What to do ... with all the rabbit poo ...

One of our bucks

We've currently got 38 rabbits, so we've got LOTS of poop! Every other day we open the doors on the outside of the barn and shovel it out into buckets. (Our barn is an old tobacco barn, so every couple of feet there's a door that opens outward. We enclosed one side of the barn for the rabbit area.) During the summer and early fall, some of it was getting spread through the gardens, some of it was going to neighbors for their tomato plants (where it will provide lots of nitrogen and phosphorus and help build soil, but a lot of it was being dumped into the forest where the chickens would have a field day scratching through it!

The other day Mr. Wild was talking with one of our farmer friends, they were talking about an upcoming project that we're hoping to get involved with (with our rabbits, but thats another post in the making!). Mr. Wild made a joke about being buried in rabbit poop and the friend told him that there are "specialized" gardeners that would pay good money for the rabbits poo. That they have even put ads in Craigslist! Mr. Wild told him that we don't know any of these specialized gardeners. The friend said he'd introduce us to a few of them at the next auction and put the word out. Green is good ;o)

Dealing with the not so pretty side of raising animals

Almost everything we raise is for food, the goats, peacocks & horse being the exceptions.

We are raising rabbits, turkeys, guineas, chickens, cattle, hogs and ducks to feed our family throughout the year. We've bought most of our animals as babies, so we have control over how they are raised and fed. Our one mistake being the first set of hogs.

We're raising California & New Zealand rabbits. We picked those because they have a great feed to meat conversion rate and they're big, up to 14 lbs! We currently have 8 bucks and 15 does at breeding ages. We also have 8 kits (baby rabbits) under 2 months old, from 3 different litters. For me, one of the hardest things to separate is the excitement and sweetness of new babies. I keep detailed records of breedings and births, so I know when its time and I watch to make sure the does are ok during and after.

This morning during feeding I noticed that one of our does was pulling lots of hair really fast. It was time! This will be her 2nd litter, her 1st litter didn't survive. I gave her some straw and moved a heat lamp over her cage, ready to be plugged in after she'd given birth. We don't like to interfer, other than offering extra nesting materials. This evening when I checked on her, she'd had the babies and I could see lots of movement under all the fur! I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

On November 6th, one of our New Zealand does had her first litter. She made an awesome thick nest and everything was looking great, lots of movement under the fur and straw everyday. Until this morning. I shine a light into each of the nesting boxes to watch for movement. I saw a little bit of black fur, looked like a tiny ear, poking out of the nest. I didn't disturb anything and watched for movement. There was a little, but not like it'd been the days before. I checked mama, she was good. This evening when I checked again, she'd uncovered the babies and they were dead. There weren't any marks on them, everything was were it should be. Its so hard when you don't know what causes them to die.

I took them out and put them in a small box. It brought tears to my eyes. One of them had its mouth open and I could see the tiny teeth. I wanted to hold it, to somehow breathe life back into it. Writing about it is making me tear up again. I know that they are raised for food, they don't have names and aren't pets, but it doesn't make dealing with the deaths any easier. I write everything down in the rabbit binder and brush my tears away, hoping that her next litter will be stronger.

Time flies, right!?!

Well, so much for posting all the time!  So much has happened since March, so lets play catch up, the summarized version.

We left Las Vegas May 16th and arrived at the farm in Kentucky May 19th around midnight.  We spent the next week in a hotel because super tiny rural farming areas take their time turning on power & water.  The phone & internet took almost 3 weeks after the 4 days of waiting on power/water.

We've been working around the clock to get things in order, fixed up & cleaned up.  The main house needed plumbing repairs in the bathroom and kitchen as well as new insulation on the pipes under the house.

We had part of the hill in front of the barn dozed/flattened and put a trailer on it.

We had the upper pond drained, mucked out & widened and the dam rebuilt.  Its fed by a spring, so we haven't had to wait on rain.

We've fenced off the hills behind the barn for the goats, which we now have 11 of.  The original 2 we came out with are doing so much better than they ever did in Vegas!

We bought a horse, his name is Fury, but everyone calls him Buck.  Still trying to learn the story behind that.

Our neighbor down the road bush-hogged our front field; the grass was about 3 feet tall, maybe more.

The neighbor on the hill behind us plowed a plot for a garden.  We got that tilled and broke the sod chunks out best we could and got to planting.  We've gotten tons of tomatoes, potatoes, beets, zucchini, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, honey dew and the pumpkins are growing like crazy!  A couple of weeks ago we planted lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, basil and cabbages.

We bought chickens, ducks, turkeys, guineas and rabbits.  We've built hutches and cages.  Then we built 8ft x 8ft chicken wire enclosed raised cage/rooms for the turkeys, they grew fast!

For our anniversary, July 1st, we bought 2 great pyrenees puppies, both boys.  Their names are Sledge (right) & Hammer (left).  Cute huh!  We've been working with them in the chicken/goat/horse area.  They are almost ready to start staying in the yard with all of them.

We bought 5 hogs.  Have them put up and have been feeding them corn, getting them ready for butcher in October/November.


And lastly, we bought 2 jersey milk cows, one in her 2nd phase of pregnancy, both in milk and healthy.


We've gone fishing a few times, lots of hunting too!  The laws for hunting on your land are interesting.


We started our 2nd year of homeschooling August 10th.  We've studied the Civil War, canning/preserving, gardening, animal husbandry, breeding rabbits, studying the animal tracks that we find behind the house in the morning, identifying the plants and trees.  We've made jelly out of Queen Anne's Lace, which everyone around here calls chigger weed.  We've gone walnut & acorn picking, then did rubbings of the leaves.  Also lots on dinosaurs, because those are a huge favorite here!  Oh! and the caterpillars, they absolutely fascinate Tyler.  They spin these huge web looking cocoons that hang in the trees.


Oh!  And we had a baby deer adopt us, so we've been bottle feeding her since June.

I'm promising that we'll be updating frequently!  There is so much to share and in detail!  We're working hard on becoming self-sufficient and want to share our journey as so many others have that inspired and helped us along the way!