Mater's corner: Star crossed lovers

 

We really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We found an ad on Facebook for meat rabbits and purchased a male and female (Pip and Nip) and two cages for about 100 bucks. I researched online about what to feed them. My husband had already set up a giant enclosure with a fence through the middle to keep the male and female separated. Initially we had no plans of breeding them. They were solely for back up, emergency food. It took less than a day for them to figure out how to get to each other. We tried to separate them again. About a week later I went out to give them their food and water and noticed all these tiny mouse like creatures all over the pen. It turns out we'd bought a pregnant female. Unfortunately, every single kit died. I was horrified and wanted to keep them separate forever. It was not meant to be. They found their way into each other's pen again. This time I prepped for kits. I bought a nesting box on Amazon for $45. Two weeks in I found that the two of them had dug a burrow and then buried it back up and stamped it down so that I wasn't quite sure where it was. I made sure there was plenty of clean dry hay. Nip was very well fed. At about day 25 she started acting unusual. She wasn't eating or drinking very much. I suspected she had had kits, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out where. They certainly were not in the nesting box I'd made for her. I kept going out and trying to spy on her to see if she would reveal where these kits were. In the meantime her beau, Pip found his way to her again. Two days later, I sent my eldest out to check on the rabbits. She was standing by their pen for an awfully long time. I called from the back door. She turned to look at me and said "I think Pip is dead"! It turns out that he was. Something had breeched over the fencing we'd set up and ripped off Pips nose and left puncture marks on his body. It was awful. Nip was unharmed and we briefly suspected her of the crime. It seemed very unlikely though considering their amorous relationship. In our efforts to keep Nip safe we moved her into the quail enclosure. Three days later our dog jumped into the old rabbit pen and crazily started digging. It turned out that Nip did have a litter of kits. The poor dears would have been completely starved to death if not for my hound dog. He was likely intent on eating them (he had one in his mouth), but we managed to rescue the 7 kits and return them to their mother. Praise God the dears were unharmed from the ordeal. Nip nursed them for a couple weeks but then pretty much refused to as she was pregnant again from that brief dalliance with Pip before his untimely and brutal demise! Once I met the adorable baby rabbits I knew there was no way that I was called to meat rabbiting. These first seven were named Pip Jr, Nix, Black Shot Pickles, Black Nose, Flash, Wilby, and Bluey.