bunny bungalow

Based on the design of my good friend Anglika's bunny cages I finished my second bunny bungalow. I hoped to move the mommy bunny with her six kids last week but we're back in another bout of winter so it's still too cold... Good thing bunnies like to snuggle because they're rapidly outgrowing the indoor hutch!

 This is the first one I made, with a frame of hemlock and siding of old oak floor boards. For the run I recycled wire panels of my old ferret apartment, made by stacking three bunny cages on top of each other, connected by wire stairs. These were large, good quality cages which I have not been able to find locally.

I found the hard way that making a bunny bungalow out of one piece made for a heavy and difficult to maneuver piece of woodwork, so I did some thinking and split the unit up in three pieces; two hutches and one run. The hutches are made with hemlock framing and painted pine tongue and groove boards, the run is made with scrapwood pine lumber which can be easily replaced as needed. I bought the largest rabbit cage at Tractor Supply to use as paneling for the run, but am not pleased with the measurements and quality of the metal wire. Next time I will buy rolls of wire and make one from scratch to my own dimensions (a 1x2 cm roll for the bottom and a 1x2 inch roll for the sides and top).

Inside of the bungalow living area. The floor is wire with holes small enough to accommodate bunny feet but large enough for the pellets to fall through. I will add a sliding door on the outside of the hutch door to partition off for ease of catching; similar to my first hutch, which proved very useful. I prefer the two hutch design as I found the bunnies tend to use one hutch as living quarters and one as a bathroom, which really cuts down on cleaning! A few times a year I give everything a good scrape, and remove the poop heap below for composting into our gardens. Bunny poop is neutral and can be used immediately, without lengthy composting.

The finished project. The lids are roofed with left over sheet metal (used to protect ordered sheet metal in shipment, from our carport project) and hinged upwards for easy access to the living quarters. This run has a door at the front, the first one a door at the top - either works. I will put another piece of sheet metal on top of the run to protect from snow and rain (the bunnies seem to be out more with roof on run).

One more hutch to go, and we'll have a bunny villa park :)

new bunnies; twice!

The two angora bunnies from my friend Angelika grew up to be real friendly, but also became two boys... and they grew loads of hair... I had a hard time remembering they needed to be combed, again, and again, and again and felt pretty bad about that, especially when one got a little matted so I combed him out well but almost left him naked! I was a little too focused on removing the matts I forgot to check how much was coming off, and that in early spring... Angelika had room again so she took her two boys back. I do still have a couple containers of angora hair but found it did not even work real well for felting... so much for that idea.

I did learn I like to have bunnies, especially for the amount of weeds that go in and the piles of poopies that come back out, but are no good with high maintenance breeds. A friend of mine came across an older meat breed doe, a Giant Chin (chinchilla, as in similar color) and I ended up buying her. After a lot of looking and asking around and visiting the Buffalo County Fair and the Syracuse State Fair, I was unable to find her a buck, any meat type buck, anywhere! I happened to mentioned this unfruitful search to a tin can rally friend of ours, who laughed and said he had just started breeding his own meat bunnies a few years back and to come on over anytime. He lives like two blocks down our street...

 So that's how our Giant Chin Anabel had a very enthusiastic date with this black New Zealand buck, 30 days later resulting in these two precious little bundles of fur...

Anabel is not with us anymore, she developed some sort of cancer and died late fall, but her daughter Clarabel and son Albert are still with us. For a short while they lived side by side in the bunny bungalow until I realized - Clarabel was hopping around with a hay mustache - that that wire middle partition might not be as much of a procreation hurdle for bunnies as I assumed... so now Clarabel lives with her six kids in the sunroom and Albert is by himself, at least until the boys are old enough to be sexed...

Bunnies!

Haven't been here for a while... it feels like forever!
Summer always is our busy season, lots of gardening, selling photography and new this year: making soaps. It's getting a little less hectic recently, so I'll try to back up and add some things that happened the past couple months over the next couple posts :)

One of our goat kids died few weeks back from a major worm infestation we totally missed... by the time I realised something was wrong, dropped off a fecal sample at cornell and started her worm treatment it was already too late. Right after that we got an open email warning about major worm infestations because of the wet spring - we're not the only ones to loose animals this year.

On a happier note, I was able to sell two of the girls, Karamel from Thirteen and an unnamed boer from Monica, to Sarah who was Simon's toddler room teacher. She's starting her own petting zoo (and my girls sure are used to little kids by now!) to accompany her new daycare. The girls will live lives of plenty (of hugs and treats) I'm sure!

And we seem to have enquired two bunnies - two babies from Angelika's angora bunny collection. They are real friendly tho not tamed much, we're working on that! No food unless they eat some from my hand first :)

Initially they lived in the chicken ark which they outgrew pretty fast, so with some left over hemlock 2x4's and repurposed tongue and groove oak flooring I made a two apartment bunny house which works really well. The layout is something Angelika's husband Simon designed for her bunnies and I copied for mine - I really like I can raise a wire wall in the middle and separate the bunzen immediately when needed, with a house for them on either end.

And if the bunnies do go back to Angelika I can use it for brooding chickens which would be really nice instead of the sunroom!