New Project

The other night we had insanely strong winds and frigid temperatures. All night, right into the morning, the wind literally howled, screamed, whooshed, and whirled, and when we woke up in the morning there was a sheet of ice stuck to our front door.

I kept thinking about the rabbits outside and praying that they were warm enough in their hay-stuffed cubbies, and even though I know they were, it was an urgent message that we need to build indoor hutches for them before Winter officially arrives.

So the other day we started prepping our indoor hutches. Wanna see what we're using? :D

Do you like our Child Containment Unit? No seriously.... that's what it was. We got this thing for free from a church that used it in the nursery... There were four mattresses that came with it.... For children.... And there are sliding "jail" doors on it.... That lock.... WTF????

Needless to say, we told them they could keep the mattresses as we wouldn't be caging any children in it. And if we did decide to cage some children we certainly wouldn't want them to be comfortable or anything... After all... it's a dungeon! 

Here we have a test specimen (just to see how well this unit truly worked).

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding!!!

Okay, I'll stop I swear. Seriously though.... tsk tsk.

So anyway! Our plans for this setup is to put plywood up on the backside of the unit, take out the sliding/locking doors and install hinged doors for easy access. The inside of each hutch will be lined with chicken wire, as will the floor, and underneath the chicken wire at the floor will be a slide-out tray that catches the pee and poop so we can easily clean them.

Here I am, sawing off the dowels from the backside of the Child Containment Unit... I mean soon-to-be rabbit hutches... with Sophia strapped to my back. I am truly amazing. Thank you, thank you.

With some of the money we've been given through our GoFundMe link, we are going to buy a water warmer for our rain barrel, and some tubing so that we can set up a better watering system than what we currently have (which is... plastic pet bowls).

While this hutch unit will serve its purpose throughout the Winter, it would not pass inspection by the USDA. What we really need are metal/steel hutches that can be easily cleaned/sanitized. The above unit is made out of particle board or some other weird wood-particulate material. We would love to be able to reach our goal that we set through out GoFundMe campaign to build a certified kitchen/processing/packaging area. 

Things are coming together slowly, but surely (actually, a bit more quickly than we'd initially thought!), though at times things can definitely seem overwhelming with everything else we've gotta keep up with here at Wild Hare Farm! I love it though. I wouldn't want it any other way... except I could use a personal chef... that would just be the bees knees....

THESE GUYS are our next project....

 And because I got too busy to post this when I had originally intended to, the turkeys have actually already been processed. And so I will document that rigmarole in my next post!