followed that mess. I wasns't living here at that time but this is according to locals I have since met.

Fukushima most likely has three meltdowned reactors though Tepco is only admitting to one. There is a lot of keeping the lid on the magnitude by this due to the powers that be wanting to protect the reputation of a huge $ industry. The official EPA response was to raise the acceptable levels of radiation to as if by a magical wand make everything less bad somehow.

The death count of the Fukushima is over 4,000 people so far. The emporor and wife along with their nine year old grand daughter went to the Fukushima area to show support and were later hospitalized with respiratory problems. Two famous in Japan news reporters ate produce on air as a show of support and one now has a cancerous tumor in their throat and the other hospitalized for pnuemonia symptoms. The robots that they have been sending in lately for readings have not come back out.

Don't weigh in lack of our phony media attention to mean anything here folks.

I put up three links above, two of which will enlighten readers to a much greater degree.

My first year of "production" we had 1400 pounds of meat from our rabbits (2010). In 2011 we opted to scale way back because we were much busier with our goats and wanted to prioritize that. I had no problems with lack of fertility in 2010. Since we were so busy in 2011 and did not attempt so many breedings and did not log the failures to impregnate we have to go with memory and I'd say that about half did not concieve.

My friend, as mentioned above, got one pregnancy out of about nine attempts in the summer/early fall of 2011. Two were done (attempts) at my place with previously very successful bucks. It was only after my friends experience and my listening to an interview that really clued me in that we may have a problem.

I intend to see if I can find a resource and generate interest so we can get our hands on (or their hands on here) a radiation meter.

At this point I don't know if it has anything to do with Fukashima but nothing else in the routine consideration arena (diet, weather, etc) seem to fit.

Update....I just emailed somebody at the University of Washington, science/medical department to see it I could get pointed toward anybody researching radiation levels/effects in our state. Stay tuned.

 

[Miss M]

Yes, when you take the event as a whole, it is way worse than Chernobyl. I certainly didn't mean to downplay it! I was speaking of release of radioactivity ONLY. In that respect, as far as I have been able to tell from what I have read, Chernobyl was actually much worse. Naturally, if they are misreporting the numbers, then that's another matter. But going on numbers released in September, released radioactivity is much lower. This would be due only to Fukushima having containment on their reactors. Chernobyl had no containment, so there was nothing to stop or even slow down the radioactivity from spewing into the atmosphere. If Fukushima had been built like Chernobyl, we would now have a severe worldwide fallout crisis.

Even if the numbers are correct, and the release is much lower, we can still have a very real impact from increased radioactivity here, as we have documented marked increases. It certainly looks from your experience, and from seeing so many RT members talking about their does missing, that we've got some radioactivity-induced problems here. It would be interesting to look over the threads from the last half-year, and map where all the RT members are that have had rabbits with fertility issues, or significantly smaller litters, or increased defects.

I had read that the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami was some 13,000. Is the 4,000 you mentioned due to radioactivity? They are not reporting anything beyond some workers experiencing mild radiation sickness, but I am skeptical that a disaster of this magnitude (even if the release of radioactivity is less than Chernobyl) could have so small an impact -- especially since they were not evacuating the area very quickly.

Didn't know Tepco was still trying to say only one reactor melted down... maybe they are splitting hairs or something. Weird.

Anyway, please realize that I'm only going on the numbers I can find, and I'm speaking only of atmospheric radioactivity release. I know that the disaster is much worse than that, and radioactive water is still pouring into the Pacific Ocean.

We may not be in the direct wind route, but we get our drinking water from the Mississippi River. As far as I can tell, the water of the river has not been tested for radioactive particles.

 

[LilFish_JWQueen(:]

my 4-h leader actually has friends over on japan and has been there a few times so thats how i heard about this. But all the stuff that is happening here..is it lik superstitious stuff or?

Cause like to tell ya the truth usally i have litter after litter but the last couple months i have not had more then 5 litters..

 

[Miss M]

No, it's not superstition.

How many matings did you attempt, to get those 5 litters?

There have been quite a few members having lots of trouble getting litters the last few months. Even low levels of radioactivity can have effects like this. Radioactivity levels on the west coast have been documented at levels 10 - 50x above normal since the disaster. We're just trying to figure out if there is a connection.

Heat sterility doesn't explain all of them.<br /><br />__________ Thu Dec 08, 2011 2:49 pm __________<br /><br />

No, it's not superstition.

How many matings did you attempt, to get those 5 litters?

There have been quite a few members having lots of trouble getting litters the last few months. Even low levels of radioactivity can have effects like this. Radioactivity levels on the west coast have been documented at levels 10 - 50x above normal since the disaster. We're just trying to figure out if there is a connection.

Heat sterility doesn't explain all of them. Boomerscaboose is the first to offer this as a possibility.

 

[LilFish_JWQueen(:]

well my last breedings i bred like 9 rabbits..all the ones that kindled were dead cuz of it being cold i believe.
But the last 3 months ive (and including rebreeding the ones that didnt take within the three months) around 60 breedings. I breed alot of rabbits at a time then rebreed them right away if they dont take.