Due to human error......

....and carelessness, and poor judgement, and lack of foresight.......and on and on, and on. 

And also, due to a poor choice of nesting location on the part of the mama rabbit.  

But I set her up for failure, no matter how you look at it.

Photos:  Red, the good mama rabbit, and me, the poor-planning, error-making human

Twelve tiny little lives were lost this morning.  Mama Red pulled lots of fur, made her nest, and had her babies.  Twelve of them, a whopping large litter of kits.  One would not have made it (I found him outside the nest), but the other 11 might have had a change, if only......

Back in January, I was thinking, "it might be nice to have the next litter of babies in March.  They'd be born 8 weeks from now.  When the weather starts to feel warmer and we need a touch of cuteness on the farm."

Mistake number one, which I realized with some level of horror as soon as the breeding was done.  Gestation takes only FOUR weeks for rabbits, putting the birth date smack in the middle of February, which is usually the coldest month of the year (no-one informed THIS winter that it should wait until February to be bitterly cold!).  

I had gone over it and over it in my mind, sure I was missing something.  It was such an obvious mistake that it got right past me.  Human error, on a giant scale.  Rabbits are born FOUR weeks after the male and female are put together.  Not eight.  I don't deserve to have rabbits if I can forget that easy fact.

But, plenty of people breed their rabbits for a February litter, depending on which 4-H program you are in.  Some rabbits need to be a certain age or size by the time the county fair rolls around, and the 4-H families are either breeding for that age or buying rabbits who will be that age by fair time.  Other people know what they're doing.

A few days ago, I moved her to the cage with the smallest openings in the cage wire (to keep babies from burrowing right out of the bigger cage-wire floors).  I put in the nest box, and lined it with several layers of cardboard.  Put the softest hay inside, and waited for her to build her nest inside of it.  She didn't.

Rabbit error:  She chose not to use the nest box, but burrowed down through lots of straw bedding to the bottom of the cage.  The babies were born into a nest with no bottom, literally, because the wire of the cage is all that separated them from the chill of the bunny barn.  

The huge amount of fur that she pulled was wispy and billowing all around the cage, but not inside the nest.  She was standing guard over 12 little bodies that were already chilled and no longer able to hold in the warmth that they had when they were born.

I feel awful.  I apologized to my rabbit for the mistakes I made to bring about this sad result.

And now the brow-beating begins:

I should have moved her into the house (where the dogs and cats would have terrorized her).  I should not have bred her when I did (Too true!).  I should have been less anxious for babies and more in tune with reality.  I should have.....(fill in the blank).  

It's not all my fault, of course.  Those babies would have stood better than a chance in a snug, fur-lined nest in the back of the nest box.  It's cold out, for sure, but they would have been one litter of countless litters which survived in this winter.

What it boils down to is.....If you are the one choosing the breeding time, (I was, obviously), then you (make that "I") need to choose that breeding time responsibly.  That's where I failed to take my responsibility seriously.

I'm sorry, Red, that I put you through this.  You are a good mama, and you didn't deserve to lose all of your babies because of my poor planning and even worse judgement.  

We'll do better next time.  :(

Laura

http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/