After the birth of two litters of bunnies in as many weeks, Matt decided it was time to come up with some serious family planning. So on Saturday (the day before Jeff left), they got to work rebuilding our old chicken coop into a divided house for the bunnies. This would allow us to keep the males separated from the females and also create a maternity ward for the new moms who were nursing. They did an amazing job getting it all done in one day.
The five bunnies that were born the week before Christmas (one for each kid).
Matt left with Webb and Jeff for Kenya on Sunday after lunch. Not even hours later we heard a screeching from outside, so we went to investigate. We noticed two of the 3 week olds had gotten out of their day pen. (Think of it as a pack ‘n play for bunnies that allows allows them to eat the grass out in the yard). We went to investigate how they got out. Well one of the older bunnies had dug a burrow underneath a corner of it….interesting...then realized Oh crap, there are newborn bunnies in the middle (like minutes old..not the days or weeks old ones that we already had). Quick scurry of our kids to round up escaped rabbits and then grab all but the mom and new babies from the pen and put them away. The mom was literally still giving birth and one of the males was on top of her. As Tierney said “Why does everything always go all crazy as soon as Daddy leaves?”
Six newborns in the burrow:
I know that we’re not supposed to touch the new ones until they have hair, but I was also pretty sure that they weren’t safe out in the open. I called Matt who confirmed that I should move them inside (without touching them).
Our new maternity ward. 6 on the left born yesterday (pretty sure one won’t make it due to a huge gash along its back) and 3 on the right from a few days ago.
Problem seems to be that the boys can jump the fence to get into the girls’ dorm rooms. Now I can’t even tell what mom goes with what babies or even which ones are males and females. There may be a few more litters coming before we have this whole family planning thing all figured out.
Mama Jackie is ready for a lesson in dressing a bunny.
The kids also caught a little baby hoopoe…super cute, but I made them put it back in the bushes because I wasn’t about to take on anything else.
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