September at The Rabbitry Center: Rabbits, Bees, Gardens & Hunting Season
September is here, and we’re officially making the turn from summer into fall here at The Rabbitry Center.
The last several weeks have been incredibly busy around the property. We’ve been breeding and selling rabbits, weaning litters, building cages, harvesting honey, working in the garden, planting food plots, dealing with a predator problem, and getting our new hunting tower ready for deer season.
We even managed to accidentally pull an apple tree completely out of the ground with the tractor!
So rather than trying to squeeze everything into one newsletter, I wanted to put together a full property update and show you what’s been happening as we head into September.
🐇 The Rabbitry Has Been Busy
We’ve been breeding rabbits like normal, raising litters, weaning youngsters, and sending rabbits home with new families.
We’ve also spent a lot of time creating videos about two subjects that are extremely important in a working rabbitry: weaning rabbits and building good cages.
We’ve covered different weaning ages, cage construction, cage floors, and some of the methods I’ve developed over the years to make building multiple cages faster and easier.
We’ve also been talking more about our rabbit reservation system.
As litters are born and customers begin reserving rabbits, you need a simple way to keep track of who’s available, who’s reserved, pickup dates, balances, breeding dates, and upcoming litters.
I like keeping things simple with dry-erase boards and a giant dry-erase calendar.
I go into much more detail about that system in Episode 49 of The Rabbitry Center Podcast.
🦝 A Predator Found a Weakness in Our Rabbitry
We also had an unfortunate situation recently that reminded us why predator protection is so important in an outdoor rabbitry.
Our trail camera caught raccoons coming through the rabbitry at night.
We discovered they were reaching underneath the cages and biting at the feet of baby rabbits when their feet protruded through the cage floor.
That exposed a weakness in our setup that we’re now fixing.
One thing I’ve really come to appreciate is using a solar-powered trail camera as part of the security system around the rabbitry.
Trail cameras aren’t just for deer hunting.
They’re a terrific way to keep an eye on your rabbitry, chicken coop, apiary, garden, or other areas of your property when you’re not around—especially at night.
I’ll leave a link to the trail camera setup I use at the bottom of this article.
Our Predator-Protection Upgrade
Identifying the predator was step one.
Now we’re installing an additional layer of protective wire underneath our existing cage floors.
The goal is to create another barrier between the rabbits and any predator attempting to reach through from underneath.
I’ll be documenting the entire upgrade and putting together a video showing exactly what we’re installing and how we’re doing it.
Stay tuned for that video this September.
Sometimes a problem reveals a weakness in your system. Once you find it, you fix it and make the system better.
🍯 Wrapping Up Honey Harvest
Late July through August is what I like to call the Super Bowl of our apiary—the annual honey harvest.
By September 1, we’re generally wrapping up the main harvest and shifting our attention toward something even more important:
Getting the bees ready for a Michigan winter.
We’re feeding where necessary, treating for mites, checking food stores, and preparing our colonies to overwinter, generally
clustering them down into two deeps.
At this point, our mindset changes from:
“How much honey can we take?”
to:
“Do these bees have everything they need to make it through winter?”
That’s an important transition for any beekeeper in a northern climate.
🐝 Keep Your Smoker Smoking!
This year’s honey harvest also gave me a painful reminder about something very basic.
Keep your smoker smoking!
While pulling honey, I managed to take about four stings directly to the face.
Working outside in the August heat was already hot enough. Doing it with a throbbing, duck-bill-sized lip made things considerably more interesting!
I tell that story—and talk more about our annual honey harvest—in Episode 49 of the podcast.
🍅 The Garden Is Paying Us Back
After all the planting, watering, weeding, and work earlier in the season, late summer is when the garden finally starts paying us back.
The spring vegetables have mostly finished, while the summer vegetables have been producing tomatoes, squash, beans, zucchini, jalapeños, and green peppers.
My biggest challenge with zucchini is finding them before they turn into baseball bats!
We’ve also been growing tomatoes, jalapeños, and green peppers in the greenhouse.
Some of our tomatoes developed blossom-end rot, so we’ve been working on correcting the growing conditions and keeping moisture more consistent so the plants can properly take up and move calcium.
That’s gardening.
Every season teaches you something.
🌱 Fall Food Plots Are Going In
As summer winds down, our attention also turns toward fall food plots and deer season.
We’ve been preparing the ground and getting our fall crops planted.
One thing I enjoy about managing our property is trying to make everything serve more than one purpose.
Some plants feed the deer.
Some feed the rabbits.
Some provide nectar and pollen for the bees.
Some improve the soil.
Fruit trees can feed us and wildlife.
And many of these things accomplish several jobs at once.
That’s the system I’m continually trying to improve.
🍎 We Pulled an Apple Tree Out With the Tractor!
Unfortunately, we had a pretty serious mishap while working around the food plot.
Our younger apple trees have protective wire cages around them. Some equipment on the tractor caught one of those cages, and before we realized what had happened, we were dragging the cage—and the apple tree—behind us.
It pulled the tree completely out of the ground.
This wasn’t a tiny sapling either.
The tree was probably three or four years old, the trunk was approaching two inches thick, and it already had four or five apples growing on it.
That was a heartbreaker.
We immediately put the tree in water and eventually replanted it in some really rich compost.
We’ve experienced quite a bit of leaf dieback, but we’re hoping the root system survived and the tree will eventually push out new growth.
Now it’s a waiting game.
Thankfully, several of our other fruit trees are doing extremely well. Some have actually gotten so large that we’re going to have to cut them back just to maintain our shooting lanes around the food plot.
I’ll take that problem!
🦌 Hunting Season Is Almost Here
September also means one thing around here:
Deer season is getting close.
Our new tower blind has been one of the bigger projects we’ve worked on this summer.
I’ve been documenting the build along the way because I’m planning a complete video showing how we built it.
I’m also working toward putting together a build plan for anyone interested in constructing something similar on their own property.
Between finishing the blind, getting food plots established, checking trail cameras, and preparing equipment, September is when everything starts coming together.
🎥 We’re Still Rebuilding!
Behind the scenes, we’re continuing to re-upload our videos at lightning speed.
There’s a lot of work involved in rebuilding years of content, but we’re going to keep pushing.
I also want to give a special shout-out to Nick, who was able to send me several videos that I couldn’t locate.
Nick, you’re the man!!
Thank you. I greatly appreciate it.
Looking Ahead
September is one of my favorite months on the property because you can feel the seasons changing.
The rabbits get some relief from the summer heat.
The honey harvest is behind us, and the bees are being prepared for winter.
The garden is still producing.
The fall food plots are growing.
And hunting season is right around the corner.
That’s what I enjoy about this lifestyle.
Rabbits, bees, gardens, fruit trees, wildlife, food plots, family, business, and projects all become part of the same property.
You don’t need hundreds of acres to start building something productive.
Start with what you have.
Keep improving it.
Learn from your mistakes.
And enjoy watching it grow.
Thank you for continuing to follow along, watch our videos, listen to the podcast, read the blog, and support what we’re building.
Here’s to a great September!
— Bobby
The Rabbitry Center
Watch, Listen & Read
🎙️ The Rabbitry Center Podcast — Episode 49
🔨 Rabbit Cage Building Playlist