Surprise!

1:46 PM, 7 February 2010
Temperature: 51 F, overcast, no wind

Today has not gone as planned. We transferred three of the rabbits to their new grazing arks, three having been completed. The three so chosen were the agouti doe, the buck, and Minnow. None really protested the change and gave every indication of enjoying the new space. However, while raking out Minnow's cage, we made a discovery: five live baby bunnies and three dead ones.

All five have fur but their eyes are still closed, making them between 3 and 9 days of age, as the eyes open between 10 and 12 days and fur appears noticeably after 3 days. She had hidden them so cunningly in a ball of straw and hay and her own fur that we believed it to only be her bed. Having moved her and discovered the babies, we put the babies in with her, in where the new nest hay is; hopefully we'll have a high survival rate and she won't reject them, but it's impossible to say right now.

She does seem happy in her new location, and was even lying down and grooming herself already. So we'll just have to see. For now we've gone from five rabbits to ten rabbits literally overnight.