Sunday 9 October 2011

Baby Rabbit Accident



I was on the phone talking with one of my sister-in-laws who lives in Isabela Province yesterday. She said that the electricity just came on that day after several days of having no electricity because of the typhoons. Isabela was badly hit by the previous two typhoons that ravaged the country one week after the other. Thank God that they are safe and sound in spite of the calamity that hit them and that is more important than worldly things. Other provinces are still submerged in water so the residents could not go back to their homes. It may take a couple of months before some residents could go back to their own homes. Anyway, while I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, I heard a loud crying sound from the rabbitry. Every body went to see what it was all about naturally. Everyone thought that a rat may have gotten inside the rabbitry and is biting the baby rabbits. That's because we've seen some rats around recently although the neighbor's cat has been catching them.



 Anyway, it turned out that one of the baby rabbits caught its foot on the door of the cage because it was not closed properly. The kit must have been jumping around as usual when the accident happened. This caused the baby rabbit to cry out loud. After extricating the leg that was caught on the door, the baby rabbit was OK, no limp so far. It's just that the experience must have stressed the baby rabbit and the others as well. In fact, the black buck is having diarrhea today and I am attributing this to the stress that they all experienced yesterday. We're keeping a close watch on him and we're restricting his diet until his stool goes back to normal. All the other rabbits are doing okay so far and the baby rabbits are growing very fast. They really could eat a lot of greens specially the vines and leaves of sweet potatoes that we feed them. I just cleaned out their cages and after one hour, they made a lot of poop again. They're a regular poop machine but I like it because I could use their manure for the garden.  


Friday 7 October 2011

Weaning the Rabbits



The baby rabbits are now 7 weeks old since yesterday, October 06,2011.  We were going to separate the baby rabbits from their mothers yesterday but I was still feeling sick so we had to postpone it. The litters can actually stay all together in the same cage where they were born until they are almost 3 months old. This will help them to keep each other warm since it is getting cold here in the mountains. Late this afternoon, we finally separated the baby rabbits from their mothers. We first removed the two does from their individual cages and placed them in their new cages that were reserved for them. By leaving the baby rabbits alone in their cage and just taking out their mother, this will reduce the stress on the baby rabbits. Then we removed the two smallest rabbits among the litters and these went with their mothers in their new cage as well. They will stay with their mothers for a few days so they can get some more milk and this will also help the mother does from suffering because of a swollen breast. After a week, we will remove the two baby rabbits from their mother  and will put them back with the rest of the litters. We have not sexed the baby rabbits yet as of this writing. We'll do that when they turn 2 months old so they will not be too stressed because of this separation from their mother.  We also took this time to use the small handy butane flame torch to burn off the furs that were sticking on the wire cages of the newly weaned rabbits. After cleaning the cages, we gave them a new feeding bowl and new drinking water bottle.  Then before we left, we fed them some pellets and greens to distract them from the stress of being transferred to a new cage.They were happily munching away when we closed the rabbitry for the day.