OUR LOSSES.
Our young people were very anxious to add some rabbits to their
playthings, and as we always like to encourage a love of animals in
children, we consented that they should become the fortunate
share-holders in a doe and six young ones. These were bought early in
September, and, as long as the weather would allow, the children used
to take them food; by and by, however, one died, and then came the
complaint that Master Harry had killed it by giving it too much green
meat. The young gentleman was thereupon commanded not to meddle with
them for the future, but the rabbits did not derive any benefit from
his obedience; two or three times weekly we heard of deaths taking
place in the hutch, till at last the whole half-dozen, with their
mamma, reposed under the large walnut-tree.
One day the lad who had attended to them knocked at the drawing-room
door, and on entering with a large basket, drew from it a most
beautiful black-and-white doe, and held it up before our admiring
eyes; this was followed by the display of seven young ones, as pretty
as the mother.
"Please, ma'am," said Tom, "these are the kind of rabbits you ought to
have bought. My brother keeps rabbits, and these are some of his; I'll
warrant they won't die!"
Willing once more to gratify the children, as well as to solve the
enigma of whether it must be inevitable to lose by keeping these
animal, we became the possessors of these superior creatures, with the
understanding that no one was to have anything to do with them but
Tom, the said Tom saying, with perfect confidence, that "he would
'warrant' they should weigh five pounds each in six weeks."
Not being learned in rabbits, we trusted to his experience and
promises that we should always from that have a brace for the table
whenever we wished for them. What was our disappointment, then, when a
week after we heard of the death of one of them! This was soon
followed by another, and another, till the whole seven little
"bunnies" shared the grave under the walnut-tree, and in a day or two
the doe likewise departed: I concluded she died of grief for the loss
of her offspring.
In vain did we endeavor to discover the reason of this mortality; it
could not have been for want of food, for they consumed nearly as many
oats as the pony. At last Tom thought of the hutch, or "locker," as he
called it. "It must," said he, gravely, "have had _the_ disease." So
what that fatal complaint among rabbits is, remains a profound mystery
to us.
Now this hutch was made of new wood, in a carpenter's shop, at a cost
of nearly $10, and how it could have become infected with this fearful
complaint we could not comprehend. However, from that time we
abandoned rabbit-keeping, and resolved not, for the future, to keep
any live stock which we could not look after ourselves. We did not
attempt to do so in this case, because we were frightened at the
responsibility Tom threw on our shoulders, if we looked at them the
doe always eating her young ones was one of the evils to be dreaded by
our interference.
I suppose profit is to be made by keeping them, or tame rabbits would
not be placed in the poulterers' shops by the side of ducks and
chickens, but we are quite at a loss to know how it is accomplished.
It did not much matter in a pecuniary point of view, as it was very
doubtful if the children's pets would ever have died for the benefit
of the dinner-table, and I only insert this chapter for the purpose of
proving what I stated, viz.; that if a lady wishes her stock of any
kind to prosper, she must look after it herself. When I say prosper, I
mean without the expense being double the value of the produce she
would receive from her "four-acre farm."
We did not enter these disasters in our housekeeping book, it went
under the title of children's expenses. For my own part, I am disposed
to think that it must always be expensive to keep live stock of any
kind for which all the food has to be purchased. Had we continued to
keep our fowls in the yard, I am convinced they would have brought us
little or no profit; but the grass, worms, and other things they found
for themselves in the field, half supplied them in food, as well as
keeping them healthy. We had not one death among our poultry from
disease in the six months of which I have been relating this
experience of our farming.
Our next venture proved more prosperous than the rabbits, and will be
related in the following chapter.