Rabbit Work

Things have finally dried out to a point I can work on some much needed outdoor projects. With all of the rain, I have reworked the placement of the rabbit hutches in the enclosure. We need more room to install an outdoor sink and a small door in the fence to back the wagon in for loading and cleaning out.

The hutches needed to be be painted too. With rabbits, you really have to be careful with the wood you choose to build the hutches. Being a part of the rodent family, they are constantly looking for something to chew on to wear their front teeth down. I have tried my best to cover areas in their cage with 1/2 inch hardware cloth. But, rabbits also like to "pick" at anything that sticks up too, including bits of wire. They sometimes will pull it loose and then chew the wood! So, choosing safe untreated wood is a good thing. When painting the cages, I only painted the outside and edges that were covered with some sort of protection.

As you can see, I also decided to add plastic bins under each cage. Believe it or not, rabbits pretty much drop their manure in the same area each time. It's usually near their food source. Knowing that, I positioned the bins to catch most of it. In the bottom of each bin I've added about 1-1 1/2  inches of sawdust pellets that are used in horse stalls (also in pet store cages) to absorb moisture.This is where I had planned on putting my composting worms, but with fire ant issues I have changed my mind. There isn't an effective way to organically treat fire ants and I don't want the rabbit yard contaminated.

The manure bins will save on some shoveling and waste. Another lesson I learned about too much rain is that the manure was breaking down so fast under the cages that I was losing a lot of it. Plus now it will be much easier to let the rabbits out of their hutches for exercise in a clean area. I will keep you posted on how its working.

Phase number three is to finish out the entire roof between the rabbits and chickens. I would like to be able to let the animals run loose in that area at times and not worry about the hawks and boy, do we have some huge ones here that would love a chicken or rabbit to eat!

Under Construction

Keeping everyone cool here when the temperatures exceed 95 has its challenges. Our summers put everything to the test when it comes to just surviving. Plants are monitored daily with container plants needing watered at least once per day. The animals..well its not uncommon for us to refill water morning and evening. It just gets that hot here. The chickens seem to fair better than the rabbits, so we've had to take extra measures to ensure their safety. One of them includes finishing a roof over their enclosure.



This has been part of our plan for the area since the start. Trying to find time to construct it has been our challenge! There is nothing like pressure as your motivation. With the sun scorching down and knowing my dear husband was going to have to manage animal care while the kids and I were away for a week got the ball rolling. With just a couple of days to work on it this is what I've finished so far. I do plan to cover the whole enclosure with chicken wire like the chicken yard. I have the bamboo roofing tied on here until we get back.

By covering the rabbit enclosure with chicken wire, we'll be able to turn the chickens loose in there to take care of any weeds (surprisingly the rabbits would rather dig than eat grass, lol) and fire ants. The chickens LOVE to eat them. I guess its a spicy treat or something. This will save a lot of labor and be much healthier for everyone. Since I use the rabbit manure for my garden, I don't want to treat the area with any sort of fire ant or weed killer. It seems like a pretty good deal to me!

This is NOT about construction...



I plucked this huge tomato hornworm off of one of my tomato plants this year. Can you believe how large they grow? It's no wonder they can consume branches of leaves at a time on my poor tomato plants! This year I'm thankful the population of these boogers has been low. Last year I was put through the test taking care of this problem. For those looking for an organic way to handle them try bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) Some labels just say "caterpillar killer" on them and it has Bt as the active ingredient. Bt is a protein that caterpillars can't digest and that is what kills them. Humans are not harmed at all by it. You do need to reapply it on your plants after a good rain and every few weeks to keep your plants protected. Bt is not selective in the type of caterpillar it kills so be careful on where you use it. I have dill and parsley that swallowtail butterflies use for their host plants. It will kill their caterpillars too.

One personal satisfaction I get when I find a giant tomato hornworm on my tomatoes is that they "pop" green slime when I stomp on them. Gross I know, but hey...someone has to pay! Thankfully the damage done by the hormworms usually doesn't cause major harm to my tomato plants. In most cases the plant will recover just fine. I have even seen a few plants eaten to nearly nothing and recover but I still don't like 'em.

I Finally Got My Order In!

Yesterday was a busy day here on the 'stead. Getting our ducks in order to be ready for Spring planting has kept us on the move. Now I can't wait to get the garden started.

This year we're trying to focus more on sustainability, so many of the things I ordered were for just that. The order I placed at Bountiful Gardens included as many perennial crops as I could find. Perennial alfalfa is what I'm probably most excited about. The rabbits need food and I'm hoping the plants live the 25+ years that was stated. That will save a ton over the years on feed PLUS the huge soil benefits that alfalfa provides.

It was so exciting to have my order placed at Seed Savers Exchange also. It was really hard to decide what to plant! There are so many interesting varieties and funny names that I wanted way more of them than I could afford. Names like "Lazy Housewife" and "Jacob's Cattle Gasless" beans, and "Bloody Butcher" corn. Who could pass up names like that?

My other goal this year was to plant as many open pollinated heirloom seeds as I could. I decided which varieties by their high yield and dependability. The thought of what this year's food prices could look like is kind of scary. I want to make sure that the food I plant will produce enough food for our family and others in need. PLUS, being able to share the seeds will help too.

And last but definitely not least(drum roll, please) I ordered my bees!! Yeah!! Now there's no turning back, hee-hee. I used Rossman Apiaries to order Italian bees...all 3 pounds of them plus the queen. How exciting! I'm now getting the hive set up and ready to go for the new tenants.

With the up and down, hot and cold weather we've had, I'll have to really watch the weather so I can get outside to work on the garden. It's been crazy here... 80 degrees one day, the wind picking up to 50+ mph then the temps dropping below freezing for a day or two with freezing rain. It has literally been on this cycle like clockwork. The poor animals! Here in the house, we're heating it one day and trying to cool it down the next. It heats up quickly here with most of our large windows facing directly south. That's good for passive solar heating in the winter, BUT not so good when it gets hot. I've melted a few Christmas wreaths on the front door in the winter here from the direct sun. Now I just need to work on a way to harness this solar energy to make it work for us. More planning!

Marathon Week

Having Christmas, our wedding anniversary, sons birthday, New Years and my husband birthday in barely over a week definitely is a marathon for us. Tonight 6 teenage boys are coming over for a birthday party sleepover so food planning and entertainment are in the works.

The chickens are laying an average of 6 eggs per day now. Hurray! We just have a few more weeks when the other 4 should start laying. There goes our cholesterol level, lol.

The rabbits are doing well. I think they're lovin' the cool temps and are as cute as ever.

My indoor lettuce and spinach are up and growing. I can't wait to harvest some. :)

Last but definitely not least, the garden planning! I've been hard at work figuring out the details of next years veggie garden. I really want to make sure I plant plenty for us and a good deal extra for those who will be in need. Next year will probably be a lean year for a lot of people and I want to see if I can be of help.

I'll post my garden plan soon. I need to make the diagrams for it all first. :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Bunny Lane

I was concerned for awhile that I was posting too much about my animals. My blog is a gardening blog and I thought it was beginning to turn into a "Look at my Pets!" I would then have to rename my blog to "Noah's Ark" or something.

Well, it's been nearly a month since I've given a rabbit update so here goes..




This is Jack. We so far have figured out that we have 1 boy out of the 4 new bunnies we received. It's so hard to tell ya' know. Jack is a super sweet rabbit. I built him this box to get into in case of rain or wind. Our area for the animals is fairly protected but I'm a worrier and thought the bunnies would be happier if I built them a box inside the cage. (The others are next) Jack likes it, but prefers to spend most of his time sitting on the top. He keeps it clean and sleeps a lot perched up high. Fun Jack...




Here are the three sisters: Smoochie Louise, Jill, and Cotton. They stay in the same hutch preferring to snuggle together and groom one another. The floppy-eared one we know is Smoochie, but the other two..well it's hard to tell. We're thinking about dying their tails or something to differentiate them. One does have a softer coat, so I can tell by petting her that this is Cotton. But, in the scheme of things, I don't think they're all broken up over the fact I can't tell them apart. As long as the food and water keeps coming they're happy.

Trying to keep the new bunnies tame has been our biggest challenge. We try to hold and play with them daily to make sure they are used to it. Bunnies are so skiddish and it doesn't take much to get them into a thumping & scratching fit if they feel insecure. So far they tolerate our lovin'.

Now to our skiddish & huge rabbits...



Miss Janie with the "huge" dewlap is first. Honestly, we don't feed her much! These two rabbits eat far less than the younger rabbits. The poo production is proof of their efficient 10 pound bodies. We have found something that Jane absolutely loves though...DIGGING!! We have a pet corral that we set up to allow the rabbits some time in real grass and dirt. Jane, who normally is still as a statue, turns into this amazing digging machine. She loves eating grass roots, scooping out the dirt, sliding and stretching out her body to smooth the dirt out. She'll literally do this for hours! We put her out there several times per week to get some exercise. (We rotate all of the rabbits out this way too)

Now Tarzan..ya' gotta love him. He runs in circles in his cage at the very site of someone coming to visit him. He's not a snuggler, but you can tell he enjoys human company. Talking to him gets him all stirred up ready to run some more.




This is the rest of the enclosure we built onto the end of the chicken yard. Basically it extends parallel along the west side of our privacy fence. We still plan on covering the top of the area like the chicken yard so we can grow grapes or some other sort of vine over it. It will provide nice shade for those hot 100+ degree days in the summer here.

We lined up the hutches in one long row to maximize roof coverage and protection for the rabbits. A long gutter attached along the backside of the roof is another thing we plan on adding for rainwater catchment.

As you can see, we haven't added the worm bins underneath yet. I decided to wait until spring when I can construct raised boxes for the worms underneath. With cold weather here, I thought the worms would reproduce at a more rapid rate in a warmer environment. I'm trying to get as many red wigglers as I can as fast as I can. The other part of the equation is the fact it may take some effort trying to deter an invasion of fire ants into the worm bins. Elevating them and treating the ground beneath the bins may be our best option.

Until then, we're shoveling rabbit poo into buckets and hauling to the garden. We sprinkle the ground underneath the rabbits when we're finished to "sweeten" the soil and reduce any amount of urine smell.

There ya' have it...Life on Bunny Lane.

New Bunnies

The day I was finishing the hutches for Tarzan and Jane, our Californian rabbits, we got an unexpected offer from a sweet friend. They had recently raised a litter of rabbits and it was time for them to find a new home. Well, guess who's home there are now a part of? Yes, we've adopted 4 of the cutest white dwarf rabbits I've ever seen. :)

All of them are identical in color and all, making it hard to tell them apart. So, here are a couple of pictures of a few of them. I'll post more later.




They are so cuddly and soft! We can tell a difference already with their personalities between them. To see them sitting up on their hind legs looking around is adorable. I'll try to get some really good pictures to show.

Now it's back to rabbit hutch building once again. :) I wouldn't want anything but something really nice for them to live in and stay healthy.

With these new bunnies, our manure/vermicomposting endeavors should be well underway. We're up to about 6 pounds in red wigglers this month and hopefully by February, nearly double that. It should handle the waste processing and have plenty of finished worm castings for spring planting. I'm SO excited!

Raising Rabbits

"Tarzan" is a Californian buck. This is one of the larger breeds of rabbits weighing between 8-10 lbs. He has such a wonderful personality. Every morning he runs in circles excited to see us coming towards him. He pushes his treat bowl around with his nose making a huge racket in eager anticipation of whatever we have for him that day.




"Jane" is a Californian doe. She definitely is a sweetie, but more timid and docile than Tarzan. We've been trying to work with her more to relax her, but I think it may take more time. It's really better when rabbits are handled when small, just like kittens and puppies.

Something that we didn't know about does, especially larger breed ones, is that they develop a "dewlap" under their chin. We were SO worried at first when we saw this pouch-like growth growing larger as she crossed over into maturity. I was thinking the worst, but thankfully after some research, we realized the growth was actually normal and was used for pulling extra fur from when making a nest for her litter of kittens. How amazing! Now I will never think of people with double chins the same. :)

Our rabbit raising endeavors started with the thought of possible meat production, but well, that's not happenin' here.. cute animals are just too hard to think about eating. We'll stick to other things for now, say vegetables. Times will really have to get tough to get to the point of eating rabbits. We can't even staing burying a few young chickens that died. We mourned for days over them. Imagine if it were one of our precious bunnies. We're weaklings I tell you!

The second benefit we considered for raising rabbits was rabbit poo for our garden. In case you are unaware, rabbit droppings are one of the highest quality of all manure. It has 2.5 percent nitrogen ratio without the weed seeds that can come from horse or cow manure. It also doesn't have to be composted for as long of a time as other manures. (Chicken manure takes up to a year) I've read that in as little as 8 weeks before you can use it on the garden.

Lastly, we raise red wigglers. These are the composting worms that are so popular now in vermicomposting. The worms are actually manure worms naturally, although they do an excellent job breaking down so many other things into wonderfully rich worm castings for the garden. We plan on building worm bins under the rabbit hutches soon to further process the manure down quicker for the plants. Hopefully within the next few weeks I can include our progress.

Rabbits just make good sense for us to keep. They really eat very inexpensively, use up veggie scraps, and with that produce LOTS of manure that smells very little.

Now I'll have to show pictures of how Tarzan likes to walk on a leash in our backyard eating grass. :) Good times...

Bunnies!

Our newest members of the family - Jane (top) and Tarzan (bottom)