I raise my rabbits ultimately for meat production. Some of the byproducts are manure, hides, some occasional cash, and therapy from handling them. But the main reason I raise them is for meat.

So whenever I would have a small litter born, say 4 or 5 kits (the term for a baby rabbit), I would get bent out of shape thinking that I’ve wasted production time. After what I’ve seen this week, I may have to rethink some of the hows and whys of litter size…

The Back Story

A few weeks ago, I had two litters born on the same day, April 2. I’ve planned this to happen many times, in the event there is a problem of some sort, small litters, poor mothering, a does that doesn’t make it, or many others little things that benefit from having two nursing does at the same time. Larger operations have a lot more flexibility, but since I only have three production breeders, I have to juggle my delivery dates quite often in order to get two does to kindle (the term for rabbits giving birth) on or near the same day.

So everything was working according to plan, I had two does deliver the same day, one with a wooden nest box, the other with a new suspended nest box. This was to allow me to get some idea on how well the suspended next boxes worked. The guys over at InTheRabbitHole.com swear by them, and they have me sold on it, so I was hoping for a good end result.

The first stumbling block was the litter sizes. The doe with the wooden nest box kindled 4 kits. The doe with the suspended nest box kindled 9 kits. NINE! WOOHOO! While I was unimpressed with the litter of 4, I was stoked about a litter of 9…. That works out to a single litter providing over 25 pounds of dressed out meat. Awesome.

I considered fostering a few of the nine with the mother of 4, a common practice, and one of the reasons I like to double up on pregnant does. I decided against it, to see how they all fared.

And in doing nothing, I learned a valuable lesson, I think.

I check on the kits every few days to make sure there isn’t a trampling death, or some other unfortunate complication. When I checked on them yesterday, I was floored at what I found.

Here are two kits one from the litter of 4, the other from the litter of nine, both born on the same day, both have the same father, and both mothers are sisters. Call them half-siblings, or maybe even 3/4 siblings, since they had a LOT of genetics in common.

That is a huge difference! And in only NINE days! And these are NOT freaks of each litter, they are all roughly the same size.

So now, I’ve taken the incident-turned-lesson and expanded it. I’ve taken the two smallest kits from the litter of nine, and fostered them with the litter of 4. This balances out the litter sizes, and will be interesting to see how things develop.

And from now on, I won’t be so unhappy with small litters, they probably grow out to harvest size a week or two earlier.

Crazy!

(For a great book on raising rabbits, try “Storey’s Guide to Raising Rabbits“. Next week, I’ll be doing a review on it.)

Peace,
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