As these stories always go, we didn't only have three rabbits. But you know, it was not my little boy's fault, those two girls chewed right through a 2 X 4 and into his apartment in their condo. They had a double sized apartment, but they just HAD to go 'play' with him. I was bringing my son home from a violin lesson one night in February, right after we had a warm spell, and sure enough, here is little old Dotty in playing with my Sable. The poor little guy was corrupted! And 30 days later, we had 8 more little furballs!
Oh, I did the research. This breed (Mini Rex), is supposed to have an average of 4-6 kits in a litter. Well, obviously I have above average rabbits. And, you know, a large litter like that is likely to lose a couple. Nope, just one, it was a peanut. [peanut =a rabbit born with a double dwarf gene which causes them to die within the first few days due to an incompetent digestive system]. The rest were perfectly healthy rabbits: Otto, Audrey, Tink, Cookie, Darth, Caramel, and Sandy.
If you were wondering, yes, I have become.... a rabbit breeder. It is in my nature really. I grew up on a dairy farm, but we always had other animal species around for 4-H or whatever. I liked looking through the breeding books we had for selecting bulls to breed the cows and heifers to to make them produce better offspring. I loved judging animals, especially dairy, in contests for FFA and 4-H. So, it was no surprise that I jumped right into it with both feet. The most rabbits we have had at one time has been 34. My hubby thinks I am crazy, and though he loved Sable too, he isn't really crazy about this little hobby of mine and wishes I would get rid of all of them. He says if I had an outbuilding to put them in it wouldn't be so bad, but they are in our garage. I think, what the heck, my minivan never gets to park in there anyway. Besides, it would cost a couple thousand dollars to put up a small structure to keep them in, so why not the garage? I'm just sayin..... My friend who is a big time, national rabbit show winning crazy kind of breeder has about 200 most of the time.
Really though, I am hoping to get them out in their own building or something that is part of the garden shed I want to put up next spring. They make perfect fertilizer.
Sometimes there are silver linings to the black clouds of life. Remember, I have dogs. I have Standard Poodle dogs. Standards were developed/bred to be waterfowl retrieving dogs. They are said to be the second smartest dog breed next to Border Collies. Last spring (2009), I put a deposit down on a little Black (or so I thought she was black) puppy. She came home with us on June the 5th, the first Monday after school was out. Her name is Bunne's Madamoiselle Francine, but we call her Francy.
Oh look, she is winking at you! We loved her and played with her and had so much fun. We took her to puppy obedience class and taught her some things there. It was going wonderful. Well, almost wonderful, my vet said, "She is a dominant personality dog, but you seem to have one too, so you will probably do just fine." Yes, we had our challenges and our little contests of wills, but we all survived. Then I began my next crazy obsession, chickens. We had wanted to get chickens since we moved here to an acreage. We want fresh eggs and veggies and all that good stuff you can grow and raise yourself and be healthy and all. I bought 8 hens (well, really they were still pullets, but most people don't know the difference). They were Dark Cornish girls and just the most beautiful birds!
I built them a lovely pen that was mostly open but had a roost under a tarp to protect them from rain. It was August after all, and it was still plenty warm. 
They laid eggs for about a week before most of them went on strike. Go figure! But I learned, they do that when they move, and then there was this other thing. Francy LOVED to go down and lunge at the pen and bark and scare the living beans out of those poor girls. All but one quit laying. Then fall started and the shorter days cause the girls to stop laying too.Now, some people may think the use of a shock collar for a dog would be a cruel thing to do, and so did I until I got tired of all the other tricks to break my doggy of her new bad habit. I couldn't blame her, it is in her blood to want to go get the birds. But I finally resorted to getting a shock training collar. See, they aren't a bad tool if used properly, and if you have a smart dog all it takes is a couple of jolts and they say, "What the hell was that? I don't want any more of that, so I am going to be a good doggy." Francy is smart, so one good zap on 6 (out of 8 levels) and her attention was all mine. In one day, and only a couple of lower zaps, she got the message that the hens were off limits. In a day, she learned it. I was on my way to free ranging chickens. I thought she got the message at least.
That isn't to say we didn't suffer some setbacks. After a few weeks of collar training she starting getting wise with us. She knew that we had the remote controller and she started sneaking around the chicken coop area. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Zeke. Zeke was our next puppy.
Don't forget, animal breeding is in my blood. I got a male, a bit younger so as to keep the control of breeding in my court. Another, yeah right. Okay, so we got Zeke on October the 5th. He is a Brown boy, and his name is just Zeke Voss. He is a man-dog after all, no silly frou frou name for him! Actually, my husband called him Spigolli for a while because he reminded him of that character played by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Remember? The burnout dude? Always toking it up in his van before, during and after school. Zeke was sort of like that, we found out. He is smart, in his own way, I suppose :) He has often run into the corner of the garage and other large non-moving objects because he doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to things that he can't eat or that doesn't give him things to eat. He is a trip. I think my hubby was pretty close to hitting the nail on the head. After we had Zeke about a month, the vet told me he had an overbite. I should have just had him neutered right then. I don't want to be one of those breeders who does it just for getting lots of money, I care about making the breed better. So, I wasn't going to breed them, and I thought I had plenty of time. Before I knew it, he was 8-months old, and she was 15-months old, and my son comes in one morning and says, "Mom, the dogs are connected by the tail." Have you ever had one of the AW SHIT moments? Yeah, me too. The damage was done. There was no turning back, but geez! Every time we turned around!?!?!?!
Okay, I got ahead of myself again. We need to go back to rabbit control and chicken control. or shall I say out of control? I got more chickens in September, chicks actually. I got 25 broilers and 7 others to raise and keep to lay and breed, then I got another 20 broilers and 5 more to lay and breed. After 8 weeks, we butchered all those lovely broilers. They were yummy! However, Francy had succeeded at killing a couple of the hens by this time. Like I said, she became sneaky. Hubby and I were building our big coop
. The Cornish girls were out free ranging in the corn field and stealing Kenny and Harry's corn. We heard a hen screaming where something got her. I jumped down from the coop and ran into the field toward the sound of here screaming. I was sure a fox nabbed her. I got in the row where she was at and there is little Francy ripping her poor feathers out. I ran after and Francy ran to the house with her tail tucked. The poor girl died, probably of shock, during the night. I was so mad I could have spit nails! But, I reminded myself, she is a dog, a bird dog at that, and you can't just expect a puppy of any breed to know they aren't supposed to chase the chickens. Heck, they are great fun for a puppy to chase. Trust me, I know. We lost two others that day too, I think they got scared off into the field and couldn't find their way back.It was starting to get cold before we got the big house done, so I had to put together a couple of smaller ones to hold all the chicks that were growing. I had 15 purebreds and the broilers. The broilers were in the PVC pen I had originally built for the hens. I could move it every couple of days easy enough and they weren't going to be around for long anyway. The house of the hens was a dog house looking thing
It is a 4X6 and it has plenty of room and 4 nest boxes. I had built an ark too that was 4X8 and half enclosed with wood and half with hardware cloth. I learned that I like to over build a little, that ark was so stinking heavy I had to lift it with a tractor and bucket with a chain! When we would move it, we slid it. The juvies were then quartered in the ark to get them acclimated to being outside. I finally decided to let the juvies free range a little since we were out there with them working on the big coop. Hubby was really getting into the chickens at this point. He would sit on the ground outside the big coop and they birds would come and jump on his legs and peck and scratch around. It was so much fun just watching them - Ah, chicken TV.
Then I was in the upstairs of our "new" garage (it is 5-years old and we still call it new), and hubby was in the house working. We both forgot that Francy was outside. She had her collar on, but nobody was there to beep her (the beep was sufficient after the first day to get her to stop doing what she was doing). I was left with 5 hens and an Easter Egger cockerel. All the rest of the juvenile birds were dead and scattered all over the ground. My heart sunk. All but one of my first chicks were gone. No more Barred Rocks, no more New Hampshire Reds, only of the 15 were still there. Then to my surprise, two days later one of the Australorp girls came out from hiding. I was so happy to have one more survivor!
At this point, the ground was starting to freeze and it was getting darn right cold for being out in the big coop trying to finish, so we said we would stop until spring. Who remained would be fine in the small coop until then. And they were. I added a heat lamp and a water heater when things got real cold, but they all did great. In fact, it was getting down to -20 and those silly birds STARTED laying eggs, every day, every one of them!
I was excited, I had already ordered chicks for the coming spring and was starting up the incubator for hatching eggs. I was starting to go chicken crazy!!! I had to do a test run in the bator, so my neighbor wanted some duck eggs hatched, and I grabbed 3 fresh eggs out of the nest, and I had already won an auction on BYC for some Silkie eggs. So, I fired it up. Oh yeah, I was gonna have me a whole bunch of chickens!
Three days later, guess what happened?
Here, we were sure we had those dogs broke of wanting to kill another chicken. They both wore their training collars every day, we charged them at night so they would be ready to wear in the morning. But, after spending about 3 months of going out and eating the chicken feed, it happened again. I had been out that morning picking them up and admiring how lovely they all looked, scratching and pecking in the straw we had around their coop for them. I looked out an hour later and they were again, scattered on the snow. Those that weren't dead were so close I had to end them. The only thing I can figure happened is that the dogs had been going in the grainery and finding dead birds that had frozen during the cold spell we had early in the month. They were bringing them to the back door and chewing them up. I think they got the taste of feathers and decided they liked it so much, here were these big birds right there for the plucking. I don't think I had ever felt so sick and such a failure. Of course, we had to tell the kids when they got home from school. My daughter was heartbroke, she just loved collecting eggs and the Australorp we name Henny Penny (how original, right?) was her favorite. She cried a few times that week at the thought of losing her little hen.
My daughter took this and others of our little flock just a few days before the incident.It wasn't long after that the two murauders broke into my rabbit cages and killed my 2 newly purchased bucks, the two original does, Dotty and Buttercup, and Otto.
Now, some people have said, "I would shoot my dogs if they did that!" But reality is, they are doing what is in their blood and bones for them to be doing. I know this and I cannot hate them or blame them for who they are. Besides, they cost way more than a few chickens and rabbits. I know you can't put a price on a pet. I lost Sable the fall we got the chicks and Zeke. Just found him dead in his cage one morning. And yes, this cold-hearted woman cried. As far as I could tell, it was from some kind of digestive blockage. The dogs are part of our family, and how do you place a higher value one family member over another. Yes, if I have to, I can euthanize and animal by one of a few humane ways to do it. I don't enjoy it, and I hope I never do enjoy killing another creature.
So, the silver lining I mentioned earlier. It is easy, population control. If I could just teach the dogs who the cull critters are and they stay away from the ones that I need to keep around, then I would have it better. But there is that damn Murphy's Law of Animal Husbandry, "whatever will go wrong, will go wrong the best ones you got."
Francy and Zeke became the pround parents of 9 little puppies in July.
Zeke got neutered right after we discovered their getting connected. Poor guy still thinks he has it in him some days.
We lost one puppy that died within the first 24-hours. Two of them I had to euthanize because they had deformities that they would have suffered and died from eventually. So, I was left with six lovely little pups. They were SO cute!
By the way, does anyone need a Standard Poodle puppy? I still have 2.
Little Miss Darling
Master Renaldo (Naldo for short.
I would much rather bury a furry or feather friend than to bury one whom I have laughed with and cried with, and I am talking the two-legged human kind of family or friend. But that is for another time.
For now, I hope you have enjoyed reading of my adventures in raising rabbits and chickens and dogs all in one place. It is not for the faint of heart. But I have learned SO many things in this last year and half. One way or another, I will find a way that all of our furry and feathered friends can co-habitate here at our little slice of the earth. But like all good things, it takes time.
Later kids,
CrazyChick
