My Rabbits, or "On Raising One's Own Meat, With Some Discussion of the Attendant Pleasures and Dilemmas"

[chromedome]

On 2/9/2025 at 8:18 PM, AlaMoi said:

fast forward to 1986 - my parents+grandmother visiting us in Germany, at a resto with "Wild" dishes, my grandmother ordered rabbit.

stating, she had not eaten rabbit since 194x - as she got real tired of it . . . it was a good tasty dish and she enjoyed it!

 

history makes for odd things . . .

My restaurant, back in the day, was located in a small hotel owned by a "semi-retired" couple who'd moved down from Montreal. The husband was Dutch, and had been a child during the war. 

 

Times were very hard then in the Netherlands, especially during the last winter of the war. Most of you Stateside won't know this, but but the RCAF spent much of the winter of 1944-45 dropping not bombs, but pallets of food, over Dutch cities (and facing the same AA fire, and night fighters, as the bombers on combat missions). Those drops helped keep the Dutch from actual starvation, though many were still malnourished. Our troops also liberated most of the Netherlands during that final year. The upshot of all this (and the fact that the exiled Dutch royal family were honored guests in Canada through the war) was that the Dutch and Canadians enjoyed a special bond after the war*, which is why the husband moved here as a young man in the 1950s.

 

He explained to me once that during those hard days, his mother made a dish that was everyone's favorite. I've forgotten the details, but I believe it was something potato-based (probably the equivalent of the Depression-era "soup" of hot water, ketchup, and as many crushed-up crackers you could scrounge). His mother wasn't able to make it on a really regular basis, but it was a favorite within the family and they looked forward to it whenever she could get the ingredients. After the war, when things had gotten better and they were able to buy groceries as needed, they were sitting around one day talking nostalgically about this dish. So they wheedled Mom into making it for them.

 

It did not live up to their recollection of it, not in the least. He explained ruefully that hunger is, indeed, the best sauce.

 

*For the 150th anniversary of the modern-day Canadian state, in 2017, the Dutch bred a special tulip in red and white that bore some resemblance to our maple-leaf flag:

 

Circling back to the main thrust of this thread, nest boxes went into our four does' cages yesterday afternoon. They required a degree of repair, because after the autumn disaster with the stray dog I'd left them sitting out to bleach in the sunshine, and our grandson began playing with them one day. Young boys' play, as most of us know (or remember sheepishly) is often rather destructive, and the nest boxes were very much the worse for wear when I looked at them the next day. So we had A Serious Talk, and hopefully won't need to have another (he's a good kid, and was genuinely chastened).

 

The two brown does, Hester and Hazel, were bred a day before the other two, Hilda and Ivy. We should see litters from them the first two within 24 hours, and then a day later for the other two. Hester in particular has been showing a very typical late-pregnancy nesting obsession, gathering up her hay in mouthfuls at every feeding and then looking around for a place to arrange it. As of this morning all four of them have shaped the hay in their boxes (I wasn't able to buy straw this past fall) into suitably cozy nests. Usually they'll line the nests with fur anywhere from 1 to 3 days ahead of time, though we've also seen them line the nest and then give birth all in a matter of hours. At this point only Hilda has begun that process, and half-heartedly at that, but I'm not reading too much into it. I expect there'll probably be fur in the nests when I go up later for the evening feeding.

 

The first litters of the year are always exciting.

 

We've learned something of our rabbits' personalities, by now. Hester and Hazel are still skittish and hand-shy, though they'll both tolerate an occasional stroke of their forehead (which seems to be a favorite caress with rabbits in general). Hilda is much more approachable, and will happily have cuddles. Ivy (the sole survivor of our original breeders) was very affectionate when she was little, but since "the incident" that killed her littermates, she has been very skittish and unsociable. Vimes, the black buck, has gotten over his initial wariness, and will accept some petting and stroking. 

 

But Carrot is the real charmer in the group, a natural-born snugglebunny. His cage is the last I get to as I work my way around with the food and water, and by the time I get to Vimes' cage next door Carrot will be bouncing around excitedly in his cage, for all the world like a pup at the SPCA who knows it's his turn next for a walk. When I open the door he greets me by bumping noses (aka "bunny boop," "muzzle nuzzle") and then leans into my hand for scritches and cuddles, exactly like the big mastiff does in her rather larger way. It's rapidly becoming clear that Carrot will become a house bunny once he's done his duty by our bloodlines here. 

 

In other news, we have hatched out a couple of dozen baby quail, so the bunnies are not our first spring babies. Here some photos, to give you some idea of how quickly they grow. When first hatched they're about the size of my thumb; in the next photo they're maybe the size of a hen's egg (3 days old), and in the more recent photo (a week later) they're the size of... I dunno, a yellow mango or a mid-sized songbird?... and mostly fledged out already.

 

This picture's not as good, but the feeder base is 5 or 6 inches in diameter, for scale: 

 

...and one bonus pic. The little man may be hard on unattended nest boxes, but he's very gentle with hatchlings.

 

We'll add a few females from this hatching to our permanent flock, just to top it up to the optimal number for our cage size (too few or too many, and they fight or get territorial). The remainder we'll try to sell either by the bird or as a "starter flock" or two for anyone wanting to begin breeding their own quail. My GF has a quote for purpose-built quail cages like ours at wholesale pricing (minimum order 6), and hopes to sell a complete starter kit of a cage, a male and a half-dozen females at a nice markup.

 

We now have a second batch of quail eggs in the new incubator, at her dad's place. He hatched some for us last year, and quite enjoyed watching the wee birds grow, and was keen to do another hatching this year. Our older incubator is now brooding a batch of chicken eggs for us, divided between Silver Laced Wyandottes to join our main multipurpose flock (sample image of the Wyandotte here:)...

 

...and some silkies, who will more or less be pets for my stepdaughter and the grandkids. Not sure what coloration these ones will have, but here's a sample image of random silkies:

(Their nickname is "furry chickens," for obvious reasons.)

 

We've also bought a new enclosed run for our chickens, with a frame of steel poles and then a mesh cover to protect them from terrestrial and avian predators. I can't set it up yet, because we still need to clear away the last of the debris from the swimming pool we'd ripped out, and that's currently still frozen to the ground. Once we have it set up, with a McGyvered entrance from the chicken coop as well as the main human-sized door, they'll still be able to get out and do chicken things, but will no longer have the free run of our entire property. That will make life a lot simpler, and reduce wear and tear on my garden, as well as making sure they can only lay eggs within a tightly constrained area (no more irritated hunting for illicit nests).

 

Also we'll be able to go back to leaving the mastiff outside during the days again, which will restore our previous status quo of having minimal wildlife encroaching on our property (and also means that any future stray dogs will be met with extreme prejudice).

 

Spring is almost here! (appearances notwithstanding)
 

Edited Saturday at 01:35 PM by chromedome
minor typo/proofreading fail (log)

[Maison Rustique]

Great stories and precious photos!!

[chromedome]

Well, then. First litter of the year, first emergency of the year.

 

I start at Hazel's cage at feeding time, simply because it's closest to the door, and found a litter of about 10 kits inside (the first count is just a rough "fumble through the mound of fur" estimate), but one of the little guys was off to the side rather than in the main pile, and coldly immobile. I set about reviving that one in the usual way (described earlier in this thread, IIRC), by holding it in my cupped hands and huffing my warm breath on it until it started to warm up, and then tucking it inside my shirt so I could carry on with the feeding.

 

Then I moved on to Hester's cage, and found... an entire litter of cold kits. Apparently she'd pumped them out, then hopped out of the nest box and left them to their own devices. So I hustled through feeding and watering the rest of the bunnies, then loaded them into my hat and brought them inside. They're currently on a shelf in my office, wrapped up in my GF's electric blanket. Hopefully as they warm up, some of them will revive. Once they have, I'll put them back into Hester's next box for a little while and see if she steps up and gets over her new-mama confusion.

 

Edited 3 hours ago by chromedome (log)