The two rabbit kit litters are nearly a week old. Everyone is still alive and kicking (literally), and their fur is coming in – the pink ones are now white, like their mother. In a few days, their eyes will open.
Given their age, it was an unwelcome surprise to discover one of Loretta’s kits on the floor behind her cage yesterday. It was a big and healthy one, with a good-sized frog belly. While we didn’t know it was hers for certain, the kit didn’t appear injured (Ava’s cage is stacked above Loretta’s), so we tucked it back into Loretta’s nest box and figured it was an anomaly. Not so.
Upon checking on the kits this morning, we found the big one outside of the cage again, and it felt a bit cold. Suspicious (paranoid?) now, we counted Loretta’s kits and even with the escapee added, one was missing. We looked all around the cages and saw nothing. Finally, we pulled the droppings tray out and there the poor kit was – covered in dust (chick-generated dust), looking like it had been floured. It was very lively, though, so we put everyone back into the nest box. Clearly, this was a trend that had to end.
Like many farmers, we have different bits of fencing on hand that are left over from projects – they really come in handy. Our solution to stop the kits from unintentionally leaving the cages was to add hardware cloth to the bottom 3″ of the cages and tape the top edge to cover sharp edges. As with all hardware cloth projects, this involved a lot of wire cutting and handling sharp, pointy edges.
The kits are now in a maximum security facility, and they’ll soon be too large to even fit through the regular cage wire, so we’re confident the escapes will cease. Seems there’s always some kind of adventure..!