Feed – Pro Manna Rabbit Pellets, about 1/2 cup daily as a supplement to green hay and fresh greens. (Rabbits need all three.) Rabbits especially love parsley and broccoli leaves. Provide clean wood sticks (not pressure treated) for chewing and fresh water daily.
We keep New Zealand and California White Cross rabbits for breeding and meat. We also have Giant English Angora rabbits, whose fur we collect for spinning.
Rabbits breed very vigorously. Move female in with male for 2 – 3 days only. Gestation is 31 days. Provide a nesting box and hay for nest building. When doe gets close to giving birth, she will begin to pull out her own hair to add to nest and to cover babies for warmth. Litters are generally around 6 or 7 kits. Babies will begin to move around inside nesting box, a couple of days after birth. Eyes open around 1 week. Kits grow very fast and are usually hopping out of the nest and beginning to eat greens at 2 weeks.
The English Angora “Terrence” Feb 2018 at 3 months old.
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Older Posts:
Jan 2017
A year and a half later we have still have the original male rabbit and Fluffy the good mom is still with us. Two of the males were very aggressive, scratching and biting, and we had to separate them from the does. Fluffy and one of the other does just had 5 kits each. We’re selling the bunnies at 6 weeks.
Jun 2015
We started last year (’15) with two females and a male, New Zealand and California cross. They are supposed to make wonderful moms. Fluffy did well right from the start. Puffy, not so much…She had three litters and didn’t care for them each time. We had to decommission her. Fluffy is doing fine with her latest litter.
It is so hot here in Florida this year, that the bunnies really suffer. We try to keep them cool with a fan and misting water. When Fluffy was about to have her kits this time, we put her in the Firebee shed. She that thought the AC was great! Then we moved her back out with the newbies and thought she wasn’t feeding them at first. That why you’ll see the dropper feed on the video. We even gave the kit some of Emma’s milk…that was an adventure, first time milking a goat!
Everything is working out fine for Fluffy now. She is feeding them. And Emma can concentrate on KatyToo and Half & Half!
Rabbits love the garden greens and veggies. Not so much Kale… At first the greens need to be dried so as not to upset their systems, especially if they have been used to pellets.
