Norwegian Rabbits

from the blog, "My Little Norway": The Jets

Meet The Jets! – Jumbo Jet, Ink Jet and Brid-jet.  They are two weeks old in the pictures and only Jumbo has her eyes open.  Here their ears are still kinked back and they are covered with their mum’s (ripped out) fur.  Yesterday they turned three weeks and are very happy running around their pen.  They look like regular bunnies now and their personalities are definitely coming through.  (Our fourth kit died after two days as she wasn’t eating.  We tried to help her by holding the mother Black Betty on our lap so she could freely feed without competing with her siblings but she just wasn’t interested.  We have read and been told that bunnies can just go for no reason at all but it is still hard to see one go.)

It is amazing how quickly rabbits grow.  These little kits are very sociable and have no qualms chasing their mother around the pen for milk.  They are so demanding that we are now ‘on-the-shelf’ feeding the kits so Black Betty can have a rest.  This means that Black Betty can spend her days outside in her own pen in the sun and grazing on fresh grass and at dawn and dusk we take her into her kits for feeding.  I was a little worried to do this at first but Black Betty really needed a break.  However, the kits have adapted so well to this with there strong temperaments that I think this method of feeding kits is excellent for this breed of rabbit.

I’m quite amazed at how great rabbits are as pets.  I thought they would be like guinea pigs or hamsters that don’t really care if you are there or not but rabbits, at least Trønder rabbits, seem more like dogs.  They jump up on their pen when you come walking by for a little pat or scratch, they have crazy-play and then sleep long in the sun, and they even like to lick your fingers!  We are very happy to be able to help conserve this Norwegian rare breed.

We have registered our new Trønders with the conservation authority who were very excited that we had started breeding.  They were looking for another breeding pool in case something goes wrong (like a genetic defect) with their own.  This responsibility has made us more committed to breeding this rare breed.  It is now official that by far we are the most northern breeders of Trønder rabbits in the world (the second is in Trønderlag in the middle of Norway).  But when you live where we do, being the “most northern” isn’t such a big deal as nearly everything can claim that title.