No, God no, not me! It’s Mary, one of my rabbits. All of our rabbits were free. The last two (a boy and a girl) came from a coworker of my husband’s. When they were brought to us, they were in the same cage, and both were consenting adults, and I thought, “better write down the dates, just in case”. So I’ve been watching her closely.
Today, when I put some alfalfa hay into the cages like I do every morning, Mary picked up as much hay as she could get into her mouth and started frantically looking around for a place to put it. Ahhh, I thought. So I put the nest box in the cage, and arranged it to where she would have some privacy, and couldn’t get between it and the cage wall (which she kept trying to do). I stuffed it with some shredded paper that I use for litter under the cages, and gave her another big handful of hay. After a while, she stopped trying to take all the stuff out of the box, and started putting it all into the box. Then she started pulling out her own fur to line it with. I think we’ll be having baby rabbits sometime in the next few days. VERY exciting.
Below is a video I took of her early in the process.
Note I now have “baby guards” on the lower sides of this cage, so that if the babies get out of the nest box when they are little, they can’t fall through the cage sides.
Miles Away Farm Blog © 2012, where this is NOT the rabbit we had intended to breed, so we might have two pregnant females. Alice, the purposely bred female, is due (if she is pregnant) in about a week.
MilesAwayFarm
Miles Away Farm Blog 
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July 25, 2012 at 9:09 am
Rachel Turiel
Baby bunnies! How exciting. Will you, *gulp*, eat them?
Also, on the poo, I am always wishing for more readily-accessible animal manure. (Also, I just read that one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite things to do was contemplate his manure pile). xoxo
July 25, 2012 at 9:28 am
MilesAwayFarm
Yup, we will eat them. When you do the math that a mama rabbit can give birth to 8 babies four times a year, it doesn’t take very long to figure out that you would be overrun if you didn’t. Saw a great youtube on backyard rabbits. The guy would make a half circle shaped fence, put it out onto the lawn next to the patio, and put the rabbit down in the grass. While it was peacefully munching grass, he would use a pellet gun to off it between the ears. It never knew what hit it or saw it coming. And MUCH more easy to process than chicken. But damn they are cute. As for compost, I like to contemplate mine too, I just don’t like to turn it. Grin.