Bléré!

Last weekend I went to visit my family in Bléré. It was super nice and I had so much fun! My cousins' daughter Olivia turned 12 so we were all gathered there to celebrate it. My cousin Gregory, his wife Julia and their wounderful son Abel, which you can see in the picture above when we were out on an afternoon walk. Beside them is my other cousins' daughter Eva and her baby :).

We ate so much good food and we had such a great time! On saturday we went to Tours and walked around in the old town, on the market, we had some drinks and we saw a giant dead elephant. Then we went home again and had a lovely meal prepared by my lovely cousin Mélanie. I love my family so much!

       

Now, a new week has started however. The first week of the last month of my stay in France. Time flies and I feel like I'm slowly getting my results sorted out. In the left picture, there's a kit, which you recognize from before of course. Cute and lovely as always. In the right picture, you can see the scale that I use to rate one of the rabbits' maternal behaviours; fur plucking. Rabbits pluck their fur to build a so called maternal nest for their nude kits, so as to keep them warm, and how much does do this, varies a lot. The fur grows back quite quickly, but for rabbits in intensive production (as this is) the fur may not recover fully between the births of the kits. This obviously gives a horrible look to the does. Moreover, my rabbits have suffered from disease lately, which has not ameliorated their fur recovery rate. The one in the upper left corner has given milk to her kits already, and is now laying down, "chilling" (the backpaw was put up when I approached with the camera however, one can never be too sure, being a rabbit). The one beside her, to the right, has not given her milk, and is completely full. She looks like the one to the right after a few minutes, which is very impressing. She has a scared look in her eyes because she didn't expect me to barge in with my camera when she was expecting to gain access to her kits. The one in the lower left corner has plucked her fur, but quite evenly over her body, and she even might have regained some already, she has also given her milk already. The lower right one does not have any kits this round, which is why her fur has fully recovered, and she has gained so much weight comparing to the other ones (since she eats the same feed as the other does which give milk and need huge amounts of energy every day). 

So, I agree it doesn't look nice, but I can assure you, (most of) the does are in really good shape (they have of course suffered from disease and have not all entirely been cured). Nonetheless, this is not how I personally would have carried out animal production. It works, but is it nice? That's another question. 

Tomorrow is AI (Artificial Inseination) time. Performing AI on a nice looking rabbit (lower right picture) seems fair to me, on a bad looking one however, I'm not so sure. So tomorrow I will go to the farm with mixed feelings. As previously mentioned; "When in France..."

Hope you have a good week!