Rabbit Communication

Anyone interested in rabbit communication should check this out: http://language.rabbitspeak.com/rabbittalk_intro.html

Satin Angora Breeding Stock

We picked up two satin angora last weekend and I finally got around to photographing them today. Both are from Almosta Ranch stock and I'm very pleased with them thus far.

This is our buck, Bacon. He's a broken red with the prettiest patterning.

The next few are of Lola, our chestnut doe. She was missexed originally so Lola seems to suit her. She's also a carrier for the ruffus gene, so we should expect to see some more reds in future litters!

But I did just save loads of mony on my Car Insurance by switching to Geico!

We're in the process of getting the barn set up, so we've been haunting the local home improvement stores looking for ideas about how to do it cheaply. We're taking a bunch of basic cages and turning them into "hangers" by (you guessed it) hanging them from the ceiling of the barn. We're doing this because it's cheap and easy, and it also makes cleaning a lot more convenient. However, we didn't have a chance to actually go ahead and price the initial hanging scheme that we had devised.

Let me describe the initial plan: hang the cages from the barn rafters with a loop of chain attached to each corner of the cages, and then repeat this downward for each additional level below that.
For our set up, with 8 cages, that's 20 connection points per level. For the top level, it is attached directly to the rafters, and each subsequent level is tied to it by about 4 inches of chain, with a connector on the top and the bottom.

So, for our two rows of cages that's: (20 * (.47 * 3) + (2 * 20 * 1.8) + 2 * (20 * .47 * .3) + (2 * 2 * 20 * 1.8) = $28.20 + $72 + $5.64 + $144 = $249.84

And that's just for the damn hanging part.

Now, since one of the nice folks in the hardware department there
pointed out that we could use "uncoated steel utility wire" instead of all those damn connectors, we could cut out all of the new connectors except for those needed to hang from the ceiling (all 20 of them).

That comes out to: (20 * (.47 *3)) + (2 * 20 * 1.8) + 2 * 20 * (.3 * 20 * 2 * (4 / 110)) = $28.20 + $72 + $17.46 = $117.66

Now, that's a lot of savings, so I was a little bit skeptical at first that it could be so easy.

I decided to do an experiment to test the tensile strength of the wire. I tied the wire in a simple loop around the wooden handle of a gardening tool, and I tied the other end in the same way around a piece of scrap wood we had lying around. To conduct the tensile strength test, I sat in a chair, with the scrap wood braced against the floor by my feet (standing on it) and the garden tool in my hands; I then pulled on the wire as hard as I could.

The result: the wire did not snap, though it did embed one end about a 1/4 inch deep into the scrap wood. That was enough for me.

Winnings Announcement

The official work from our last show came in, and according to the officials these are the official results:

Hrothgar (REW Sr. Buck English Angora): Placed 1st in his class. No Leg awarded, due to insufficient competitors.

Flour (REW Jr. Doe English Angora): Placed 1st in her class, and won Best Opposite Sex Variety. No Leg awarded due to insufficient competitors.

Analysis: it sounds like we've got some nice rabbits, if only we could find some more competition to really show it. Hrothgar probably would have done above average if there had been more competitors, but is unlikely (in my opinion) to have pulled in a Leg. Flour probably would have been in the top two or three if there had been more entries, and I feel confident that she could have gotten a Leg.

Pregnancy Update

It's been about 10 days since we bred Flour, our nice REW English Angora doe, and she's looking pretty good. She's put on nearly a pound since her breeding, and she's looking happy and healthy. I'm guessing that the breeding took fine, but we won't know for certain for another week or two.

ANN: Satin Angora

Well, we recently purchased two beautiful Satin Angora Jr's from Kathy. We have a Broken Red (or possibly fawn or chocolate, we'll have to let him grow a bit to tell for sure) Buck with amazing markings named Bacon, and a pretty little Chestnut Doe Rufus-carrier named Lola. We're still looking for a Red (or other similar Rufus-carrier) doe to fill out our breeding program.

In the future we're expecting to get a Red line (that will likely include Copper's), and a Broken Red line.

Vulcan Nerve Pinch

Dani showed me a neat trick last night that I thought should be written down. There is a specific place that you can rub on a rabbit to make it relax (provided that it's not already especially wound up). Just place one finger on each side of the rabbit's head, just underneath the eye, approximately where the cheekbone is in humans, and gently rub till the rabbit closes its eyes. And, that's all there is to it.

When done on an upright rabbit, they just seem to enjoy it, but when they're on their backs, it can actually make a fussy rabbit calm down enough to be handled upside-down. We used it to groom the mats out of our Angora buck's chin and armpits (which he normally hates us messing with).

Now, it's not a perfect solution, but the rabbits don't seem to mind if you do it.

In other news, apparently both of our Silver Foxes really like to be scratched on top of their backs. The little timid doe even lays down for you to do it to her. How strange...

New Cages

The cages came in yesterday, and man, are the freakishly heavy and awkward. They're only 70lbs a piece, but it's like moving a mattress in that they wiggle constantly. Pointless complaints aside, the cages are really high-quality. I put together 1/2 of one of the 8' units, and it took about 2 hours, several blisters, and a lot of swearing, but I've got a really solid cage out of it. They'll make fine hangers, if we distribute the weight evenly.

I'm considering using chain links for our connectors instead of cable ties, since readjustment with a chain just means moving something a little bit, instead of making a whole new connector.

We're probably going to be sidling the cages up along the walls, but I think we could probably put them across the open space too, if we wanted to simplify installation.

Long Term Plans

I've been asked a couple times exactly what we're going to be raising in our rabbitry, and I've given it a lot of thought, and I've come up with a policy and some goals.

First the overall policy:
I intend to do the following:

1. I will not breed rabbits that do not conform to the ARBA Standard for their breed.
   
2. I will not breed a rabbit which is unhealthy, or has shown itself incapable of producing reasonably healthy offspring.
3. I will not breed rabbits to their relatives without having a good and specific reason for doing so, such as for the isolation and propagation of recessive or desirable traits.
4. I will not breed a rabbit which has an unreasonably poor temperament. My rationale for this is that I have eliminated other factors which may be causing the poor temperament beside genetics.
5. The only exception to the above statements being experimental breedings to remove unwanted features from an otherwise desirable gene pool.
   

Now, my present goal is for the rabbitry to raise three specific breeds of rabbit: English Angora, Satin Angora, and Silver Fox. I feel that each of these breeds would be a good fit for the rabbitry, and I do not intend to go outside of that list within the foreseeable future.

Of Llamas and Rabbits

This weekend we attended the local Llama Show. It was interesting to say the least, especially given that I'd never really interacted with a Llama before. The highlight of the morning would be when we got a chance to chat with a woman who raises Satin Angoras and Alpacas. She had a lot of hand-spun products for sale, including blended wool products made from Alpaca, Llama, and Angora wool. The texture that the blending produced was silky and pleasant in a way that's hard to explain without just feeling it. She said that the softest ones were an 80% Alpaca, 20% (Satin?) Angora mixture. Seeing as Dani picked up a large bag of Alpaca wool, and an even larger bag of Llama wool, I think that the Class A wool from Flours first sheering will wind up in a blended yarn at some point.

Behavioral Observations

Since we picked up the Silver Foxes, we finally have enough rabbits in our herd to really be able to compare their behavior.

By Gender: All of our males have been much more adventurous than their female counterparts, as well as seeming less fearful or timid overall.

By Age: Those rabbits that we have had the longest seem the most at ease with us, and are most easily handled.

By Upbringing: Those rabbits that we know have been extensively handled starting at a young age are most easily handled when they grow up. Examples include the hand-reared rabbits from Aboundingful's Rabbits, and the rabbit that we know was handled by several children from Rhonda. The handling status of the Silver Foxes is unknown, but they are cautious enough to make us think that they may have been handled less in comparison.

By Breed: Our English Angora all seem to be relatively placid and calm. Our dogs and cats do not scare them at all, and they seem to have no fear of us when we move suddenly or make loud noises (more like curiosity). They don't really like being groomed with a blower, but they all put up with grooming after they calm down a bit, without biting, thrashing, etc. The Silver Foxes, on the other hand seem slightly more timid than their English Angora counterparts, though we can't rule out other factors causing this besides breed. However, when calm, they are affectionate and pleasant. They've never bitten either of us, but neither likes to be handled overly much (petting is okay, once they calm down).

Right now, I'm trying to socialize the Silver Foxes more to see if their behavior is strictly due to breed (which I'm assuming means that we would not see a change in behavior with increased period of ownership), or if they just need to get used to us. A handful of sunflower seeds to act as a bribe seems to work pretty well. As well, I'm intentionally picking them up and holding them for short periods during "play time" to get them used to the idea. Right now, all I've gotten out of it is a dozen or so scratches, but I'll keep with it. The "football" hold, additionally, seems to work best on them (if you count the number of scratches, at least).

Flour's first hair cut

I think I should point out that this was a first for all involved. I've never given a rabbit a haircut before and doubt this will be my last. Overall I'll say it was pretty messy and if I could do it all over again I'd try to do this chore outside. I'm still picking fluff out of the carpet and my husband's beard. I even caught our dog trying to eat some earlier today.

Anyway we weighted Flour before hand and gave her a good final brushing. She was 5 lbs 12 oz, pretty good size for a young doe. We even got her to pose pretty one last time...

When it was all said and done it was about 2 hours later. She weighted 6oz lighter and looked a hell of a lot stupider. That's probably more my fault than hers but I hope I'll get better with practice.

Anyway, I know Ryan already posted about this, but the pictures are really worth seeing...

First Breeding (Technical details)

Having already mentioned the amusing bits, I thought that for posterity I'd say that we bred them first at 8:45 PM on Thursday June 13 2008, and then again several hours later at 8:00AM the following morning.

The larger space was nice, because we could reach the doe afterwards, and I don't think the dimensions of their cages would allow that.

Once they were done, we held the doe while slowly walking around the apartment to keep her from urinating the semen out of her. For the most part she was a real doll, and didn't mind being held. I held her partially upright and reclined on her back (kind of like a baby) for about 5 minutes, before returning her to her cage.

After checking back in on her later, the doe was behaving as if nothing interesting had happened, and we didn't see any change in her eating or drinking habits.

The buck of course strutted around like a cock on the walk. He seemed to be in a very good mood afterwards, and did not object to being handled or returned to his cage.

First Breeding

We bred Flour and Hrothgar for the first time today, and wow... I didn't really expect what I saw. This is my first time mating rabbits, so I'm a bit new to it all, but I've been reading the books on the subject, and they all say something along the lines of "the male will mount the female, and he will dismount in short order, indicating that the mating has finished". They mentioned that he would grunt, they mentioned foot stomping, but holy crap they didn't mention that it would be hilarious.

So I set Hrothgar down on the floor in the space we let them run around in. Leaving him there, I go and grab our doe, Flour. She's shaved already, so she looks ridiculous, tiny, and lumpy. When I drop her in the pen with him, she immediately takes an interest in our buck, and starts frolicking in a circle around him. Meanwhile, the stupid buck doesn't even notice her come in, as he's totally taken with sniffing the one small clump of hair left on the floor after we got done shaving the doe the night before. He's sniffing it so intently that his head furnishings totally conceal the bounding doe that's next to him.

Finally, after she nearly kicks him in the head, he realizes that she's there, that she's female, and that there's no cage in his way this time. Like a viking intent on rape, he pursues her in an ever tightening circle in the middle of the hall, until bam! he's on her. In the blink of an eye, he's behind her, humping like it was an Olympic sport, until he suddenly finishes, grunts like a triumphant viking warrior, and promptly falls off to the left.

The doe was left with a "what the hell just happened?" look, and the buck just sat there thumping his foot happily.

The whole thing took less than 10 seconds, but Dani and I didn't stop laughing for a whole two minutes.

An analysis of my decision to purchase two SF juniors

Let's start out by laying out the approximate cost of this:

• Drive 584 miles, at $4.00/gallon, with 23 mi/gallon on our car = $101.57
• Price of the non-lop = $65
• Price of lop = $50
• Total = $216.57

Now, here's what we get for that much money: Two Jr Does from a GC x 1Leg litter. This means that there is a high likely hood that they will individually be of high quality. Both of them were in molt in the pictures, so it's hard to judge the quality of their coats from that. Both of them looked like they had good shape in the pictures as well. One, however has a droop ear right now.

If she's genetically predisposed to it, then we can't use her as a brooder, if she's injured then we still can, and if she's just got Summer Ear, they we can show her too.

I'm betting that she's got Summer Ear, but I'll settle for an injured brood doe.

I'm crossing my fingers in any case.

Tattoo update + shaving

So, after yesterday's post, I'd like to say the following:

• We tattooed Freya with the Inkinator, and Dani practiced ahead of time on a banana. The gun was lightly scrubbed with the cleaning brush, and rinsed out in rubbing alcohol. The process went like this: I wrapped Freya in a towel, and held her still(ish). Then Dani went and cleaned the ear with a little rubbing alcohol. She decided that it would be easiest to tattoo the rabbit if the ear was braced out flat against my leg. That position seemed to work ok, but the small ear, and its tendency to fold on itself forced us to try and hold it open rather than hold the bunny firmly. The rabbit tried thrashing a couple times, but generally gave up after a while. The ear itself had enough odd features to it (like folds of cartilage) that we had to reposition her several times. She only seemed to mind the tattooing when we got close to the cartilage ridges in her ear, I'm guessing that they're sensitive. The tattoo was done with the black ink that the gun came with, which I shook up prior to use. It may not have really gotten into the tattoo a couple times, so we aren't sure if we used enough ink. We put some A+D Antibiotic ointment on the inside of the ear after we were done to seal it all up. Other than that, she seems to be doing ok, and we'll just have to see how the tattoo turns out in a couple days.
• The Silver Foxes both seem to love birdseed, so I'm going to try and train them to be less standoffish and fussy by rewarding them with seeds when they come close to me, or allow me to handle them without fussing.
  
• We also shaved Flour, or rather trimmed her down with a pair of craft scissors. It took about an hour and a half, and she produced 6 oz of wool. That's not too bad. We discarded some of the soiled stuff from her feet and vent, but the long stuff is going to Dani for spinning, and the shorter stuff (less than an inch in length, and probably longer than a 1/4 inch) were set aside for use as nesting material later this month. She was remarkably good throughout the whole process, but got a little flustered near the end. We did top to bottom, but we may want to reverse that in the future. She also looks ridiculous. Her vent was thoroughly trimmed for mating preparation, and we'll do a similar trimming to Hrothgar's crotch tonight. Hopefully that will be enough that he can actually achieve coitus without being blocked by fur.
  

Supplies

Alright, so here's the supplies I need to pick up in the near-future:

1. Replacement tension-spring (preferably with finer-loop hook connector) to replace the over-stretched one.
2. Another 50lbs bag of feed; Blue Seal "Sho" formula (I'm guessing that's the name).
3. Another couple of bags of litter-pellets, to hold us over until the worms are ready.
4. Wood to make the worm-boxes
5. Cables, cable cutter (may be able to substitute our tin-snips here), a swagging tool, and several of those collars (the little metal eyelet that you use to make the loop), several connector clips.
6. Several sheets of plastic tarping (the kind to divert waste away from the wall).
7. Several sheets of "roof" material, that we can clip to the cages so as to prevent rabbits peeing on each-other.

I think that's everything I can remember right now, but that's pretty much it.

Ventilation

A conversation with Ellen tells me that we might be able to get away with setting up a number of fans and having windows and what-not open. This would probably lower the temp enough that an AC wouldn't be necessary to keep them cool.

Should we do this, I'd like to design some kind of screen doors for the barn. The windows we can screen up easily enough (I think), but the big bay doors will require that we make up some custom screen doors of our own. It shouldn't be too hard, just a couple hinges, some properly sized planks, and then mesh over the gap. I'd guess that having some kind of wire mesh backed up with netting would work great at keeping out flies and such while letting plenty of air through. I'd guess chicken-wire and mosquito-netting would work.

We should probably look into figuring out how to partition off the doorway area from the street proper, without looking crude. That, and figuring out the kinematics of the doors so that we don't get annoyed by it all.

Tattoo Prep

I'm not really sure what Dani's exact plan is, but I think we're planning on letting Freya wear herself out a bit, then wrapping her in an old towel, and hoping that the Inkinator works right. I'm rather concerned that we'll need to immobilize her head, so that she can't jerk around or bite. However, I don't really know how we could do that and first off avoid suffocating or overheating the rabbit, and secondly having the correct ear available for convenient tattooing.

In place of Vaseline, we've got a mild anti-bacterial petroleum-jelly-based ointment that we'll rub on to make sure she's ok.

Stressing out the rabbit is a big concern for me, but I don't really know what we can do to avoid it other than do it fast and with as little pain as possible.

So many firsts

Well, things have been a bit hectic around here, so I thought I'd start up this blog to record them, just in case anyone's interested.

We've got a busy week planned:

Today: Tattooing Freya with the Ear Number that Rhonda never put in. I also need to send the deposit check out to Josette in Ohio (I hope I chose well).

Tomorrow: Shaving Flour (and possibly trimming Hrothgar) so that we can breed them. It's such a shame, she's got a gorgeous coat.

Friday: Mate Flour and Hrothgar twice. Once in the morning, and another in the evening. This will be a very weird way for me to start my workday.

Next Week: Touch up the tattooed Ear Numbers on the Silver Foxes.

Other than that, we're getting in the cages in the next week or so. I'll have to assemble those, and drop them off at the new place. Then we need to get the setup supplies and the stuff we need to make the worm boxes.

I need to figure out how to get effective cooling with the new barn, while also having good air-flow.