My dad breeds rabbits, has done so since he was a kid in fact. This is of course an interesting concept for the boys and during my parents’ most recent visit they promised some pictures of a soon to be born baby bunny, so the kids could see how fast they grow up. Four weeks and five pictures later, I thought I would put them together on a page somewhere so that I can share it with other interested parties, so here they are, along with the original comments that my parents provided (typos fixed here and there):
| Date: | Picture: | Comments: |
|---|---|---|
| July 4 |  |
As we promised we have taken a picture of a just born rabbit. This one is 3 days old, born on Sunday evening, the day we came home from the U.S.A. |
| July 8 |  |
The second time that we take a picture of the same young rabbit, you can see the colours a little better now. The body is less pink, the eyes are still closed. He was sleepy. The rabbit is now one week old. |
| July 15 |  |
The rabbit is two weeks old now. The eyes are open and he likes to look in the world around him. The skin is white and you can see the spots and stripe very well. |
| July 24 |  |
The rabbit is three weeks old now. He still drinks mother’s milk, but he started to eat a little hay, and together with his sisters take some dry food now. He plays and runs with his sisters and mother through the hutch. |
| July 31 |  |
He is four weeks old now. He still drinks mother’s milk, but eats more of the hay and dry food and drinks water too. He doesn’t sleep anymore in the nest that the mother made before he was born, but together with his sisters makes his own warm place in the hay. |
| August 6 |  |
This is a picture of our young rabbit together with his sisters. The sisters are the ones in the middle (entirely brown) and on the right side (different colour than her brother has). They are five weeks old now and from now on they stay in their hutch without the mother. The mother will visit her children once a day so they can still drink some mother’s milk. |
| August 24 |  |
Our rabbit is 7 and a half weeks old and he has his own hutch now. His weight is about 1.5 kg (3.3 pounds) while at birth his weight was about 30 gram (1 ounce). By now you can see his spots very well, because he lost his baby hair. He is very quiet, he likes to be a model. |
Disclaimer: These pictures were taken with an aging webcam. The hands holding it belong to my dad. 
Update: Added picture #6 and #7 (the latter with a 2 month delay, as I nearly forgot).
I can’t help but wonder what the purpose behind breeding bunnies is, besides selling them. Maybe selling the bunnies is the only reason (and maybe it’s enough of a reason)? These kept popping up in my head:
- bunny stew!
- snake food
- bunny-fur-hat (with ears)
- bunny-mittens (with ears)
- bunny-carpet
they look like pretty decent snake food to me.
Thanks, but if you want to feed bunnies to your snakes, I don’t want to know about it.
The local pet store sells pet rats for the same kind of reasons, with as effect that they really don’t care much healthy the rats are when they’re sold, even if the customer happens to want the rat as, you know, a pet! Made for a slightly traumatic experience when one that we got was dead within hours of the purchase. We got our money back, but it was still annoying.