Rabbits are both very clever and very sociable animals. In order to try to accommodate for this in our rabbits' lives we endeavour to provide different environments and different situations for them to experience so they do not just spend their whole lives in a hutch. This keeps our stock entertained and therefore happy which in turn helps to ensure they are in tiptop condition for breeding and showing.

  Our young rabbits spend time out playing on a grassed area in a secure run as well as being

  allowed occasional access to run around inside our house. Older and more trustworthy rabbits

  enjoy free run of our garden (under close supervision). All our rabbits are given toys to play

  within their hutches on a rotational basis. Providing toys for a few days at a time and then

  removing or replacing them means the rabbits never become bored with any particular toy.

  As a rule we keep all adult rabbits in individual hutches positioned close enough that they can

  hear, see and smell the other rabbits. We feel this is the ideal situation for adult rabbits as it

  prevents unwanted litters and/or injuries from fights and means we can easily monitor food and drink intake and other health related issues whilst still enabling sociable behaviour to develop. Two years ago however, we noticed two of our does were showing signs that they wished to live together rather than in their own hutches, so decided to allow this to happen on a trial basis. We now have one large hutch with a fully bonded family group living in it which is virtually unheared of for breeding animals!

Here is their story....

Brazil, an 8 week old chocolate Dutch doe, was given to us by Victor Baldock at the Greater London Dutch Club's Adult Stock Show. We brought her home and settled her into a top hutch next to Terri a 5 and a half year old chocolate Tri-Dutch doe. Within a week Terri had realised the hutch next to her was no longer empty and had begun chewing and pushing on the

divider that separated the two hutches. On several occasions we entered the rabbitry and found the divider pushed right open and the old doe and the young doe snuggled up together. The two were always split back up for fear of a fight breaking out if they were left together. Soon it was clear that no matter how often we split them up if they were going to remain in

neighbouring hutches they would always get back together. The options were to either split them on to different levels or allow Terri to keep the youngster and mother her for a while. This is the option we chose (on a trial basis) as Brazil was fairly small for her age and clearly wanted Terri to be a mother figure. This arrangement worked well for several months even

though both does were regularly being split up to be shown and put back together again afterwards. Terri was even taken away to two and three days shows and returned to their shared hutch with no problems what-so-ever.

Brazil was now seven months old and we felt it was high time she was mated if she were

ever going to be used as a breeding doe which was her intended purpose all along. She

was therefore put with Thornton and she and Terri were split up so that she could litter

alone. This proved disastrous for Terri who began to pine and lose condition very rapidly.

For fear of losing Terri (now six years old) Brazil was hastily put back into her hutch and we

decided to try to find a young replacement doe for Terri to mother when the time came that

Brazil would have to be removed again. No young does could be found however that Terri

liked so we made the hard choice to leave Brazil where she was and to just wait and see

what happened. On the 29th May Brazil gave birth to a healthy litter of two. We were quite

shocked to see a beautiful nest in one corner of the shared hutch perfectly lined with

chocolate, white and orange fur. There was only one place the orange fur could have come

from and a quick check confirmed Terri had joined in and had plucked her own chest for the

babies!

Brazil's first litter had been such a success and Terri had enjoyed playing with them so much that when it came time to re-mate Brazil for her second litter there was no hesitation at all. The second litter arrived on August 27th and was a litter of three. A Tri-Dutch baby was added four days later as its own mother wasn't looking after it so Terri and Brazil raised three chocolate Dutch and a chocolate Tri-Dutch together, again with no problems.

At six and a half years old, on November 15th Terri sadly passed away. She had been a wonderful asset to our stud of Tri-Dutch being the founding doe of our entire line of chocolates and had greatly increased the number of chocolate Tris in this country. She had been a successful show rabbit in her youth and later as a veteran. Her legacy lives on at Halcyon Stud where our chocolate Tri-Dutch stud are now in residence. In her old age she became quite frail and dodery yet being allowed to live with young litters again (albeit that they were not actually hers) enabled her to spend her last few months happily bouncing about the hutch playing as if she were a youngster again.

After Terri's death we became concerned for Brazil as she had never lived in a hutch on her own before. As there was a doe in her August litter we were intending to keep we left the two together. Brazil was now living with Nestlé, her daughter.

  On the 14th April both Brazil and Nestle littered together in two seperate nests.

  Unfortunately Brazil had just one tiny baby which had died of the cold by the time we found

  it. Nestlé had three in her litter and they were all fat, fed and healthy. Brazil proved to be

  quite a nuisance to Nestlé and kept trying to steal her babies which was upsetting her.

  Brazil's milk had never come in (perhaps this was why her baby died) so we thought it

  would be best to split the two adult does up and let Nestlé take care of her litter by herself.

  The two does lived in hutches side by side for almost three weeks until Nestlé's litter

  began running around. We decided to try to re-introduce Brazil and Nestlé to see if they

  could cohabit peacefully again. A close eye was kept out for any fights or any threat to

  the young babies, but none ever arose. It was as if Brazil and Nestlé had never been

  apart!

As Brazil had lost her last litter she was mated to a new buck in mid June so on July 12th

she gave birth to a healthy litter of three. Nestlé and her son who had not yet been sold on

were still in the shared hutch with Brazil at this point, but still no problems occurred. Due

to space issues in the hutch and Nestlé's limited use as a breeding doe here we decided

it was time she moved on to a new home. On 27th July she was collected by her new

owner leaving just Brazil, Nestlé's son (still not yet re-homed) and her two week old litter in

the hutch. We decided to keep a daughter from this new litter to replace Nestlé as Brazil's

companion.

Brazil and Dream, her youngest daughter from the litter mentioned above, had been living together happily as a pair since the other babies were all sold. Dream was shown briefly as an under five month exhibit and always returned home to her mother after the show with no problems. At six months old Dream was old enough to be used for breeding so both does were mated to different bucks on the same day. We eagerly awaited their litters hoping they managed to share their babies with the same success we had always known from this family. Thew pair did not disappoint us.

  Dream now had a young litter of 2 which are doing very well as Brazil and Dream were

  doing a wonderful job of sharing the care for them showing the desire to co-habit is

  certainly a family trait. Brazil did not have any babies, but she seemed to think Dream's

  babies are hers anyway. At the beginning of the month when the babies were very young

  the weather turned very cold and we lost all litters in our rabbitry except Dream's. We can

  only assume the reason they survived was down to the absolutely GIANT nest the two

  does joined together to build.

Dream's litter of two mentioned above were growing well so Dream had been re-mated to a new buck. The new buck was a brown-grey and the mating had been carried out to check the buck was fertile as we had been unable to produce any young when he had been paired with our brown-grey doe. Dream's new litter was somewhat of a surprise as she produced 2 blacks, a brown-grey and a steel. This indicated that Dream is not infact a chocolate afterall but actually a chocolate masked steel. This can only have happened by breeders introducing blacks into their chocolates and those blacks had been steel bred. Knowing that dream was not a pure chocolate prompted us to come to the hard conclusion that she was no longer useful here, and as Brazil seems to have stopped breeding we decided to begin looking for a new home for the two does to retire to together. On a happier note, her newest litter which were all of good type and well marked were probably the friendliest baby Dutch we had ever bred. Some of these babies would therefore remain here for use with a new pale-grey breeding program as we consider rabbits of excellent nature to be very important when breeding.

In mid September Brazil and Dream both went off to their new pet home where Dream

would continue to be used occasionally as a breeding doe. After the success we have

experienced with these chocolates we have been studying our other does and have

identified a blue doe called Ludo with a similar nature. We therfore allowed her to keep her

daughter, Yazi, living with her up to the age of 5 months and then remated Ludo. Success

again! Ludo and Yazi are bringing up a litter of 5 together. Older sister Yazi is extremely

attentive to the young litter and very willing and able to help with caring for them. When Yazi

is old enough we will attempt to have both does littering at the same time.

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