Hippity Hop, Baby Bunnies!

(finally!)

We finally have little baby bunnies going hippity hop about the place. Yay!

After what seemed like weeks of rain and mud, it finally cleared up enough that we are able to get out to the bunny yard with a camera. Which is a good thing, since Jessie's little ones are becoming cute now.

Jessie, a black doe, and Nero, a black hybrid buck, had four little ones. There's one white one and three black ones. One of the blacks, Spot, has well, I'm sure you guessed it, a spot on his/her head. There's also Speck, who has a speck of white on his/her head. And Lotus, who is all black and Petunia, who is all white.

They are three week old baby bunnies this week and they are at the hippity hop stage. They hippity-galoomp about the hutch, figuring out what to do with four feet. They've also figured out how to hop up on top of the nest box, so now there's no more hiding place for Jessie when she wants to get away from the little ones.

Now that being on top of the nest box is not a get away spot anymore, the babies like hanging with mom and occasionally napping on her as well. I suppose an angora mattress would be a lovely soft place to nap. Not sure what Jessie thinks about all this, but she doesn't seem too upset about it.

Poor Jessie! As if one baby bunny isn't enough. It looked like Petunia decided on top of mum was a great place for a nap. Then it looks like Speck decided if one's good, two's better so he's napping on top of Petunia and Jessie.

Jessie doesn't carry the Vienna gene, but obviously Nero does. The Vienna gene is used to produce Blue Eyed White rabbits but it's a sheer pain for folks who don't want BEWs, white marks on bunny heads or white toenails on colored rabbits. It takes a double recessive to get a BEW, but before you get to that point, there's a lot of 'mis-marked' bunnies around who only have one recessive Vienna gene and one dominant Vienna gene. It can also entirely hide and not show any marks on a rabbit that carries the gene, so at least with the white spot, we know Spot is a Vienna Carrier. Speck also has some white, although when his wool grows out, it will be hard to see.

This is Petunia, I think the babies will have flower names this year. Although, the ones who go to new homes will get a new name from their new humans. The bunnies who stay here will get flower names. I don't know if Petunia is male or female. If she becomes a he, then he will be named 'Aster' instead.

Since Petunia is white, we don't know if she has a Vienna mark or not. Her pedigree will still carry a 'PVC' for Possible Vienna Carrier just so we will know she could be a carrier. She does have a pedigree, although she is a hybrid since Nero is a hybrid. He is 1/2 English angora, 1/4th Satin angora and 1/4th German angora, so these babies are also hybrid angoras. They're 3/4ths English, 1/8th Satin and 1/8th German. It will be interesting to see if they get the fuzzy faces and ears of the English or if they will have clean faces like the Satins and Germans.