A Nest of Kits

Observe & Interact 1 Minute

petitparadis kit

Blackberry has three remaining kits. All looking well fed and healthy so we are hoping she will nurture them through successfully. Mrs PP has been placing the smallest of the three on top of the other two at regular times throughout the day in the hope that this smaller one will be closer to a feed when Blackberry does her feed time.

So far this had worked and Blackberry is quite accepting of the interference and of us handling her kits despite them being less than a week old. In fact they are a week old today. I am managing to keep the feed up to her as she is eating quite a bit more with milk production happening. I’ve harvested fresh grass from Tillellan to keep her and the other rabbits and guinea pigs happy. Hopefully soon we can move this menagerie to their new location where they can get fresh grass and greens more regularly.

Published by Petit Paradis

I am on a journey with my family to transition as closely as practicable to a state of self-reliance in suburbia. I practice permaculture principles in our house, garden and community. We are on the southern coast of Western Australia. To our north is the rest of the world. To the south, Antarctica.

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4 thoughts on “A Nest of Kits”

    1. We use the Guinea Pigs primarily as a resource for ‘processing’ our kitchen ‘waste’ and ‘green waste’ from the garden. They have a broader palette than the rabbits in as much as they eat a wider variety of vegetable matter and they graze often throughout the day. I placed a half bag of hand picked grass clippings in the hutch with G-Pigs & Rabbits and every blade of it was gone by this morning. That is largely the effort of the G-Pigs. The rabbits will leave odd bits around. We don’t use them for eating though a friend of ours has tried one and preferred the inputs and outputs that she gets from her meat chickens than the G-Pigs. So for us, they eliminate our green waste and in return give us great manure for compost or digging into garden beds. They also are our most consistent pets lasting longer than chickens. Our rabbits we have not had all that long and the intention with some of them is ultimately as a food source.

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      1. I should add too Tony, that we have for the majority of our time here had free-range Guinea Pigs. That is they are left to their own devices in the garden. We provide little shelters here and there so they have somewhere to run to if a cat enters the garden or a raptor flies over. We also need to supply water. They nibble on grass and weeds and clean up fallen berries and tomatoes. Plus its plain good fun to watch them scamper from collection of pots to shrub, or just graze at the edges of the garden.

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