Project Bunny

As one of our rabbits died recently, we were very happy to accept a rabbit a friend offered us. She is 6 months old and we have called her Bernardette. I went and picked her up on my almost birthday (my real birthday being the 29th of Feb, I count it as the 28th other years)
We are giving her a few days to get settled before mating her as she is quite shy at the moment.

Ginger (the remaining female fauve rabbit) failed to give birth a month after having mated with Bunny Boy, so we mated her again. At the time we were not sure whether it was Bunny Boy or her that caused the failure to conceive, so I have arranged to borrow a male rabbit from a friend (he is bored and apparently 'getting his rocks off' will entertain him - the rabbit that is not the friend...).
Then this morning, 30 days after a visit to Bunny Boy, Mrs Robinson gave birth to 11 babies. Unfortunately she still hasn't worked out what she is meant to be doing . She had pulled a bit of fur, but not built a nest and had had them scattered all over the cage. She had eaten half of one and there was one that looked like it had been born dead, I brought the rest in and warmed them up under the heat lamp, seven of nine (yes sounds like a star trek character) came back to life while we were out at our riding lesson. During this time also Mrs Robinson had got on and built a proper nest with hay and a lot more fur. So I have slipped some cardboard under the nest and put the seven revived babies in it. No idea whether she will feed them or not, will check tomorrow, if she does not I don't suppose they will survive until then.

So all in all we haven't made any concrete progress on project bunny, but at least we know Bunny Boy is fertile, and Mrs Robinson has slightly improved her mothering skills in that she managed to build a nest eventually this time.

Ginger (the remaining fauve de bourgogne female)

Mrs Robinson

Bernardette (if you look at the photo of Ginger you can see
why she is called Bernardette - the cages are made by Bernard
Semiac and say it all over them.

Bunny Boy is bottom left - his official name is Bernard