Building a Rabbit Colony

you ever walk past your firewood rack and think where did all my firewood go and when is summer going to be here [Applause] hey there beginning farmer friends we are going to let the 4010 warm up and today this afternoon in a short amount of time that we have available to us we are going to try to complete at least one project that we started and if we get that done then we'll move on to the second project i'll tell you about those in a second by the way if you find yourselves watching these videos and liking these videos go ahead give them a thumbs up a like a subscribe hit the notification bell let me know that you're out there tell me how crazy i am in the comments down below whatever you want to do we're so thankful for everybody who's taking time to watch these i think that the project that we're going to work on first today is we're going to finish cleaning out the rabbit shed that means we've got the chains on the tires so we can get to where we need to get with the bucket to clean that out into the bucket so i am going to grab a shovel i don't remember where the shovel is and then we're going to go put the loader bucket on the 4010 we're going to scoop all of that out get ready to put sawdust and straw down it should go pretty quick in case you missed my previous video where i started this project but did not finish this project what we are doing in here which is our rabbit chef it is an old granary that's maybe 10 or 12 foot wide by 20 foot long something like that there is a divider wall down the middle so the other side there's a few more rabbits over there and that is eventually where we're going to brew some chicks this year but what we're doing in here is taking the rabbits out of these wire cages we're going to put them on the floor and make it into a rabbit colony basically where they can hop around they'll all be together we use different feeders on the floor instead of the cell feeders like this or the self-filling feeders whatever you want to call those so what i'm going to do right now is i'm going to go under the cages i'm going to take out all this manure all the old bedding and the stuff in the middle is actually pretty clean so until i get new straw and new bedding in here i'm going to push this stuff from the middle right here that is fairly clean i'm going to push that under the cages and then we'll get the rabbits down probably in a couple days when we get a bale of straw and we'll put them onto the ground the great thing about this being an old granary is that the door has some slots in it so that we can put some boards down in it so when we open this big door right here the rabbits can't go running out so i'm gonna grab my shovel i've got the loader bucket right out here outside the door i can fill that up and then it'll go over to our compost pile i'm gonna need a different tool kind of frozen in there look at this my wife is strong she bent the tines on this potato fork yeah all right we're gonna try that we got one side cleaned all the way out and i had actually forgotten that we had had some rabbits in the middle here so i am having to clean out a little bit more middle than i thought i was going to have to i think that's going to be okay i have to go to town today anyway so i'll just go get a bunch of wood chips what i want to do for our colony is put wood chips on the base layer to kind of provide the most insulation because it is open for about a foot to two feet below this part of the shed here so there's lots of air under there is what i'm trying to say so a little bit of insulation to keep the floor warm we're gonna do this side of the shed right now we're gonna get it all cleaned out ready to go we'll go to town we'll get the wood chips we'll get everything spread out and as soon as we can we'll just drop the rabbits on the floor now that we've got everything cleaned out and the bucket emptied on the tractor i'm gonna head to town and i'm going to get four to six bags of pine shavings then we can add straw as we need to in the spring it'll be easy to clean out straight out the door over there and then we can even come in with the power washer i've done that in the past and really wash it down well use some shovels and kind of squeegee everything out the door i'm really liking the way it looks i'm really excited to get the rabbits on the floor i just got back from town with five bags of the pine shavings you know what they say spare the pine shavings spoil the job name that tv show from canada this hasn't always been the case but now i will be the first to admit that i have a bad habit of starting a job and then taking a long time to finish the job this rabbit colony is kind of a case in point although i was waiting until i got the chains on to finish it because we did get snow after i started the project but i think i have everything minus some water bowls we have some water bowls we can use but i like to use glass pie pans for water bowls when we do a colony like this i think some of those broke so we don't have as many as we need we'll make do with what we have but i think what we're going to do is we're going to put the wood shavings down the pine shavings down then we're going to put the rabbits down i am working very hard on trying to become a person who finishes jobs that they start [Music] okay i think we are ready for rabbits to drop onto the ground and into the colony not drop as much as be set onto the ground i've got water dishes set on a piece of plywood i set it on the piece of plywood so they don't kick up all these wood shavings into the water bowls right away we've got feed at the back in our little chicken feeder along the wall that they can eat out of the only thing left to do is to take some of these champagne de-argent rabbits out of their cages and set them on the ground and let them start exploring their new colony last time we had the rabbits as a colony in here they would get up behind these cages that was not very fun so what i'm going to do i thought i was gonna put the cages up on top there but it was so tight getting those cages in here and maybe we're never gonna use these cages in here again so i'm gonna take the cages out if we have to put them back in we can put them back in but at least this way they won't get up behind there when we go to try to catch them they'll also make it easier to clean this whole area out in the spring without having to dig underneath remember how i said the reason i was moving those cages is because the rabbits hopped up behind the cages that's not two rabbits in the same cage that's one weapon in a cage and one rabbit behind the cage i think so far i'm really happy with it there's a little more cleaning that i would like to do now that i got the cages out of here but all in all it's in pretty good shape i don't really know a lot about rabbit colonies and the reasons behind them my wife knows more than i do and i didn't ask her exactly what the reasons were behind this i just know that it works it's nice to have them on the floor on the bedding instead of on the metal cages but there are a lot of different ways to raise rabbits i know that joel solotin raises him in hanging cages above his pigs or chickens or something like that in a hoop house and that's the way he raises them and then they take the grower rabbits out onto the pasture other people do a colony outside so i don't know a lot about the different ways to raise rabbits but this is the way we're going to try it for the winter at least or what's left of the winter hopefully spring will come soon since we're in the getting stuff done mode let's keep getting stuff done let's work on these shelves we've got five more to cut i don't think we're gonna get them all done tonight because two things will happen first of all it's gonna get dark eventually probably before we get it all cut and second of all we've got a 10 year old who's got a birthday today so we probably don't want to spend all night out here cutting shelves either but he's out here right now he's going to help me we'll just cut as many as we can this is the point of the project when you have one little light on your dewalt 5 amp hour battery battery's dead we'll be right back new battery three green dots we should be good to go now i've got two shelves done today i am questioning whether or not the shelving unit itself is straight or if my cutting is off by that much but they're getting difficult to put in i basically need a ladder i'm getting high enough up now that i can't maneuver things around to get them to drop down into the rails the way they're supposed to do so i'm gonna have to bring the 4010 in lift the loader up climb up into the loader bucket go through that whole process i'm going to quit though because it appears that i am on a two-shelf per day maximum which means it's january right now 2021 so i've got let's see three more shells to go i should probably be done sometime in march or april at the rate i'm going now i am gonna call it a video right now because like i said 10 year old birthday today but before i go i want to give you a little information so i don't just leave you hanging here let me go find that information and then i'll report back to you the information that i went and got for you is about the rabbit colony i wanted to not leave you hanging tell you why we do what we do around our farm and so the main reason that we do this there's not huge philosophical reasons but it does make it easier for winter chores having the water bowls as opposed to water bottles that just freeze really quickly with the little drinks the ball drinkers at the bottom of those those freeze really quickly even if the water in the bottle itself doesn't freeze that little ball freezes solid so having bowls instead of those balls that's a big thing the feed in the big community feed trough that's an easier thing but beyond that it mimics more what we do when we have rabbits out on pasture they're used to having solid ground as opposed to being on wire mesh so that's a good thing for them also rabbits are a social animal but it's also good for rabbits to be able to exercise that's one of the reasons we put them out on pasture in the rabbit pins it's one of the good reasons that we have a rabbit colony as well hopefully that gives you a little bit of information on why we did the rabbit colony this way right now we've got eight champagne day argent does on the ground here we've got a buck and a couple potential bucks up in cages still if you look in here they're actually having a pretty comfortable time right now thank you so much for watching it was a day of getting stuff done which is always a good day so no matter where you are morning noon night whatever time it is i hope you are getting stuff done and i hope you enjoyed today's video

Channel: The Beginning Farmer

Views: 15,422

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Id: zmT_YpYUYjs

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021