I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: whoever came up with the phrase “breed like rabbits” has never owned rabbits. Obviously.
If you’re new to our silly little blog, I’ll fill you in real quick. Dandelion is our fawn-colored doe (female) rabbit. When we first attempted to bred her in the spring, it took three separate breedings to finally get a litter from her. That is three months of waiting folks. Three months of toe tapping and calendar marking expecting to see a litter in the nest box at the end of each thirty day cycle.
Dandelion is also the only agouti rabbit we have. Which means that she is the only rabbit that can contribute to great color genotypes that make those colors to die for like: chestnut, orange fawn, cream fawn, opal, and red.
So of course when we bred her thirty-four days ago I was expecting to see a few of these gorgeous colors in her nest box. But no. Instead, I keep finding an empty box. What does this mean now you ask? Now we wait the full thirty-six days, to make sure that Dandelion isn’t just playing with our heads, and then we will re-breed her on Tuesday hoping that maybe this time she will really take.
Let’s all collectively sigh. {sighhh}
Rabbits are simply never cooperative when you would like them to be.
Oh Dandelion! I’ve got my fingers crossed for you! Maybe you’ll walk out in the morning and find an entire nest of beauties!
You know, when I started reading this, I thought you were going to say she had an entire litter of ruby-eyed whites or something! Who did you breed her to? Obsidian? Or 7 of 9? I can’t remember now. Anyway, that’s totally what popped into my head – nothing but plain old whites.
Oh man, a whole litter of ruby-eyed whites would be so boring! I bred her to Obsidian and will again on Tuesday. I’m kind of doubting anything will show up this month… Hopefully next month! It may even be that the bucks are sterile from the hot summer. But Dandelion has a history of being ornery so it’s easy to blame it on her.
Keeping my fingers crossed! Somehow, with farming, nothing is as easy as I would like/ or think it should be.
Preachin’ to the choir!
Hah hah! Silly goose bunny! Well, what can you say, at least you got a what, two week head start on the process?
She certainly is a silly goose! I actually decided to hold off breeding Dandelion for one more week so that I can breed Dandelion and Blackberry the same day. That way I can foster kits from one doe to another doe just incase.