Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

The little chap in the first photo is the reason why it is important we vaccinate our rabbits against Myxomatosis. You may remember back in the autumn we lost five of our rabbits including our breeding male and female to this horrible virus. Myxomatosis is spread by direct contact animal to animal or by being bitten by a flea or mosquito that has itself bitten an infected rabbit. It causes swelling and lumps and is often seen around the eyes first. There is no cure so for wild rabbits it can mean a slow and painful death (pet rabbits usually get put to sleep by a vet). This wild rabbit does not have it (or at least is showing no signs of it at the moment) but we do know the virus is around and as you can see, our rabbits and the wild ones can get very close. This particular wild rabbit has been around for ages and obviously likes ours a lot as most days we see him around their run. He (or she) could possibly even get in with them which of course would not be ideal as we would not want any of them pregnant (if this one is indeed a boy!).
And talking of mating, we put Crumpet, our new brown rabbit in with Pancake a couple of days ago. Crumpet was mated with very quickly despite being much larger than Pancake. When rabbits mate, the male finishes by 'falling off' the female with a grunt (it's quite funny to see and hear) and if one sees this, it usually means the mating has been successful. Rabbits are pregnant for 28-31 days so we now have a due date (based on 30 days) of 22nd April.
And so to our very first chick of, hatched under our broody bantam tonight - there were two when we last checked at around 8pm so hopefully tomorrow we will find five: dry, fluffy and ready to start exploring...