It seems to be happening…. again.
February 2008, no live babies.
February 2009, no live babies.
February 2010…
Celcius crashes with her litter of two (1 peanut, 1 giant). Courtenay misses. Andra misses. Cambrie misses. Cadee crashes her litter of one. Ahhh. Oh. Correction… Cadee had two more DOA this afternoon.
And, so history seems to be repeating its self. What is it with the month of February??
My, my, my. What a LOOONNNG day it was yesterday! Ki and I were up late loading all the bunnies into the van Friday night, so we wouldn’t have to deal with it at 4:30 in the morning on Saturday. We were up early and on the road by 5:00 am… heading to Huntington for a double all breed show.
This is how Ki did:
Show A under Judge Chuck Pelham:
Then in Show B under Judge Mike Young:
I only took 3 Seniors, so wasn’t expecting a whole lot. But, had a slew of young 2# juniors that I took for kicks-n-giggles. This is how they did:
Show A under Chuck Pelham:
Then in Show B under Judge Mike Young:
So, Ki came home with 6 Legs and I came home with 4. I was quite pleased with that, considering the competition that was there. Also, Chuck Pelham was giving me grief (in a nice way) that my little juniors were still wiping the milk off their chins!
Here is Kenya -
White River's Kenya
On January 12th, Sedalia had a lovely litter of 4 kits. They are now 26 days old. One of them is particularly tiny. Teeny tiny. His siblings have been moved back out to the barn, but I was too afraid Squirtzee would not be able to make it out there in the cold, and so I kept him in the house and fostered him to Quicksilver’s litter. They were born on January 21st, making them 9 days younger.
Squirtzee
Squirtzee with his foster sibling.
Squirtzee weighs 3.75 ounces. His foster sibling weighs 4.5 ounces.
I hate winter. All the water dishes are froze like a rock now, and it sure doesn’t take very long for that to happen either. Thank goodness the poultry waters have heated bases and goats have heated buckets, so they are easily taken care of. But the bunnies… that’s another issue.
While banging out frozen dishes last night, about 9:00 pm I think, Sasha started barking. Not that THAT is anything usual. But, when Toby follows suite, you know something is up. I hurried out the North-east end of the barn to see Toby and Sasha chasing three coyotes off across the field. I’m not sure how close they were to the barn when Sasha encountered them. (Yes, it was dark, but there is snow on the ground and you can see fairly well even when it’s dark). The coyotes sauntered towards the woods, stopping occasionally to see if the dogs really meant business or not. They must have kept slinking back towards the barn, because the dogs would errupt into barking once in awhile. Neat to see the coyotoes, but kinda of scarey at the same time… how close do they really get to the barn? Do they actually ever come into the barn? I’m not worried about them attacking us, but worried about the animals.
Snapping a few pictures today…
GBF’s Charlemagne (GC GBF’s Caden x Cox’s 3J224). He is 5-months old today.
GBF's Charlemange
Then, GBF’s Caldera (GBF’s Tobias x L&R Cookie). She is a normal, but I think she is very nice for a normal. Breeding her to L&R Emerson today. She has such a clean coat and big head!
GBF's Caldera.
GBF’s Baron (ELS Elden x GBF’s Bridgette) is due today. (Her dam is also sired by Elden.) She’s been pulling a little fur this morning, but nothing at last check. I bred her to Pistol Pete (ELS Elden x ELS Lucy) this time. A ‘little bit’ of line breeding going on there. We’ll see how it turns out.
It’s been a bit crazy around here for the last couple of weeks. I’ve had 10 litters born since January 12th. For some breeders, that’s probably nothing. For others reading this, you might be thinking… “are you nuts?” We breed year-round. Our county fair is the first week of July, so the kits being born now are fair-junior-prospects. Being winter here in Northern Indiana makes it a tad more challenging. It was 14F this morning. That temperature is not conducive to keeping naked kits alive in an unheated barn, and it makes me sick to find popsicles in the nest box.
That’s how I’ve come to have ten nest boxes in the house. Eye yi yi. Having two dogs and two cats in the house also creates a challenge…bunny kits look an awfully lot like yummy mice. Macie is the “Mouser Extraordinaire” and can’t be trusted with a ten-foot pole. So, they are all behind closed doors.
I don’t take the boxes out to the does because I’m afraid of chilling the kits, so I bring the does to the kits, two at a time, once a day, for feedings. I bring the nest boxes into the kitchen and put the does in their boxes. I can watch them and be somewhat productive in the kitchen at the same time. When the does hop out of the box, I check to make sure all the kits are nice and fat, bundle up and trudge back out to the barn. The does go back in their cages and get a chunk of carrot or apple for a job well done. Then I bring the next two in and start all over. Yes… it takes a while.
I had to use a Sharpie marker and label each nest box (A, B, C…) because I couldn’t keep them all straight after about the fifth box. I created a chart in Excel that lists the box letter, the doe it belongs to, number of kits in the box, date of birth, when they will turn 3-weeks and columns to check off that they’ve been fed. At three-weeks their eyes have been open a week and they have plenty of fur. They can’t be convinced to stay in the box anymore, so that is when they go back out to the barn.
My rabbit friend Candace has been asking to see a picture of this ‘nursery’. Here you go:
The other two boxes are in the spare shower. Those kits have started to scramble around, so the shower keeps them contained! My check-sheet is on the floor.
All 5 does that were due to have babies yesterday, have had their babies. Jonica had three and Magic had four when I went out and checked again at 8:00 am this morning. All warm. All alive. Whew.
Jonica is a true Lynx (A_bbC_ddE_). I bred her to GBF’s Indigo (aaB_C_D_Ee) to create some lilac carriers. They are all probably Chestnuts, unless Indigo is carrying something I don’t know about.
Magic is Black (aaB_C_DdEe). I bred her to ARR’s CVSoul, a Chocolate Agouti (AabbC_DdEe) to create some more chocolate carriers for my Chocolate project. Two kits appear to be black. One of the broken kits looks like a broken black, and the other broken looks to be Agouti – again, probably a Chestnut, but suppose it could be an Opal.
My nest boxes are filling up quickly. I’m going to have to get Stan busy building me some more (he’ll LOVE that!). Each time I tell him I have more babies, he’s like, “You’re STILL breeding?!” Well, of course!
Last Saturday was ‘pick out the market goats’ day for us at Crazy Chad’s Goat Farm. It’s always so hard. Here are a few pix I snapped before we got totally engrossed in trying to pick the best ones in the barn!
Narrowed it down to these 3 in the one barn.
Abby with her favorite.
Haley working on setting hers up. They are wild at this point because they've not been handled much at all.
Abby looking like a true farmer - orange hat, carhartt coat and winter barn boots.
I’ve been trotting out to that barn every night at 3:00 am to check for babies for some time now. Last night, I made my last check at 11 pm before going to bed. Set the alarm for 3:00 am, and fell asleep. The alarm rang, and I thought, “too tired zzzzz”. I got out to the barn at 9:00 am, and dang it if L&R Cookie didn’t deliver 5 kits a day early. Popsicles. @#$% Ahhhh. Every single time. Life cuts you no slack, I swear. Poor Cookie.
On a brighter note though!
Sometime between my finding Cookie’s poor babies and 11:00 am, Quicksilver delivered her first ever litter, also a day early. Five toasty kits. It’s so nice to have a doe, bred for the first time, to have a live, healthy litter right off the bat. Two light-colored, and 3 darker. One is a peanut (top). Quicksilver took over in my breeding program for her dam, Plank’s Aqualena.
Less then 2 hours old (thf Saynora's Zorion x GBF's Quicksilver).
So, now of course, I’m curious about what we have in this litter. Zorion (tort) carries shaded and could carry dilute. Quicksilver (black) carries shaded or REW and dilute. Most likely outcome would be Blacks and Torts. Possibly Siamese Sable, Seals, Sable Points, something dilute…
Three more does due tomorrow. None of them are making any motions in that direction yet. Although, each time I go out to check, Jonica is cuddled up in her nestbox.
Well, I take that last comment back. Two more does due tomorrow. I walked out at 2:00 to check for babies again, and surprise, surprise…. Hughette had fur all over her cage and three fatty’s in the box. What’s up with these does all going a day early?! Today seems to be THE day.
Family of ARR's CV Soul x GBF's Hughette.
The dark broken kit, is a broken chestnut. You can tell he is Chestnut and NOT black by looking at his ears. See that they are light-colored on the inside? That means Chestnut. Dark on the inside of the ears would mean a Black kit. The kit on the right must have had a rough delivery… his entire back leg is bruised and he is a bit scratched up. Kit on upper left looks to be an Orange today (1-22-2010).
CV Soul is a Chocolate Agouti (A_bbC_DdE_) and Hugh is an Orange (AaB_C_D_ee). I specifically did this breeding to create some Agouti chocolate carriers. Why? To work on Lynx on down the road. Plus, Chocolate Agouti’s, in and of themselves, are very pretty.
Many people already know all of this, but others don’t. Here’s my take on ‘teaching’ a bit about Sable Points vs Siamese Sables.
I love them both. Such pretty colors. Not terribly common on the show table, but not uncommon either.
So, what do you think you should get when you breed a Black buck to a Tort doe? I was expecting a litter of black kits, maybe a tort. Well, low and behold, there was one black kit (a peanut) AND a Sable Point AND a Siamese Sable. How cool is that? Totally unexpected. So, one of the parents carries the sable gene and one carries a gene more recessive then the sable. In my herd that would be the REW gene, since I have no Himi’s – c(h).
These two kits are 4 days old now. The darker is the Siamese Sable, the lighter is the Sable Point. I’ll try to click pictures over the next several weeks to show how the colors change.
The only difference between a Sable Point (SP)and a Siamese Sable (SS) is the Extension gene. The basic genotype of a SP is aaB_c(chl)_D_ee. A SS is aaB_c(chl)_D_E_.
If you hear reference to a rabbit color that ends in “Point”, then you know that genetically it is ‘ee’. For example Blue Point, Chocolate Point, Lilac Point, Seal Point – non of which are showable colors in Holland Lops. There is a COD out for Blue Points though.
If you hear reference to Pointed White, that is a completely different looking rabbit. Pointed Whites are Himalayan colored rabbits; their points are colored and their body is white. This is caused by a different C-series gene, c(h), which restricts color to the points of the rabbit. It is also temperature sensitive. A Pointed White Blue, is a white rabbit with blue points, and so forth.
You can tell the dark kit is a SS and NOT a tort because there is no visible shading on him. At this age, a tort would have a lighter colored back (more orange), with darker shading along his sides. SS’s are a dark sepia all over at this age. I’ve had other SS kits that I swore were blue, but as they got older, the color changed.
It was so pretty out this morning. And, amazingly, it stayed all day long. Hoar Frost, one of mother nature’s wonders, covered everything this morning. I didn’t get out quite early enough to capture it at it’s best, but it was still pretty.
The woods to the North-East of our barn.
Sedalia is the dutiful mom. Protective, but not nasty. Just aggressive enough to remind you that she IS watching you! Her babies are in the house where they are sure to stay warm – here until their eyes open and they start to venture out of the box. I brought her in last night to feed her little ones and decided to take some pictures.
It sure is funny to watch them. They KNOW when mom is near the box. They must be able to smell her. They go absolutely ape crazy – scrambling everywhere looking for her – tumbling over each other. When she hops in the box, all you can see are wriggling feet and legs as they all jockey for position on a teat – little legs sticking out the front of Sedalia and out both her sides. Then you need to listen closely…happy slurping and little baby noises of pleasure.
When Sedalia finishes feeding, she hops out of the box. It is a completely new scene. Babies are on their backs, feet in the air, barely able to move, passed out from over indulgence. Stuffed bellies. If human, they’d be asking for Rolaids and loosening their belts a notch. Too cute.
Sedalia has 4 kits in this litter, sired by Broo’s Chase. They are 4 days old.
Jockeying for position.
One VERY full kit, on his back, still nursing. You can just make out the back legs of his sibling to the right.
L&R Sedalia - such a pretty girl.
