Nest box updates

The babies are here and all is well. The kits are 5 days old today and already they've figured out they can dig. I keep the nest box with me in my office and you can hear them scratching away. It's adorable.

Anyway, Flour seemed a bit confused at first but she's been taking very good care of them. I bring her the nest box in the morning when I'm making my feed rounds and she usually jumps right in to nurse them or pulls more fur to fix the nest. She appears to be feeding all of them, even the runts have round full bellies when I pull them out so I'm not worried anymore.

I snapped a few pics the morning...

Babies!

This is just a quick announcement: Flour apparently had 8 healthy pink and squirming kits today around 1PM. Dani says that Flour had them out on the wire-floor of the cage, but that they were clean and quite alive, so she put them in the nest-box. I'll update with more detailed information once I get back in tonight.

Day 27

Flour has begun moving about her cage with a new sense of purpose and its clear we may be seeing babies this weekend. She'll pick up clumps of material and carry it for awhile but hasn't given us the impression she knows what to do with it yet--its very cute. I caught a picture of her in the act of "not nest building"--if that can even describe it. Sorry about the quality of the picture, she didn't want to stay still.

Aside from her apparent confusion she seems to be doing quite well. Her attitude has barely changed throughout her pregnancy and even now still welcomes any attention offered to her. I will be monitoring her closely for the coming days. Flour is one of my favorite girls and if this litter turns out we'll get some very nice rabbits out of her.

Nearly 20 Days Hence

Flour's coat is coming back quite nicely. She doesn't look nearly as lumpy as she did two weeks ago. With the summer going like it is, I think she actually likes being in this cut--which is great because I don't want any more stress on her than there has to be.

I'm also keeping an eye on her weight in prep for the big day. She gained back the 6 oz lost by her haircut within the first week of her pregnancy which was a big surprise to me. At day 19 she's added more than a pound to her formerly slight build and its becoming very clear the mating took. Way to go Hrothgar!


"Who are you calling FAT?!"

With any luck we should have a litter around the 14th. First litters are tough so I'm trying not to get my hopes up....but its so hard not to. :-P Expect updates.