Well, today was not a good day for critters :( Our long awaited first litter of Holland Lops to be born in our rabbitry was delivered sometime in the middle of the night...1 stillborn. I figure it was the stress of the heat and the fact that we used a first-timer buck...and only bred them once. Several top-notch breeders recommend rebreeding right away (and multiple times) to ensure a large litter but I just can't bring myself to do that right now in this relentless heart and humidity! And not too sure, if our buck is even able to...with all this heat, he may be sterile until fall.
So, we will give all the bunnies a nice break and let them try to stay cool. We will start breeding again in the fall and will hopefully be blessed with nice, large, healthy litters of adorable fuzz!
We also lost 2 of the older pullets and 1 is wounded. Sometime tried to get into their pen and/or snatch them throught the wire. One Buff Orpington pullet was just gone...one Rhode Island Red (RIR) was mortally wounded and another Buff has a small puncture wound, which I treated and she should be ok. :)
I figure it was either a stray cat, coon or possum...leaning towards the cat...or cat keeps most critters run off, however she is getting older and there is good size tom cat that she has a little trouble handling.
We decided to move the pullets from their "biddie pen" into the Big coop with all the other chickens. We enclose the bottom underneath the coop with chicken wire and turned them loose. The older hens can't get to them and neither can any other critters :)
Hope everyone else is having a good week. Blessings, ~ Angie
No comments:
Post a Comment