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Bunnyginup 1

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Commenced:	01/12/2009
Submitted:	16/04/2011
Last updated:	07/10/2015
Location:	Parson Swamp Rd, Mayanup, Western Australia, AU
Phone:	+61409249807
Website:	http://www.faroc.com.au/Home/farocfarm
Climate zone:	Mediterranean

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Bunnyginup 1

Mayanup, AU

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Project: Bunnyginup 1

Posted by Ted Russ over 13 years ago

Please excuse me while I ramble about the "good ole days" of Bunnyginup...

In 2009 I was given a dwarf lop doe for Christmas. She was joined a few months later by a dwarf lop buck, and within a few months I was suddenly a Breeder of Dwarf Lop Rabbits... %)

"Black" Peta Panton and "Fast" Eddie Karborani, to give them their full names, are still with me today, and still allowed to produce the occasional litter of rather beautiful dwarf lop kittens, but the whole project got taken in rather a different direction since those days.

To start with, I hate to waste anything. And even two rabbits produce a substantial amount of bunny poop. It is PERFECT for enriching slightly acidic beach sand, which is what I was living on at the time, so I set about using the manure, and the stray shreddings of hay which they also drop rather a lot of, to turn several areas of sand into quite fertile beds, and began to grow kale and bok choi and a range of other vegetables, for my table as well, but mainly to supplement the pellets and hay diet of the rabbits.

But even a couple of BIG garden beds (by my standards, anyway - 2m x 4m each is a lot of garden beds) can only use so much manure and hay. I'd been layering the manure on the sand, adding drip irrigation, and then the hay on top as a thick mulch) so The Chickendales were procured.

Six Isa Brown pullets can chomp down a lot of hay and spilled rabbit pelleted food, and pretty soon they began producing eggs which I could barter for other things like scrap greens for the growing animal family, and the occasional vegies I wasn't growing for myself.

Meanwhile, the idea of pet rabbits was also not as appealing any more. Fine, I can take them to Shows and sell non-show quality rabbits as pets, but dwarf lops aren't the be-all and end-all of the lapine world. I began to make more hutches for New Zealand Whites, California Greys, and British Giants...

By 2010 I had grown my first table rabbits, and of course I now had A ) a space problem as there was no further way to grow more feed for them, B ) a manure problem because as I said, gardens and compost heaps can only take so much waste in a limited suburban yard, and C ) I was really beginning to do things that the area wasn't strictly zoned for. I started looking for long term agricultural type leases where I could add aquaponics to grow green feeds for the horde...

And that's the next chapter in the Updates trail friends!

Comments (3)

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Terry Haven : Hiya Ted.love your rabbit trials..Id like to grow rabbits sometime..what you need are some fodder trees for your rabbits to munch on...trees will grow you tonnes of the stuff if needed over the year.i grow fodder trees,.aybe we can exchange ideas,and methodoligies sometime Terry

Posted about 13 years ago

Alexandra Berendt : How did you deal with the myxo? I had a handfull of lop eared rabbits, mostly as pets and for manure, and ended up with a tiny hole in the shade cloth on their play pen (I kept two bunnies per hutch, usually females and had a large play pen for them to graze in and hang out in a bigger group, which worked very well despite people telling me that they won't get a long if they don't live togetehr all the time, apparently females are supposed to fight when first introduced to each other?). The hole admitted mozzies which ten proceeded to infect one or two does, and eventually all of my rabbits were detroyed humanely because all ten ended up with myxo, even though I had kept everyone isolated in their hutches from the first incident... It was a devastating experience and I have not gotten any more bunnies since :/

Posted over 12 years ago

Christopher Roche : rooftop snipers: A good story! I'm curious about your current life with these animals.

Posted over 1 year ago

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