boomerscaboose
New member
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
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