Raising Rabbits With Hank Will

Hard-guy though I was when it came to “frivolous” undertakings, while my daughters were young, a rabbit project made its way to the Will farm. I don’t remember exactly how it all came to be, but I do recall that one day I was out in the barn building a raised and weatherproof hutch for a pair of rabbits. I also recall chuckling to myself that it wouldn’t be a pair of rabbits for too long if the wall between the two compartments should ever fail. That hutch weighed about 350 pounds and withstood several brutal South Dakota winters, complete with wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour. I like to think that it is still in service.

There was much anticipation when the girls and I jumped into the truck that Saturday morning, heading just a few miles east to another farm. I had no idea what we were in for. It turns out that that farm’s girls (a few years older than my daughters) were selling their rabbits because they were finished with their 4-H projects – and my daughters were eager to raise rabbits for themselves, although no mention of 4-H was made.

After a little hefting and haggling, we loaded two white rabbits into a couple of boxes, headed home, and introduced them to their new quarters. I later learned that the bland-looking bunnies were members of the New Zealand White breed. Though I’m not generally partial to animals with white coats, I have to admit to experiencing a certain delight at their looks.

As is so often the case with daughters’ animal projects, I often found myself feeding these rabbits and carting their marvelous manure off to the garden. I enjoyed watching them munch hay and found the sound of it as relaxing as the murmur of contented chicks resting under a brooder lamp with full bellies. I was fascinated with the rabbits’ seemingly clumsy movements around the hutch and wondered whether they were truly happy in confinement.

When they were into it, the girls would sometimes let the rabbits roam the yard and eat fresh grass – well-supervised though, since we had a pack of herd dogs that made quite a sport of hunting the wild rabbit population to near extinction. As fate would have it, my daughters were never so into it that they wanted to try breeding the bunnies, and so for a few years, Peter and Cottontail were simply pets that gave as much enjoyment as I hope they received.

In time Peter passed away – his final resting spot was marked with a stone in the shelterbelt by the green ash tree next to stones commemorating the barn cats and a Beagle named Lilly.