We have a new purebred Flemish buck in the barn who is impressively huge, yet completely adorable at the same time! He’s about 4 months old right now and we are excited to see how well he does with our does when he comes of age. He’s the largest rabbit we have so far and he’s gotten me to adjust my hutch designs even larger now as I proceed in building them. Originally named Henri by his breeder, we have re-named him into our barn naming scheme so we can keep track of who is who and came from where and when, so now he’s named Dagda from the Celtic mythos. Here’s a pic of him in the show cage I got that he’s almost outgrown already (the cage was for our smaller rabbits):
On the way to 4H meeting for the evening, just about outgrown the brand new show cage!
I got to making some new feeders for a few of our rabbits in the barn as they appear to take great glee in dumping their bowls about 30 seconds after you refill them and put them back into the hutch. Some of our bunnies are real diggers and love to dig in their feed too which is frustrating seeing perfectly good feed flying out onto the floor to be wasted. I’m still trying to figure out a way to present their pellets so they are discouraged from digging but find it no more difficult to eat. I’m using for the new feeders to keep costs down to nothing, recycled coffee cans and curiosity tins that were lying around in the barn. It’s definitely made Davin’s Flemish/NZ rabbit Luke far more happy. That bunny always dumped his bowls after we had moved him to a different cage. He never seemed to like the new cage and was generally grumpy about the switch from wall mounted feeders to bowls, so with a coffee can feeder that seemed to do the trick. Here’s a pic of one of the heritage tin feeders I made:
Holds 2 scoops of food
When making your own equipment, it’s important to pay attention to detail and ensure there are no sharp edges your rabbits can catch themselves on, so I turned and crimped all the edges. This was easier with the heritage tins, but way more finicky with the coffee cans. It could be too that I don’t quite have the right tool for the job, but pliers, snips and a drill press make for quick fabrication. Now I’m looking for more coffee cans and smaller cans so I can make more of these things.
We also have some new muscovy ducks – a drake and 3 girls who are settling in the big pen with our chickens. Pictures to come of them, once they have figured out who is now in charge in their pen and they’ve settled in nicely. We may have also scored a free chicken coop if we can find a flatbed trailer to help get it home…It’s a nice looking one and I’ll get it home however I can!
