February 12, 2011

Ok...I have been trying to play catch up but too much time is going by. They are changing so much everyday. They are gaining weight very well. Mom is doing a great job. I have been weighing them every couple of days. I actually showed them to a group of girls at Charlottes birthday party today. I put out the Scooby Doo blanket, had all the girls sit in a circle around it. I brought up the nesting box and one by one I took them out to weigh them. Then I handed them to one of the girls. They were very good. Shuyu my little helper took down the weights for me. Aisling took lots of pictures with her Ipod. Another of Charlotte's friends took some pictures with Eric's camera. I will try to share them all a little later. Suffice it to say they are getting more precious everyday. Although I know I can't keep them all they may have to be pried from my hands. I didn't have them out to long, I didn't want mom to get upset. I brought them all back to her. I gave Snowflake lots of love, told her what a wonderful mom she was and thanked her for sharing her babies with us. Yes...it is true... I can talk to animals. So she doesn't talk back but I really think she understands me. She seems so loving since she has had the babies, and seems to really enjoy being pet. I just love my Snowflake.

Have a Hoppy day!!!

1 day old

February 2, 2011

I am so excited that they canceled school today. I get to spend a day with the new babies. The extra sleep I got was good too. I didn't sleep to well. I spent most of last night on Facebook talking about the new bunnies. Haley had taken some pictures while I was counting and checking on them, she helped me post them on Facebook. They all looked about the same size. Except for two they all looked similar in color, kind of a pale pinkish. One of the others was very pink and one was practically black. Haley decided that the black one would be Michael Jackson. One of the babies seemed to still have a piece of something that looked like an umbilical cord.

Shreeya was the only child who came to Childcare today, everyone else had at least one parent who worked from home on this snowy day. I took her down to see the babies. Pretty much all that could be seen was moving fur covered hay.

February 3, 2011

I get to stay home with my bunnies again because Charlotte is home sick. Not that I want her to be sick, but I am glad that I can keep an eye on my Snowflake and her babies for one more day. I keep on reading up on newborn bunnies and some people say leave them alone and others say feel free to check on them. Well of course I am torn, "should I, shouldn't I", kept running through my head. Well I decided to go to West Lebanon Feed and Supply and pick up more litter because I was out. I also thought I would pick up some baby animal formula in case she could not feed all the babies and needed some help. Later that night I decided to check on the babies with Haley. Same routine with the blanket. I took them out one by one. I counted nine. I asked Haley if she thought that I had counted wrong the day before. She didn't, I started to get worried. I carefully dug around the nest and found the little thing. It had unfortunately died. It was the one that had looked like it had a umbilical cord thingy. Now it looked more like the intestines coming out. Poor little thing I thought. I will ask the vet about this, and see if there is something I could have done. Then I will know if I ever do this again.

Catching up on the last month

January 2, 2011

It's kind of funny!! This year on the Chinese calendar is the year of the Rabbit. Today I went with my female rabbit, a Red - Eyed White, named Snowflake, to visit my friend Pam's fiber farm. I brought along my daughter Charlotte, my friend Lisa, and her son Harry. Pam calls her farm, Main Street Farm, and it is right next door to Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, NH. Along with lots of larger fiber animals she also has Snowflakes full sister and another male rabbit. They are named King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. They have already had two litters of bunnies. A total of nine in all. I went there to see if I could successfully mate Snowflake to King Arthur. It failed last month. I thought that rabbits were extremely fertile. We did see evidence that something had happened (I won't go into details).

January 16, 2011

Today she would be two weeks pregnant. I have done all kinds of reading on-line about "palpating a rabbit". It is the way you're supposed to find out if your rabbit is expecting. You feel the abdomen in a certain way, you are feeling for marble shaped items (the babies). I couldn't feel anything. She has defiantly been acting a little crazy and seems very hungry when ever I get near her. She always rattles her cage and actually escaped and ate part of the foam on a hot water pipe. Seemed to have come out in the end. I have since put locks on the cage on both doors.

February 1, 2011

I came home and went downstairs to check on Snowflake. She was sitting in the new addition I had made to her home. On Sunday I put in her nesting box and filled it with hay. It took up a lot of room so I attached another cage to the front. This one had a flat floor bottom. I put the litter box in this one but she has been using the whole thing as a litter box. It needed to be cleaned, especially if she was about to give birth. It was getting late and I had to go pick up the kids at the elementary school. Shuyu to the rescue. Shuyu helped coral Snowflake while I cleaned out the bottom of her cage. One of the other kids called down for Shuyu. Her dad had come to take her to dance. Perfect timing it was clean and Snowflake was in the cage. I came upstairs and started to play Electronic Monopoly with the kids. After a few rounds I decided to go downstairs and check on Snowflake. She had a big mouthful of hay in her mouth and looked up at me. "This is promising", I thought. This is nesting behavior. She had done this the other day also, so I was getting hopeful. I went back upstairs to play with the kids. Less than a half an hour later I decided to go back down and check on her again. There she was sitting in the nesting box which she had lined with her fur. In the nest....could it be? It was! I counted eight baby bunnies. "How could she possibly have eight bunnies in her, I couldn't feel anything. Where were they hiding?" When articles you read tell you that it is hard for a beginner to palpate a rabbit, believe them. When I came upstairs, Charlotte looked at me and I smiled and held my finger to my lips. She squirmed happily in her chair, and then went to her room. When I went to see what Charlotte was doing she was crying. She didn't want anything to happen to Snowflake. I told her she looked very good. I decided to take each child down one by one for a quick peek. Charlotte felt better after seeing that Snowflake was alright. That evening, when I went back to clean up the birthing mess, Haley and Charlotte distracted Snowflake by feeding her a carrot. I put a clean blanket on the floor, and after taking out the soiled bedding I took each baby out, one by one and put them all next to each other on the blanket. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...", "there aren't eight babies", Haley said. I continued counting, "Eight, nine, ten".