Today when I went out to do bunny chores, I pulled four dead kits from Caduci Mook's cage. She didn't pull any fur or make any attempt to make a nest. They were born on the wire. We put her back in with Fabio again today for a breed back. Hopefully next time she will be better at parenting.
After taking care of the dead bunnies (into the freezer for snake food), I went back out to the bunny barn, only to discover that Charlotte had also delivered a litter! She had five in the nest box, lots of fur pulled, but the babies were scattered and cold. Little #4 brought a box out, we collected all of the fur and brought all five babies in the house to warm them up by hand. Once they were warm, I left them in the box in the house near the oven (to stay warm) and went out to set up a more contained nest box for Charlotte. Then we added the contents of the box - all the fur and babies. I put Charlotte in with them so she would know where they were. We went in the house and watched part of a movie before coming back out to check on the new babies. Three were huddled in the fur, still mostly warm. Two had wriggled to the other side and were cold again. I handed the two cold ones to #4 and #3 to warm up and got some pine shavings. I put the shavings in the bottom of the nest box, the fur on top, and nestled the three remaining babies into the space between shavings and fur. When the two cold babies had been warmed back up, we brought them out only to find another of the three warm ones had wandered out and started to get cool. I put Charlotte back into the nest box before I closed up the hutch for the night and she seemed interested in finding her babies in the nest. I don't think this litter is going to survive, despite our best efforts to give them the warmest nest box available. Low tonight is 39 degrees and we are expecting rain all night and into tomorrow.
I did get a few new photos of the older bunnies. Here's a cute group shot of them in the nest box. As you can see, it's becoming too small for all of them to fit in at once. This is just five of the six of them.
Tomorrow, if I can get up the energy to get stuff done, I really need to work on cleaning and packing, and winter sowing too. We're down to 32 days now until closing on the new house. Just over one month. The big inspection is Thursday. We've filed for insurance stuff for the new house, we've been submitting all the paperwork the loan guy asks for. I'm bringing my Mom with on Thursday. The first time we saw the house it was just Tony and I (and a couple kids). The second time we saw it we took my Dad to get his opinion. This time I'm bringing my Mom so she can see our new house. I think she'll probably tell me it's very small, but I love it. Very excited to go back out there on Thursday. I can't explain it, it just feels like home. It's a sense of peace, happiness, it's wonderful to step onto that property and just feel like all of the things that get you down have gone away.
Today is the anniversary of the day my Nadia passed away. I want to say that I miss her terribly, but the truth is that when I look at Moose (Aspie), I can't help but feel like Nadia is still here with me. There are so many things about him that remind me of her. He has really healed my heart. Yes, he still needs more training, he's still a pup, but Nadia came to me an extremely abused young dog with a lot of issues. She took a lot of work too, and it was totally worth it.