Rabbit in White Wine with Sage Dumplings

It is hard to call this a recipe as I just cobbled it together on the fly and don't have exact amounts.

There is one rabbit leg per person and probably equal amounts of cream and white wine with a tsp mustard per person.

I fried the rabbit gently then put in to a small dish (one each) and then added white wine, french mustard and cream to half cover the rabbit. Then cooked in the oven for about 1 hr 30 mins before adding dumplings with sage in for the final 30 mins.

YUM!

The dog looks more interested in the beer than the rabbit!

One Giant Baby Rabbit

Blondie and Frostie were mated on the same day and both gave birth a week ago. Blondie just had one GIANT baby, Frostie had seven. I decided to get Blondie to adopt 3 of Frosties so they could all get more milk. 

A week later GIANT baby is still much bigger than his (or her I suppose but he seems like a boy to me...) adoptive siblings.

Cute bunny breakfast

After success selling Highlands and sheep we may sell some of these little guys when they are a bit older.

Deboning a rabbit for burgers

I have never boned one of the rabbits before as it looked like it would be too much of a fiddle. However I wanted to try it once, and actually it wasn't too bad.
We had stir fry rabbit from the back of a young one and the thing I really wanted to try which was rabbit burger made from an older rabbit.
Both came out well. The rabbit burger was 2/3 rabbit and 1/3 pork as it needed some fattier meat in it.

Koala babies born

Mrs Koala had 9 babies after exactly 31 days of incubation. What a good start she has made as a first time mum. Now she just needs to feed them!

Looking really pregnant the day before

Super nest with loads of fur. This is WAY beyond what the other does did.

Proud mum, she seems to be handling it well so far.

Little blind wiggly babies

Baby rabbit progress

We have two litters of rabbits with another on the way, hopefully.
It is very stressful as the babies are growing, as we have had such problems with them dying at around 4-6 weeks. We think it is coccidiosis and plan on treating these ones prophylactically.  There are downsides to this as the drugs prevents the uptake of thiamine which is also bad - so we cannot just massively dose them. I think we could also get immunity to the drug which would also be bad.

The older litter are currently 3 weeks (a bit under in these pictures) so entering a worrying age! I am about to start medicating... being sure you have got each bunny the right amount of medication is difficult too as it is given in the water and depending what they eat they get more or less...

The other litter is just over 2 weeks with eyes open now, they are all white and all but a couple have red eyes, I find that quite cute but Doug doesn't like it... 

Poppy says she doesn't mind what colour their eyes are she wants to eat them ALL.

Mr and Mrs Koala have mated

They have been with us around a month now so it seemed like they should be settled in enough.
There should hopefully be little Koala babies in 31 days time. They will be born black and then get the silvering as they grow.

Mrs Koala

Mr Koala (blue patch from the antibiotic spray on his abscess (which as far as I can tell is healing well)

More baby rabbits

Frosty had her babies while we were in La Mongie. First time mums don’t always do a great job. She has built them a nice nest which is a good start, now she just needs to feed them.

Their aunts and uncles are a week old now.

Baby bunnies (in a new nest box)

A few babies from the last litter got pulled out of the nest box by their mother (it happens to the strong ones if the lip of the box isn't high enough to scrape them off when the mother decides she is finished feeding them - she only does it once or twice a day)

So I designed a new nest box and Doug built it

It is very cold, so we hope that having the lid on the box, and the nice nest that Blondie has built will keep them warm enough.

Some of the babies will be white and some the same colour as the mother.

Gross picture of rabbit abscess (only read if you can handle it!)

This post is a bit gross so you may well want to skip it. But I want it in my 'diary'!

I have read that rabbits quite commonly get abscesses, but we have never had one before.

I noticed a big lump on Koala's face (he is one of the new rabbits). It is a solid lump here between my fingers (blue because I sprayed antibiotic on it)

Closer up. I am on a meat rabbit forum and the advice was that I had to lance it and let the puss out because otherwise it bursting might cause worse damage - and the poor guy was uncomfortable too, though still eating and drinking fine.

As per advice on the internet, I had to slice into it with a razer blade because rabbit puss is very gloopy and thick - they lack an enzyme that most other animals have that breaks it down apparently.
This is part of the way through the process of getting rid of it.
GROSS!!!

This left a huge hole in the poor fellows face. I put antibiotic spray (oxytetracycline) in it and will do so every day for a week.

Wish poor Koala a speedy recovery, rabbits are quite delicate and this has been quite traumatic for him, so we shall see...

New WABBITS

They are Champagne d'argent, a male and a female. We ordered them on the internet and they arrived by lorry - I now it sounds strange when MILLIONS of people round here have rabbits, but it is such an undertaking finding them and they are generally at least 30 mins drive away... It was very smooth and so far (they arrived yesterday) they seem fine. They are a bit under 4 months old, so not yet ready to mate. 

I think this one is the male. He is called Koala.

I think this one is the female (I have looked at her bits and still think that though it is a bit hard to tell on rabbits). She is called Sterling.

They are currently living in the stacking cages as they have never eaten anything but pellets so they need to be carefully transferred over to eating grass, hay and a few pellets.

Assuming he really is a buck we will get rid of one of the Harveys (our two existing white bucks are both called Harvey). This is the one we will keep as he is more randy.

 We will keep this doe (Blondie) who is one of the Harvey's daughter. She is hopefully pregnant.

This is Blondie's daughter (Snowy) who is also hopefully pregnant.

Rabbit Lasagne Recipe

I didn’t exactly measure the quantities so good luck!
You need some time to cook the rabbit so you can debone it easily

1 rabbit
1onion
Handful of mushrooms (or other veg if you prefer - carrot maybe?)
250ml white wine
2 tsp flour

Lasagne sheets
White sauce and cheese to top

Cut the rabbit in to pieces (5 or 6 is traditional) and fry the pieces in oil until browned
Cook the pieces in white wine with the onion for perhaps an hour or maybe more until the meat comes of the bones reasonably easily.
Keep the cooking liquid
Debone the rabbit and shred the meat
Boil the bones up for another 30 mins or so in a bit if water (not too much as you don't want the meat mix to be too liquid
Chop the mushroom up reasonably small and fry.
Add a couple of tsp flour to the mushrooms and fry a little bit more
Add the cooking liquid and the stock from boiling the bones and stir until thickened. It shouldn't be very thick as the liquid will absorb in to the pasta anyway, but reduce a bit if too runny or add water is too thick.

Mix the meat in to the stock and season the mixture (salt and perhaps pepper)

Make it all in to a Lasagne!

Chicks and baby rabbits

Not very seasonal but we have chicks and baby rabbits!

Hay

We have been super efficient about hay this year. Or at least got off to an efficient start, it can still all go wrong!
We got up at 7am on a Saturday morning (!) to go and collect 120 small bales of hay from a really nice guy who we found latish last winter. It is hard to find people who sell the small bales and we don't have the equipment that makes large ones easy. Previous winters we have had the neighbour deliver some large ones, but they have been very unwieldy to get bits off and fed to the animals.
We calculate we will need something like 400 small ones to do the horses for all their hay needs and to cover the cows between times. This assumes another neighbour delivering a large bale every fortnight in to the bottom field for the cows as he has the previous two winters.

Look! It is still dark! Saturday morning!

This is regain (which is the regrowth of the grass after the first cutting). It is more nutritious so will go to the rabbits, sheep and cows as the horses don't need that, it is too sweet and causes hoof problems.

He has a nice view of the mountains (ignoring mud in foreground)

Many journeys required to unload. But the nice man helped us so it was quite quick.

This is half of it (the hay not the regrowth). The rest is in the other hay store.

Lawnmower!

Although this line looks really neat the grass they have been on looks all mad and hacked up, so it has to get mown properly from time to time too. These ones are nearly ready for harvesting!

More and more mowing

The fields have been getting more and more infested with brambles. The animals will eat them when they are new shoots, but if they manage to take hold they won't eat them and then they grow in to massive balls that the animals cannot force their way through.

Doug has spent some of the spring mowing them with the sickle bar on the walk behind tractor.

These brown patches are all that are left of the big big ball of brambles they used to be.

This is the bottom field

Owen's field (there are still some big patches here - the plan is to nibble away at them over the years)

The corner field

This is by the potager where the hops grow.

This is the lawn that I mowed with the hover mower. Doug normally does it but I felt he needed help with the amount of mowing that needs doing at the moment!

I mowed the potager too

The rabbits are busy trying to help out too