Rabbits, an Introduction (so to speak)

Rex color Varieties

I have been wanting to raise rabbits for YEARS.  Primarily I have always had my eye on the fiber rabbits but the work involved for the yield I wasn't sure would be practical.  To get my feet wet I decided on meat rabbits.  This idea has also been on my radar for YEARS more as a way to feed the HUGE number of dogs I had at the time.  After researching back then I had an idea of what breeds I liked.  Californians were high on my list but after I spent some time on a rabbit meat group I quickly realized that rabbit blankets and throws and hats and mittens are GORGEOUS!!!  I had to up my game on the research and look into COLORS!!!



I'm terrible with genetics.  There's this meme floating around online where they illustrate genetics very simply with gummy bears and even then I'm mostly just confused.  I get how inheritance works in general but when we're talking about colors, self colors, dilutes, patterns and then how those are passed down and which is dominant and which is recessive and which one hides behind a white curtain to rear it's head later down the road I'm lost.  It's all greek.  Because of that I resigned myself with solid rabbits.  I researched the dual purpose breeds and threw out the ones that tend to include a lot of color to them...  The ones I can think of at the top of my head are Standard Rex, and Satins.  Standard Rex having the most diverse colors out there.

Snowball the youngest Silver Fox doe

I threw out the white breeds too, the Californians and the Florida White and I also threw out the huge rabbits, Flemish Giants and Checkered giants ONE because their meat to bone ratio is really not very good because they're just too big.  Need more bone to carry such a huge frame.  They also have a pretty large variety of colors.  Basically that left me with rabbits that were mostly black, Black and blue and chocolate (including the dilutes of those colors) and then the cream colored rabbits.  Ya know this picking of rabbit breeds when the pelt is of some importance is a lot like picking a wedding dress.  DO NOT go to the bridal shop willing to look at every style on the planet because if you did that you're head would explode and it would take you YEARS to pick THE DRESS out.

Etta my blue Silver Fox doe

I like blacks, greys and brown and the dilutes of those colors best.  Creams are pretty but it's basically yellow which really limits a palate.  Silver Fox and Champagne D'Argent were the two breeds I was most interested in getting.  BOTH primarily black/grey rabbits.  Silver Fox is heritage breed which was a perk for me.  ALSO I could find a pretty good genetic variety of Silver Fox rabbits near me so I got a breeding trio, two does and one buck.  This number should keep us eating a meal of meat three times a week or more possibly.  This is for a family of four.

Totoro the resident Silver fox Buck

Mr. GoodBar chocolate Satin Angora buck

Once I got the three meat breeding bunnies and decided on how I would house them (that will be in a whole new blog coming up) I decided to go ahead and pick up a pair of fiber rabbits to at least have some fiber to learn spinning on and also to get my feet wet on that angle of the rabbit breeding.  Fiber rabbits aren't QUITE as hard to choose from because there aren't as many out there.  A local breeder whom I was planning on buying rabbits from sent me samples of fiber from each of the breeds she keeps and let me try out spinning on them and feel the staple length etc...  She raises French Angora, English Angora and Satin Angora.  I was pretty sold on the English Angora based on my reading as they say it's a good fiber for beginning spinners.  Satin Angora is supposed to be for advanced spinners because of staple length and such.  I spun each kind and fell IN LOVE with the Satin Angora fiber and how it spun up for me.  I encourage anyone interested in getting rabbits to spin their fiber to try out the different kinds before you jump in and pick a breed.

NightHawk a black Satin Angora doe

SUDDENLY I decided I wanted to probably show rabbits and found that in Canada they are really hurting for genetic diversity in the blue Silver Fox so I'm very serious about getting them established over there too.  Showing, eating the rabbits and breeding/selling them is key to keeping the breeds alive.  This means some of that breeding for the table won't actually happen since I'll also be putting what I produce up for sale and probably showing a few.  SOOOO I started to keep my eye out for an additional doe who could cross to my buck and have a few nice litters of meat rabbits only to ensure my family was still eating what we were growing.  Just yesterday I found a beautiful little Californian to add to the bunch.  It's what we in the biz like to call, rabbit math, or farm math.  It just keeps adding up!!!  I'm pretty sure I'm done adding any more breeding rabbits to my place till their housing is finished.  That blog will be coming up soon I hope!!!

Frankie, the newest edition at Little Foxtail a Californian doe

Adventures with Ducks: In the Beginning

I think we may have gotten a little carried away with the ducklings but they were so cute and straight run so the whole egg laying thing was iffy, of course I just had to keep buying!  12 ducklings later, brooding IN THE HOUSE at two weeks of age became a little terrifying.  Ducklings are basically little pigs with feathers. Cute little pigs with feathers

First batch of ducklings
I had to go back for more...

Shockingly they play in their water which is to be expected but even the tiniest amount of water will be "dabbled" in.  Ducklings love to chow down on their dry crumble feed and then run over to the water and start nibbling around in it.  Basically they swallow some, they slobber some out, they cycle some through their nostrils, slobber some more, we call that "dabbling".  All this slobbering creates a small puddle around the water dish which then becomes a fantastic place to stomp around and play in.  The dry home you are to provide for your little delicate ducklings is now splattered with water, poo, some sand and wet feed.  The books all warn against this and so it was clear I was probably going to kill my ducklings if I didn't do something about it.

The water saver!!!  A very simple DIY item I found while googling how to set up my brooder so I wasn't having to clean it twice a day. I have two little girls, I do not have time to clean the brooder of 12 ducklings TWICE a day.  So I found this lovely item, basically just a tupperware storage drawer big enough to hold the waterer and the ducklings.  You cut out the top or maybe put the drawer in upside down.  Then staple hardware cloth to the top.  Place the waterer on it and voila!  All that water the ducklings were playing in and spreading all over the place is now contained inside the drawer.  I also created a much larger brooder and threw out the idea of keeping a heat lamp higher and higher every day to cool it off a degree at a time.  I mean seriously, how did ducks survive without us?

Larger brooder

Water saver photo (not mine)

Two week old ducklings not at all bothered by
my negligent heat lamp placement

It became very clear at this point that the ducks needed a duck house as soon as possible so plans began to be formed.  We had to wait for the later than usual snow fall to stop before we could get started and then we had to halt construction periodically for the higher than normal rainfall we got through early summer.  We did get the duck house built!

Duck house 

In the meantime the ducks were moved out of doors as soon as they started feathering out.  They lived in an old two horse trailer for a few months while we waited out the weather and got the duck house built.

TONS of rain and late snowfalls created quite an exciting yard area for the ducks.  Not so great for our building plans though.

FIRST I thought perhaps I'd convert that old two horse trailer into a duck house but I decided we would likely need a heat lamp in there from time to time through the winter and the trailer itself just isn't very "cozy", much of the heat off of a lamp (and the ducks) would be lost in all the empty space etc...  I also had an old camp trailer that is way beyond using for actual camping that I thought I might convert into a duck house.  Again we ran into the same problems, so far off the ground it would create so much space to keep warm with the ducks on the coldest days and nights we'd need a heat lamp and again, much of that energy would be lost.  Maybe with a really big flock of chickens either one of those options would be great. Since chickens use vertical space and ducks don't because they don't generally roost.

Cayuga starting to look pretty awaiting a new duck house.

We had a pile of old tires that had been sitting in our pasture for a few years waiting for a landscaping idea that never came to pass.  Since we didn't really want to spend a ton of money on this duck house as the ducks were basically an experiment anyway we decided on an earth ship construction and using reclaimed wood for the rest of the build.

The back wall of the duck house

We cut the tops off the tires and filled them with dirt row by row and stacked them that way.  It's helpful that we have tons of dirt and a small tractor.  The cutting the tops off of the tires was labor intensive for sure.  Some people use a reciprocating saw but I'm no good with power tools (drills are mostly safe it seems) so I was charged with cutting the tires with a utility knife.  Once you get the idea it's actually pretty quick and easy.

Landscaping timbers were also laying about in the yard waiting for that landscaping project I mentioned so we stacked a few on top of the tires to create the base for a roof.  Those were secured by BIG landscaping nails that were placed in concrete poured into a hole dug through the dirt of the tires.

We created a berm with dirt behind the tire wall and covered that with sod we took off of the top of the prairie to help keep erosion to a minimum.




Using more landscaping timbers we put four posts on the front side of the duck house and framed out the roof.

Using pallets and a pair of windows we had saved for just this sort of thing we added the front of the house.  The door is still needing to be installed as well as the "duck door" which will likely stay open through the year during the day.

We did purchase ply wood, tar paper and a few shingles for the roof, we did have some shingles and tar paper leftover from our barn build last summer.

The ducks were very happy to get into their more spacious house and out of the horse trailer. We were super happy we didn't have to shell out hardly any cash for this build.

Introductions

Entrance to great grandparents' ranch

As a child I spent a few years on the Wyoming Hereford Ranch surrounded by cattle.  In our yard though were a couple ducks, rabbits and chickens as well as a pony.  Ever since, actually we have to go farther back to...  maybe when I was born.  Honestly I can't put my finger on WHEN I knew I wanted to be surrounded by some kind of livestock.  My great grandparents (Middle Creek Ranch Inc) descended from family that landed on the shores of the US back before the revolutionary war.  I think we've probably been "homesteading" ever since.  My great grandparents were shepherds involved in the establishment of the Columbian sheep breed primarily and sometimes they raised cattle from what I understand.  Horses, sheep, rabbits, ducks are all at the top of my own homestead/farmstead list.


After a lot of research my husband and I decided that the best thing to do first off would be to raise the rabbits, our meat eating is really mostly just chicken.  Rabbits, unlike chickens, breed year round for the most part and well, they breed like rabbits meaning that two does and a buck should be able to feed my family a meal of meat three times a week at least, probably more.  I also feel like if I waste any part of my primary meat source I am not being a good steward so I wanted to make sure that the rabbit breed I chose would be one with a good pelt, and temperament because if the rabbit likes us the end of his life will be less traumatic (for him, not us I'm certain).  I'll talk later about the adventure of choosing a rabbit breed, housing and other specifics.

One morning while making my kids their breakfast eggs my daughter recognized that those are eggs like she saw on a program she was watching.  She commented it's like the egg that she saw where the chick came out of it.  I said yes, and she said, "Those come from the store though so won't have any chicks in them."  I said "oh?" and she further explained that the eggs with the chicks in them come from chickens.  I tried to explain the concept that all eggs come from birds etc...even the ones from stores but she just couldn't wrap her four year old head around the idea.  My local feed store had a batch of chicks, including ducklings so I began to research.  I dislike chickens generally so I decided to get ducks for egg production.  There are breeds of ducks producing up to 300 eggs a year!  Ducks are productive egg layers for up to 4 years where chickens are usually done after two.  We decided to include ducks for a source of food for the family.

THIS brings me to the subject of heritage breeds.  Because I'm a sucker for a cause and the fact that I'm very interested in sustainability I am doing my best to keep to the Heritage breeds of the stock I choose to raise here at Little Foxtail.  For a self sustaining family farm that may or may not branch out into sales of meat or livestock etc...  Heritage breeds are the best choice.  They are more hardy, they tend to be better mothers/breeders and have superior meat quality.  By breeding these animals and selling even tiny amounts of stock or meat it can help keep their numbers going, possibly raise their numbers and share with the public that they are a great asset.  Production livestock are really only good at growing quickly.  Not as lean as your heritage breeds and they often don't breed, especially production ducks.  They won't incubate eggs well at all.  Visit the Livestock Conservancy website to learn more about heritage breeds if you're curious.

Stay tuned for blog posts regarding the specifics of how we came to choose the breeds we have chosen and what we'll be doing for housing them.  The adventures of raising and of slaughter and butcher as we re-learn the things our great grandparents were doing as second nature.