Angora Bunny Report :-)

Hi everybody, this is Theresa. Mary asked me to write a post regarding my little bunnies. I would like to introduce my fifteen rabbits:  Mittens, Marbles, Minnie, Mia, and a new litter of ten!

Mittens is my oldest. I've had her for three years now. I got her with another one (Slippers) who ended up dying a year ago.

(Slippers and Mittens:)

So, I got another girl (Marbles) a few months later, to keep her company. Well, only two months after we got her, it became apparent that she was actually a he as I found a (dead) baby in the pen. Sooo, one of my girls wasn't really a girl... yup, sure enough Marbles was a boy! So, we quickly got to work making a bachelor pen for the poor guy.

(Marbles)


Then, about a month later (near Easter) I was watching Mittens, thinking that she was acting a little strange. The 'rabbit midwife' () in me was right. Yeah, she had a baby right there in front of me. After a few moments, it was apparent that she wasn't going to take care of it. So, I took the baby in and fed it with an eyedropper, and I also would take Mittens into the house to let her drink. When the baby got to be six weeks old we were able to find out that it was a girl. So, she was then finally able to get her name, which is Minnie. She lived in the house with us for at least three months, until it was warm enough for her to stay outside. Now she has a cage in front of the house and every time you walk past she practically screams at you: "pet me!!!" And who could resist?

(Minnie)
I sure can't!

So, after a while, we all decided that we wanted babies again, and that maybe she (MIttens) would take care of them this time. Sure enough, a month later there were four babies and (thankfully) she was taking care of them! It was so much fun watching them grow up and seeing them bounce around their pen. Sadly, when they were six weeks old it was time to start selling some of my babies. A few hours in front of the local grocery store sold three of them. The forth one didn't sell (Mia) so she's been with us since.

(The litter. Mia on the right)


I had Marbles breed Mittens and Minnie a little over a month ago. Mittens had one baby outside her house. It was still alive when I found it, and I quickly brought him/her into the house. It's one foot was hanging out through the wire on the bottom of her cage and had some teeth marks on it, (cats?) but it seemed like it would be okay. He/she lived for three days, fine and very bouncy, but then we found it dead on the forth day, so we were thinking it probably had something to do with it's foot.  His/her name was Muffin for its short life span.

(Muffin nursing on Mittens)

Then, Minnie had her first litter five days ago. She had ten (!!) big healthy babies, I was pretty surprised that she had so many, especially since her mom's biggest litter was four, and angora rabbits usually only have three or four at a time. Also, it was her first litter! I don't know how I'm ever going to name all these babies!! They're sooo adorable.

(Minnie's first litter)


I just sheered Marbles and Mia yesterday.

(Marbles getting his hair cut)
(Mia after her sheering. Once sheered, we found that she has a multi colored undercoat. It's white and black spotted!)

I was supposed to sheer them like a month ago when it was warmer so that they wouldn't get cold. Since I didn't get to it, I made them both little coats .

(Marbles and his new coat)

Mittens and Minnie both pulled out a lot of their hair to make nests for their babies, so I didn't have to sheer them.

We'll be sharing pictures of the new litter as they get older . Hope you all enjoyed reading this!
Theresa

---Hello all, this is Mary. First, thank you Theresa for the post (I would never have been able to keep 'em all straight!), you did a good job. Secondly, we saw our first snow this morning as we were sitting around praying morning prayer. Johnny said it felt like Christmas and I couldn't disagree. Big fluffy flakes always instills the Christmas spirit into me. Lastly, we have a fun, silly slideshow/vid to share with you all. Stephen made it on the boys' new movie editing program for the experience. Theresa's sheering and the Veggie Tales song brought about the idea. It turned out adorable so I hope you can all view it! God Bless!!----