Marigold's litter is 2 weeks old now and starting to explore solid foods!
These little chonkers are averaging 7.9 ounces when they were weighed at 13 days. That's an INCREDIBLE growth rate.
I'm hoping there's a really good doe in here for my program and a really good buck to send to a friend for hers 🤞 but we won't know for 4 more weeks at least.
I didn't use onion because I had a plan for the leftover scraps - homemade dog food!
I added organ meat & butternut squash from last fall that had started to go soft and let it cook through.
I used the food processor to blend it all down because 1) I was worried about the little bones and 2) I wanted to hide the organ meat because my dog is a picky diva.
I got about a month's worth of wet food from scraps that otherwise would have gone to waste!
12 cups of bone broth & half a cup of fat from my #MeatRabbits
I used the ribs, necks, and hips of 3 animals, plus a handful of misc bones I've been saving in a 12qt crock pot. I added carrots and celery too (no onion - reason in thread) to make it "properly" ... I normally use just the bones.
Of course that meant all of the bunnies got a treat of celery leaves, much to their delight.
I didn't expect to get that much rendered fat. I think I'll try making soap!
Rabbit and Dumplings soup in the crockpot for dinner tonight 😋
In any case, Houdini is definitely the best of the litter.
Her conformation is mid compared to the breed standard, but she's looking better than her potato bodied brother XD
Her coat is also a good texture and density, and she has a richer color too. Some of her siblings look a bit washed out
She's not going to win any ribbons, but her type is a slight improvement over her dam's, which is a step in the right direction. Hoping for better results in the next gen 🤞
I went out to the barn and weighed all of the babies today.
Houdini is still the biggest at 4.6lbs! She's up 1/10 of a pound since she was last weighed on Monday.
The rest of the litter was:
4.2lb red buck
4.1lb red doe
3.7lb red buck
3.2lb copper doe
3.0lb copper buck
I was hoping to get Houdini on the show table at the end of this month, but she's starting to molt (you can see the fur changes on her face) soooo maybe not. We'll see.
Houdini 🥰
I'm obsessed with her. She's so pretty and so inquisitive and soooo soft.
The buck has a nice coat, very dense and lush, but he's built like a potato.
Such a shame too, cuz he has a super sweet and cuddly temperament.
It's official! Houdini stays!
The Satin babies turn 8 weeks old tomorrow and I brought them inside to evaluate and make a preliminary decision ... which turned into a final decision.
She the biggest of the litter at 3.3lbs (pictured on the left, next to her 3.0lb brother and 2.8lb sister)
Her coat and type are pretty middle of the road, but she's equal in quality to her mother (whom she's going to replace) and her temperament is much better, so she's a keeper.
Axiom