Black Bunny Babies!

Black Bunny had her babies yesterday! She had a total of 6: 2 black, 2 white/albino, 2 mottle black!

Aren't they so preciously gross??  No fur, eyes glued shut.

 We're trying to track the genetics of the buck we have. He CLEARLY has the albino gene (The 3 albinos from his first litter with White Rabbit and then these 2 whites from his second).  From what I can figure there are 5 genes that play in rabbit *fur* and albino is recessive but if 2 recessives are displayed it over-rides ALL of the other 4..?

 So I'm going to look into that further, since we do not really like the white with red eye, if these 2 white looking ones have red eyes (and we do a couple more test breeds to confirm this suspicion) we may replace this buck with one that may not have this recessive. We kept Dopey, but if both buck and doe have recessive albino genes, then he is most like a recessive carrier and we were planning on putting him with Black Rabbit - who we know now is a recessive carrier... We would still end up with some albinos.  Stinkin' red eye rabbits. 

BABY BUNNIES!!!

We are so excited, our first baby bunnies were born last night! The little grey Netherland Dwarf doe had 3 little babies that are all healthy and fairly big considering her size. We pulled them out of this giant nest she built the day before and looked at them and took pictures. They are healthy, fat, wiggly looking little fur-less blind babies. Not to mention we are all super excited because we doubted the level of success we would have. Not only had we heard and read that Netherland Dwarfs were the hardest to breed, but who doesn’t doubt their first attempt at anything?  These babies are to be sold as pet bunnies – they should be less than 2 pounds – the White Rabbit is our meat doe and we will probably breed her in the next month or so since she’s getting close to 7 pounds. Those babies will be raised to be fat and then for food (for people or snakes or whatever). 

Aren't they so cute, but grotesque at the same time??


We've also been getting visits from some deer who have taken an interest in the goat food. They've figured out how to work their tongues through the fence into the goat food buckets we've got hanging and just snack away! (Excuse the really, really bad pictures - it was the best I could do without spooking them.)

Look really close and you can see the glowing eyes. The deer had been snacking out of the goat food. It's hilarious. It drives the ducks and big house dogs insane. Absolutely, wildly insane.


And for the random joy of it:

 Just look at that giant Rupert!