New Zealand Doe Molting

This New Zealand doe was re-bred to the New Zealand buck 6 weeks after she gave birth to her first litter. We brought her to the buck's cage and the buck performed his deed and then we took her out and put her back in the cage together with her kits. The baby rabbits could still get some milk from their mother for a week before she dries up after which the kits will be separated from her. One week later, I noticed that the doe was shedding its hair especially around her belly and the back part of her waistline.This got me alarmed because she was already re-bred and so I went online and read about this subject. I found out that it is called molting. That molting is normal for rabbits and they shed their old hairs by grooming themselves and then new hairs will grow back in time. So that pacified my fears a little bit but I was still worried because I never had this with the other rabbits before. Maybe because the other rabbits are colored whereas this New Zealand is white so when the colored rabbits did their molting, it was not as bad as and as noticeable as with this NZ doe. Anyway, I  continued to observe this hair shedding until I noticed that her litter were losing some hairs on their faces as well!

These are pictures of the first litter of the New Zealand doe.

Male New Zealand Rabbits

 Now I was really alarmed! So I went online again to read more about this and I wrote down some medication that was recommended on the websites to treat the baby rabbits. Then I went to the pet shop where I buy my supplies for my rabbitry and the guy who owns the shop told me that he does not carry the medications in my list. However, he said that he did some rabbit farming before and he knew what I needed so he gave me an ointment that I could apply to the infected area on the baby rabbit's faces twice a week. When I got back home, we immediately separated the baby rabbits from their mother. We put the males together and the females together in separate cages and while we were doing this, I was treating their faces with the ointment at the same time. What we usually do is to take out the doe and just leave the baby rabbits in their original cage. However, since we have this condition with the baby rabbits losing hairs on their faces, I decided to just leave the doe in the cage and transfer the baby rabbits in their new cages while segregating them at the same time to contain the spread of whatever it is that has afflicted them. After treating the infected ones for two weeks, the hair on their faces grew back and everything went back to normal.

Female New Zealand Rabbits

New Zealand Babies Out of the Nest Box

The New Zealand baby rabbits are now able to hop out of their nest box. The babies could get out of their nest box usually between 10-12 days after birth and they try to follow their mother around. We usually remove the nest box out of the cage 15-18 days after the rabbit gives birth. This is also the time when they start to nibble on whatever it is that their mother is eating which is why it is important that we maintain the cleanliness in the rabbitry and keep the floor of the cages free from their droppings. Rabbits have two kinds of droppings, one is called fecal droppings which are true feces. These are rounded and hard and it doesn't smell but you usually find them on the floor under the cages but in our case, they usually end up rolling down into the gutter. The other is called cecotropes and is slightly wet with a slight stinky odor. The rabbits ingest this cecotropes back as it exits their anus but we don't usually see this happening because they seem to hide it somehow. So when and if you see a rabbit with its head on its anus, there is no need to be alarmed. The rabbit is only happily ingesting back the undigested cecotropes as this is packed with rich vitamins and minerals which is essential for their immunity system. We clean out their cages twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. We wash down the dropping board with water to clean out the smell of urine so the baby rabbits will not get sick. 

First Generation Replacement Doe # 2: 1st Litter

Replacement Doe # 2 was born on August 18, 2011 from the first litter of my original stock of Cinnamon breed which was mated with the original black Chinchilla buck. When she was 5 1/2 months old, on February 04,2011, I had her mated with the original black Chinchilla buck. She kindled her first litter of 2 healthy pups on March 08, 2012. There is an advantage of having just a few kits because they do not have to compete with their siblings for their mother's milk. This is why they have grown so fast and so big. In fact, they are twice bigger in size than the litter of the other replacement does that were born on the same day. We get a kick out of comparing them to the other kits. One of the kits is a male and he took after his mother's color which is brown, while the other is a female and is grey in color. We're keeping this female again and will raise her to become a replacement doe just like her mother. Anyway, these are the first litter of Replacement Doe # 3 at 10 days old.

Replacement doe # 2 with her first litter

First Generation Replacement Doe # 1: 1st Litter

When my original breeding stock of Cinnamon doe gave birth to her first litter on the 18nth of August 2011, we kept 3 female from this first litter and raised them as replacement does. I call them  First Generation Replacement Doe # 1, Doe # 2 and Doe # 3. They were sired by the broken back Chinchilla buck so they are half Cinnamon and half Chinchilla breed. 

Anyway, Doe # 1 was mated with the black Chinchilla buck on  February 04,2012 at the age of 5 1/2 months old or just 2 weeks short of her 6- month birth date. She kindled on March 07, 2012 to her first litter of 6 healthy pups. Some of her kits took after their father's color which is glossy black. Sometimes, all we see in their cage are their shiny eyes especially when we go out just to check on them at night. We don't have electricity in the rabbitry yet but we plan on putting a light bulb in there soon especially during the rainy season so they will not be scared when there is a typhoon. On one side of the rabbitry is a translucent plastic sheet that brings in light inside the rabbitry even at night so that works just fine for now. Her cage is 2 1/2 feet wide by 3 feet long so there's ample space for her to roam around even if we put in a nest box inside. She occupies the lower bunk in the middle hutch inside the rabbitry which is bigger than the rest of the other hanging cages. These pictures below are her fist litter. 

First Generation Replacement Doe: Cinnamon Chinchilla Breed

New Zealand Doe Giving Birth

Just before bringing home the New Zealand doe that I bought from a neighbor, I dropped by Johnny's house as it was on my way home. Johnny is the original breeder in our village whom I bought my initial breeding stocks. I asked him if I could use his New Zealand breeding buck to be mated with my newly acquired New Zealand doe and he agreed. We made an agreement that once the doe gives birth, I will give him one young rabbit as payment for the use of his breeding stock. So we bred this rabbit on February 06,2012 and she gave birth to 8 healthy kits on March 09, 2012. Unfortunately, one of pups turned out to be a runt. It was so small and was not proportionate in size that we all pitied it. The runt did not live long and soon passed away after about a week and we had to bury it. So now we have only 7 all-white pups left among the litter. The pups do a lot of sleeping but once the doe jumps in the nest box to do her feeding, all you'd see are flying feet and squiggling bodies trying to get the plumpest teat for their mother's milk. So if you are a first-timer in raising rabbits and she gives birth, do not worry if you do not see the mother doe feeding her kits. She does the feeding mostly at night or in the afternoon and it only takes her about 10 minutes to feed them and then she gets out of the nest box again. Here are the pups in their nest box sleeping it away, they're 1 week old when this picture was taken. I hope you enjoy the pictures of these New Zealand kits.

New Comer: New Zealand Doe

When I first started having rabbits, I had 2 does of New Zealand breed but I lost them soon after for unknown reasons and I was devastated. I have always wanted to have some rabbits with red eyes. So when a neighbor who started raising rabbits ahead of me came to ask if I wanted to buy one of her New Zealand does, I readily agreed but asked if I could take a look at the rabbit first. She told me that she bought this rabbit from a pet shop when it was still small. Then she brought this doe to be mated with one of our neighbor's breeding buck and she kindled a litter but all the kits died. She thought that maybe what caused the death of the litter was the cold temperature because the doe gave birth during the rainy season. The reason why she is selling this doe is because she only wanted to maintain just 3 breeding does. She said that this doe has shown some aggressive behavior towards her whenever she tries to clean out the cage and she is kinda afraid of her. So when I went to visit her house to look at the rabbit, I noticed that they had a stray dog that is loose in their property. I pointed this out to her saying that the dog must be kept in a leash as this may be the cause of the stress in the rabbit which is why she is exhibiting an aggressive behavior towards her. So anyway, I paid 500.00 pesos for the rabbit and brought her home. So here is a picture of this New Zealand doe that is the latest addition to my rabbitry.

Pet Rabbit

 

Some children in our neighborhood likes to drop by our place after school just to see the rabbits and they usually end up buying a pet rabbit from us after badgering their parents endlessly. We make sure that before the rabbits leave our place, we give instructions to the new owners about feeding their pet rabbits the right kind of food so they will stay healthy. We also check first if the new owners have a cage or a hutch ready before we even release the rabbits to the them. Having a pet rabbit to take care of is a good way for the children to learn about taking responsibility. We normally dispose the baby rabbits when they are already 1 1/2 to 2 months old. Some customers prefers to buy the ready-to-breed female rabbit because they want to start breeding right away. The money that we get from the sale of these baby pet rabbits are used to buy their next sack of rabbit pellets. So the rabbits are more or less self-sufficient in this way because they pay for their own keep. We only provide them their vegetables for roughage and water of course. My one and only niece took these pictures of these baby rabbits. I think they're all cute, don't you think so?

 

Sleeping with its legs up in the air!