Never gets old...

Zebbie had her litter this morning. Four healthy little squirmy things. It never gets old pulling healthy kits out of the nest box for the first time.

We had a round of bad luck last week...unlike any we've seen before at our rabbitry. For the first time we had kits that were more than a day old crawl out of the nest box and chill on the wire. That happened to two of Fudge's, and (of course) they were a couple that I was really excited to see what color they were going to turn out to be. Then, we had one of Barbi's that managed to crawl into a neighboring cage, and subsequently lost three limbs. Poor thing was still alive when we found it, so we had to put it down. Also found the remains of another that had crawled out of the box and became a meal after it died. Four kits within three days--that's a pretty good sized litter that we had lost!

Just when we thought things wouldn't get any worse, Geri was vacuuming the rug next to a couple of Jr's in the house. She didn't want to freak them out with the vacuum, so she "just for a second" put them out on the deck. It was a very hot day with no shade on the deck. A couple hours later I heard one of them squeaking and bouncing around inside the cage like mad--apparently having a seizure or something right before it died. She had forgotten they were out there, and I never knew they were out there to start with until it was too late. That was a hard one...it was completely preventable.

Fortunately, everything seems to have stabilized and everybunny appears to be healthy and fat. Hopefully things will continue in that direction, starting with our new litter from Zebbie!