I am still having fun entering all sorts of giveaways to try winning some of the things we need for Tater, you can enter too. See this post for more details.

N was so cute, he made a little scavenger hunt of gardening goodies for me to find for my birthday. You see all I wanted was plants and bulbs for my birthday so he ordered them. Unfortunately growers will only ship after your latest frost date so I wont actually have the plants and bulbs until April, which was expected.

Still he wanted to make some excitement for me on my birthday so he clipped out each photo and description of each thing he got me, then he glued the paper to Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. Then he hid them in various plants and other places for me to find. He even wrote this cute little poem to kick off the scavenger hunt:

Now I can’t wait to be in the new place and to start planting the pretty garden goodies there! Fun. Also, my birthday fun would not be complete without some pet drama right? Well, our rabbit gave birth to 4 babies last night!

*WARNING* This is not a happy baby Easter bunnies story, if you can’t stomach the ways of nature skip this section!

While I was in the tub last night N was making the rounds feeding all the animals and he discovered 4 pitiful dead baby bunnies at Maybelle’s feet. Apparently she had given birth and we were unaware. So N comes to get me so I can see what happen.

We weren’t sure if Maybelle had killed the babies or if they had just died on their own. There are a number of reasons why baby rabbits don’t survive birth. We expected that genetics issues (a lop ear and a dwarf mating) combined with Maybelle’s lack of experience in mothering would have contributed to the lack of survival of the babies. Also some rabbits kill their young too.

Basically warmth is the main killer of baby rabbits (called kits). Mothering rabbits don’t usually carry their young around the cage in their mouth (like cats do) and when babies are born outside the nesting box they often aren’t warm enough to survive and mom can’t do much to remedy this.

Normally breeders will have to rub the born babies to warm them up. They’ll also move them back to the nesting box where they’ll be warm and safe if mom births outside the nesting box for some reason.

Well upon inspection of the 4 dead bunnies we did not see any signs of cannibalism or mistreatment. The babies were either born dead or died shortly after birth on their own (either because of cold or whatever). It is sad but is ultimately part of nature especially in situations like ours where the babies are an accident and the mother is not experienced in breeding.

Now this morning apparently Maybelle was birthing another baby. When we went down to check on her she was in the process of having one that was breech, it was partially out (from tail to ribcage)… After about 10 minutes of no progress we knew it was stuck so we helped her out a bit by gently pulling on it while she contracted. It came out and was of course dead as a result of being stuck.

She is still acting a bit weird so I am keeping an eye out to see if she has more babies today. I can’t feel any moving inside her but you never know. The reading says her delivery of a litter should be done in about 20 minutes and we aren’t sure if last night’s litter was from a separate uterus than the breech one we noticed this morning. She could still have more in there so I am watching her closely, just to make sure.

*Update* Since publishing this she has birthed one more baby but she started munching on this one.

I did snap photos of all this for the blog but am opting not to post them right on here, since I don’t want to offend or scar anyone not wishing to see the sight. If you want to see the photos you can view them here: #1, #2, #3 & #4. Just be sure the kids aren’t looking over your shoulder or anything. They aren’t gross, just sad.

Oh and in addition to the dead bunnies Dixie also left us her own little presents overnight:

After being outdoors until about 9pm yesterday and having fun all day yesterday she managed to shit out all that for us between midnight March 19th & 10am March 20th. Nice huh, good thing we are keeping her confined to a tiled room at night.

Happy Birthday to me!

The post Got some plants on the way and some animal drama for my birthday. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

The last few weeks have been filled with all sorts of crapola and it’s made us grumpy at times but we are glad to have gotten so much accomplished. Here is a recap complete with links in case you missed something or a bored and want to read our drama.

We got our taxes filed and our returns are on the way, we got our February rent check mystery solved with the bank, we got our march rent paid and sent off in this certified letter that still hasn’t been picked up!

We looked at so many home options, decided on and bought Tater’s nursery bedding, we rescued a bird from the wall of this house, delt with and remedied the broken garbage disposal, we finished Boners homemade cage but he managed to mate with Maybelle anyway and we are expecting baby bunnies in a few weeks now!

In the next two weeks I’ve got 2 prenatal appointments (one at The Farm with Pamela and one with the local OBGYN), I have a chiropractor appointment and my 27th birthday is March 20th.

Then we have the end of March and all of April to pack and move, again. In May I’ll be nesting and unpacking and then I am off to The Farm to have Tater in June! Time is just flying these days, unbelievable…

Oh wait, I skipped over the big news… We found our home!

Saturday we entered a verbal agreement and hashed out all the terms, now we are going back and fourth drafting up a contract. On April 1st we are making a down payment, moving in to the house and will have 12 months to take over ownership of it.

We are super happy and also pretty excited about it all. The place is just what we need right now! It doesn’t need major work to be ready for Tater’s arrival, it is in our price range and it is a pretty good investment for us. Here are some more photos of it from the weekend:

I think we will be very happy there and it is something we can call our own. After 5 years we’ve finally managed to find the right house at the right price and terms. I’ve always wanted to be in our own home before we brought home a baby too. It’s funny how it all works out in the strangest of ways!

Like I’ve said before the last six months have been quite the roller coaster ride for us! We went from making no life progress over several years to making tons of progress all at once within like 6 months. When it rains, it pours!

Oh and I am entering to win a Bumgenius over at http://hotbellymama.blogspot.com/, you can too. Here is how:

The post Time flies… When it Rains, it pours… We have some more news too! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

I’ve seen commercials about S.A.D and the prescription pills that “I should ask my doctor about if I am experiencing similar symptoms”. I have always rolled my eyes about the idea of the winter season making people depressed enough to need a special prescription.

Well, N and I were chatting about how strangely productive we’re feeling as a result of the oddly warm and nice weather we are having and have been having all weekend. We might be coming out of our own winter depression or something! (by the way that is why I didn’t post all weekend, we were busy doing stuff outside…)

We got all our storm debris cut up and ready to be hauled away and we finished the 100% homemade rabbit hutch for Boner! We went grocery shopping, made yummy meals together for dinner, cleaned stuff, looked at rental home possibilities, toyed with the idea of trying to get approved for a mortgage, tried to have the brakes replaced and were outside in the fresh air. It was so nice.

I am super proud of N’s rabbit hutch project (I hope he’ll blog about it and share the plans). We are just waiting for the sealant to dry then it is ready for Boner to move in! Look how it turned out:

Oh, and we stopped in our local Circuit City just for fun to see what deals were to be had (N still wants a 42in flat screen LCD tv…). Have you been to their going out of business sale? We were just amazed at how many people were still looking for and actually buying those high ticket electronic items.

Actually all this weekend we saw people everywhere buying all this high priced non necessity stuff like big screen TV’s and other electronics despite the claimed economic hard times so many are experiencing. N and I just scratch our heads when we see it. We DIDN’T buy a tv by the way…

I mean these aren’t wealthy people, they appear to be mid to lower class and they are just lining up for a $2000 big screen tv or a new video game system. Um, hello! Save your money and think ahead about your economic future guys!

Oh and don’t even get me started on Nadya Suleman, the now mother of 14 who just had octuplets…

The post Coming out of the winter coma on a warm and sunny weekend… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Yeah, so we’ve got some horny animals in the house these days. It could be that valentines day is next week and love is in the air… or perhaps it is just because they are both unfixed still and are feeling “urges”…

Either way it is bad news! Gabby walks around with her butt in the air and she is meowing and talking like crazy while rubbing herself against anything she can.

Boner is just humping anything that is warm so we keep him in a cage most of the time. Problem is bunnies can’t be confined to tiny cages all day, everyday. They need to run and hop so we let him out to exercise but we also need to keep him from Gabby’s lady parts.

I am inventive you know so I put a cloth diaper on Gabby just to make sure we didn’t have any strange crossbreeding action. Then we set Boner free to exercise for a bit. It was not a g rated morning!

Weird thing is they are both okay with the humping, it is disturbing to us but they both seems to be having a good time… Oddly. I wish we had the money to fix them both right now. Unfortunately, we don’t so we’ll just make due by keeping them separate most of the time.

Good news is the new rabbit hutch N is building should be finished this weekend thanks to the warmer temperatures, yay! Soon Boner and Maybelle will both have room to exercise inside enclosed cages as opposed to being crammed in to one cage together.

The post Whoa, that lovin' feeling!!! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

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