Rabbits

More on the “I like to pretend I’m a farmer” front: We got rabbits.

Tadaaa!

Two does and a buck. I’d post photos of all three, but they are identical.

You’re supposed to keep the males and females separated — and not just to control breeding — did you know that does will attack a buck if he is in their space? I didn’t know that until I read it this week. Which leads to my story…

In order to accommodate for the necessary segregation, we put wooden dividers separating one half of the hutch from the other. It’s rather like a little rabbit duplex.

Pretty straightforward; bucks go on the right, does on the left.

Pleased with ourselves, we went about our business for the duration of the afternoon. Late that night, The Hubbster and I were sitting out on the back porch when we noticed… There were three rabbits in one section! Being very late at night, there wasn’t much to be done at the time, so we waited til morning to try to sort things out.

1+1=…3?

Upon looking, we realized that the divider at the top of the duplex had a little bit of space between it and the actual roof, and our buck jumped over.

Talk about a rookie mistake. See, this is why I say I like to pretend I’m a farmer — I’m clearly nowhere close to the real deal. But I’m learning!

So, we fixed the dividers so nobody can squeeze or jump through, no matter what. Yay!

Back to my point about the rabbits being identical…

Um, yeah, which one is the buck?? Crap. Time to learn about rabbit genitalia, and fast! We quickly applied what we had read about sexing rabbits. We actually got lucky on the first pick, because that was the buck.

Needless to say it’s been a week full of learning experiences!

They won’t be able to mate for another 2.5 months or so, which will thankfully give us a little time to get used to this new venture of ours. 🙂

Buck? I don’t know. We took this picture when we were still trying to figure out what to do.