Farm Fresh: Rabbit Mamas Caring for Kits

 I have been "shelving" (bringing in at night) the 10 rabbit kits. It's a pretty serious commitment --EVERY night and morning. We may have a new solution that will help keep future kits safe, more on that below. 

Shelving has been an eye opening experience into the behavior of mama rabbits. Rabbits are prey animals and so they only nurse their young kits (return to their nest) for about 5 minutes, once or twice a day! Their milk is incredibly concentrated and almost impossible to replicate, which is why I always breed at least 2 mamas at a time.  If one fails to nurse her babies I can usually foster them off with another mama.  Otherwise, they are most likely not going to survive.  We have tried to "bottle feed" them before with zero success.  Silver Fox are very kind foster mamas and we've never had any issues with rejection by a foster mama. 

When I bring these 10 babies/kits back to their mamas in the morning everyone is so excited. The kits are all waiting for me and practically launch themselves into the canvas carrying bag that I use to transport each litter to and from. When we get to the barn, the mamas are hopping around anxiously and the babies start making little noises. 

For previous litters I almost never saw the mamas doing their 5 minutes of nursing, but now I see it every day.  They usually lick and inspect each of the kits while they are nursing. It's very efficient.  Mama rabbits always seemed so ambivalent about their babies before. Now I know that they are not.  Their instincts are just to keep mostly away from them so that predators don't find or follow them to their nests. 

Brother M is proving to be a very responsible Dragon Daddy.  His dubia roach colony is thriving and I never have to remind him about feeding Beardy.  He is growing mustard greens so that Beardy gets his fresh veggies every day. He loves carrying him around and worries over every little thing.  I have never had to remind him to water or clean the cage either. 

Other rabbit news.  Since we are doing 4H rabbit club now and planning to go to more shows I have been talking to fellow rabbit raisers about finding some second hand carriers. We kind of hit the jackpot on that. We found an older couple whose kids are done with 4H and grown up. They were selling all their rabbit paraphernalia. We took two cars over to their house and loaded up on valuable supplies for an incredibly generous price. 

They also had this pretty and sturdy hutch for sale. I am not usually in favor of using any wood for rabbit housing (holds bacteria). Bob Bennet advises against it in the Storey's Guide to Raising Rabbits. BUT in light of the current rat issues and the very inexpensive price tag, I decided to give this hutch a spruce up and see how it goes.  When we have a couple warm days I will get the inside sterilized, whitewashed with lime, and then paint the outside to match the barn.  It has been in a carport up to now, so the wood needs some protection from the elements. Also, their are a couple holes in the floor screens and some rust that I will need to treat and patch. 

Brother S decided to read one of our favorite children's books to Baby A.  Sandra Boynton's Blue Hat, Green Hat. 

Such a sweet Big brother moment. I love the way that all our older kids dote on Baby A. 

I found Baby A sitting up in his crib this morning. He is getting so big. 

He has 2 little teeth poking through on the bottom now.

Big brother M has been building block towers for him to crash. 

Farm Family Fun: Baby A's First Tooth, Tree Clearing, and Rabbit Genetics

 Baby A's first tooth came through this week. He has been our least droolly baby so far. I only thought to check his teeth because he has been a little fussy.  

He also had his first tastes of Kix cereal puffs. Very good for fine motor skills and keeping him occupied. 

We made a new rule last week -- no pets at church.

Baby A loves to sleep with me. And apparently Big Sis A too.  He was crying one night around 10:30pm and I thought Daddy picked him up.  When I went upstairs I found them like this. 

First graham cracker mess. It was love at first taste. 

We are raising two new (to us) breeds of rabbits for the kids' 4H projects. Big sister A is raising Polish (1st litters due Jan 31st!). Brother M is raising the critically endangered Silver rabbits (not to be confused with Silver Fox that we have raised for the last 5 years). The color genetics work differently on the different breeds - for the Silvers, agouti brown color is dominant; but for the Silver Foxes, black is dominant. We did a homeschool lesson on genetics to help me and them understand it better. 

I peeled the skin off a granny smith apple and gave it to Baby A to gnaw on. He loved it. 

It's a good time of year for making and sharing herbal remedies. I made a big batch of Elderberry Syrup to share with our friends and because Miss L had been asking me for more. 

Remember how we were going to clear the berry patch in 3 phases? Well, we changed our mind because one of the phase 3 trees was getting very rotten. We are ALL done cutting trees in this area now. Ready for Hubby's "favorite" task -- chainsawing and clearing. He is going to be VERY careful not to touch poison ivy this year. 

If all goes well, we might be ready to plant the berry patch by this fall!!!

It's a perfect time of year for canning dried beans. I did a double batch (14 qts) the kids' favorite baked beans this week. On to pinto beans next week. Last year, I did 21 quarts of pintos, but we used them up in about 8 months. I will try to do around 35 qts this week. 

Baby A's Life: 7 Months Old

 As you might expect Baby A is most interested in what the big kids are doing. All sitting on the new window seat big sis made? He wants to too. 

Looking at presents from our buddies? He wants to too. 

And the oral fixation phase continues! Except that now his pincer reflexes and small motor skills are getting much better.  He picks up everything and tastes it. 

I let him try plain bananas this week -- he loved it of course. And oatmeal with a lot of applesauce in it is going down pretty well too.  Just for fun, I put a few corn cereal puffs on his tray today and he was able to pick them up AND get a few in his mouth! oh my. 

He had his first bath sitting up in his special tubby this week.  He cried awhile and then decided it was not too bad. 

We had a few nice quiet naps by the Christmas tree, while I tried to soak up the cuteness. 

And he's scooting all over the place. He pulls himself along with his arms and does a table, but has not started fully crawling yet. Every time I set him down I feel like he's in danger.  We are still not very baby proof and little legos or other bits are lurking all over the place. 

Christmas 2020:Twinkling lights, Treats & Movie, Ping Pong Table, and a Blessing

 We did two socially distanced Christmas excursions. First, we went to see the lights around the Washington DC temple.  We heard that the line was really long and some people had had to wait for 2 hours. We decided to go on a Tuesday and arrived an hour early. We were still the 15th car in line. More cars were lined up behind us in the Stake Center parking lot, but then amazingly, they opened early and let us start driving through around 5:15pm, only 15 minutes after we arrived. 

We brought artisan bread and cheeses, smoked salmon, olives, and fruits to eat in the car while we were waiting, but ended up eating it during the drive home. 

On Wednesday night we went to see the animated light show at our local State Park.  
It has not changed much since we went last, about 5 years ago. They added some cool new lights on the lake, with fish and mermaids diving into the water. And a light show of the Frog Prince that I thought was pretty cute. 

I sewed new flannel and fleece jammie pants for all the kids and a flannel nightgown for big sister A (per her special request). They opened them on Christmas Eve (Thursday night). 

Big sister A and I prepared the snack platters for our annual Christmas Eve feast and movie. One platter was all desserts:

The other was the "healthy" snacks. 

On top of all that we also had to have the kids favorite Christmas Eve junk foods, taquitoes and bagel bites.  Hubby and I enjoyed shrimp cocktails. 

Enjoying our feast and watching "Home Alone"

Christmas morning.

Brother S found the pattern for this stuffed monster in the "Wee Wonderfuls" craft book and has been trying to get someone to make it or help make it for over a year.  Big sister A tried and I did not give it too much thought, until it kept coming up.  I figured after a year of asking for Koji it was finally time that I buckle down and get it made.  He is made entirely of scrap denim and fleece that were close at hand in my sewing bin. 

Baby A opened his first Christmas present, a woodburned sign from Brother M, with a lot of help from his siblings. 

Per usual, taking his cues from the the big kids. 

Miss L was pleased to receive a unicorn coat. 

Big sister A made cute little peg people for each person in the family. Hubby's is my favorite. So accurate. 

Hubby spent a lot of time on Christmas Eve day tidying the basement -- it really needed a good dusting and vacuuming post-chick brooding. The kids told us later that they thought it was a little odd that Daddy was doing so much cleaning, but didn't think anything beyond that. After the feast and movie, Daddy pulled the table out of the box and got it all set up. 

The last present we let the kids open Christmas morning was the package with ping pong paddles and balls.  They said, "oh this will be fun... It's just too bad we don't have a table to play it on."  Long pause while Daddy and I laughed. "Well... Why don't you look in the basement?" And then a big scramble of kids running downstairs.  It was a fabulous Christmas surprise. And it's been a lot of fun so far. 

We have gotten in the habit of doing activities instead of presents, but that has been hard with the covid quarantines. We decided that this would be a good Christmas activity and be years of fun for the family and friends. 

Baby A had his baby blessing the Sunday after Christmas - December 27th. 

I tried to take some pictures of how cute he looked with the "good" camera. Obviously, still don't know what I'm doing, but it was better than my phone. 

For Baby A's blessing we invited all the siblings and cousins to a virtual sacrament meeting. We had the blessing first and then one cousin from each family gave a little talk based on the "Come Follow Me" lesson from that week.  It was wonderful.  It would be lovely to do that more often. The kids keep asking when we are going to do it again.  It was really fun to have a lot of the cousins all together in one zoom call.