Bunnies

We decided to start raising rabbits at home.  We started with 3, but now we have 9.  One of our females is pregnant and should be giving birth in another few weeks.  When we got her, she was pregnant but all of her babies died.  This time we are hopeful that the babies will live.  

Building the house

I never knew how much rabbits eat.  They eat A LOT!  I think they could eat every second of every day.  We go and pick grasses and weeds for them from around the village.  Some times we also get them carrots, sweet potatoes, cabbage or banana leaves.  It is great that it doesn't cost so much to feed them.   But it is quite the funny scene to everyone else in the village to see a mzungu(white person) picking weeds.  They stop to ask me what I am doing or why I am taking the grass or they just whisper their speculations.  Some even think I am witching people.

We are supposed to be raising the rabbits for the boys to eat.  It probably wasn't the best idea for the world's biggest animal lover to start taking care of them.  We will see how to manage that day when it comes.   In Uganda, people carry rabbits by their ears.  Every time I see the boys doing that, I scream for them to carry them well.  They laugh at me for carrying them like babies.  Sometimes I am in their house talking to the rabbits and the boys come asking who I am talking to only to find me holding a rabbit and talking to it.  They just laugh and think I am going crazy.  At least I stopped naming all of them, but they still laugh because I call them mama, papa and baby.

This is baby.  She is my favourite but shhh...don't tell the others.

The all white one is Papa.  I think we are mortal enemies.  Last time I tried to pick him up, he scratched me and made me bleed but I plan to win him over.

So that is what is taking up my time these days. It is a full time job just searching food for them. We have started a small garden of cabbage for them and will eventually add sweet potatoes to it. We will have number 10 the end of this month and then babies next month, so it seems we will quickly be overrun by rabbits. Next up on my list of farm animals is goats. or ducks. But the boys all hate ducks because they say they are so dirty but they like chickens. Go figure...