Bunny Biology: Breeding Our Mini-Lop Ch. 1

The week of Easter we welcomed the cutest little white bunny into our garden.  We named her Flip Flop because she reminded us of the white sandy beaches in Australia, and cuz her ears are floppy of course.  She has been the sweetest little pet.  She hops around the yard at our feet, gets on her hind legs and begs for a pat, she chases the kids, and she can even "jump" on our trampoline and go down the slide.  She is a multi-talented little bunny. 

When Flip Flop hit about 5 months, her personality seemed to change. The "rabbit people" I talked to for advice said she was in her pubescent teenager stage.  One minute she was her usual sweet self, then the next she was a raging rabbit.  I experienced this personality "flip" first hand when I was hanging wash recently in the backyard.  Flip Flop was hopping seemingly happily at my feet when all of a sudden...BAM! She nudged her head into my legs and started circling me and making grunting sounds.  In a flash, she lunged at me and took a chunk out of my hand when I tried to pet her.  I grabbed a pair of pajama pants off the line and waved them at her to try and scare her away to no avail.  She chased me all the way to the laundry room door and even rammed into the glass door once I was safely inside.  I was scared to death and thought maybe she had gone rabid! A call to my husband made me feel a bit like I had imagined most of it.  He said it sounded like a Monty Python movie.

I heard somewhere that breeding her may calm her down a bit.  I also heard that desexing her would also do the trick.  Since I had never experienced a pet having babies before, and I wanted my kids to be able to, I decided to try breeding her. I wasn't sure how to go about finding her a mate, but I figured the Internet was a great place to start.  I placed a simple ad on a popular site called Gumtree (similar to Craigslist), and received 5 replies right away.  Rabbit owners are the friendliest folks! :)

We chose a woman nearby that said we were welcome to bring our doe to her place for a couple of days to meet with one of her bucks.  Here's a picture of Flip Flop with her suitor.  He was a handsome fellow, but I'm not sure Flip Flop was as thrilled with the idea as he was.

After two nights and three days, I got a text that Flip Flop was ready to come home.  "She's not too phased in him" were the exact words.  By this time we were missing her terribly anyway, so we were more than happy to go pick her up.

Flip Flop seemed so happy to see us, and even crawled up on Hagen's lap in his car seat during the car ride home. She's content back at home now, and we shall see if this lesson in "Bunny Biology" will produce anything.  Let the 31 day count down begin!