My plan was to breed NZW-B with Misty Blue and see what I got. I was hoping to get self colored kits (solids) and I might have gotten one or two, but I also got Agoutis and at least one steel, maybe two. I am still perplexed by the fur coloring on one. I do not want any steels or Agoutis for my Silver Fox hybrid line so that answered the question of whether or not we would keep him.
I made him available as well as my NZW/SF junior buck BGG-1, who has a very firm body and would be a good brood buck. I did get an inquiry on the junior but after talking with the prospective new owner, I decided to offer him Whoops and NZW-B. Whoops should be two weeks along in her pregnancy, which would have been okay for her to make a move to someone set up and with experience, but this was a buyer just starting out with rabbits and he did not have cages yet. With the temperature swings we have had, I wanted to make sure the kindle would survive and thrive.
I made the proposal that we would keep NZW-B and Whoops until after her kindle opened their eyes and had enough fur to keep warm, which will be around February 15th. Whoops was bred with NZW-A, who was not related to NZW-B. We explained that Whoops is an older doe, but she is such an excellent mother and has always had the best temperament of our NZW purebreds.
In fact, we have a design flaw in two of our connecting cages so that the wire separating them did not go completely to the top in the hay feeders. (My husband tells me he will fix it.) At first I thought I had mistakenly placed the kit in the wrong cage after handling it as I try to do every day. I realized there was a gap with enough room for a kit in the adjoining age to climb into the hay feeder and squeeze through to get into the Whoops' cage. Now, female rabbits are quite territorial, but Whoops never pestered any of these kits.
All of BGG-4 visited her, sometimes alone and sometimes together, and that old doe just let them have their play time with her, while she would lie along one side of her cage and watch them like a nanny. I am not so sure any of my other does would have tolerated an uninvited bunny visit like that. This continued until they were too big to squeeze through that opening.
For me, this was to be Whoops' last season with us at the end of spring and, even though I had scheduled one more breeding with her, we believed she had a few more kindles in her. She could be bred two more times before summer so we thought it would be better for an experienced doe, as sweet as she is, to start out someone new to rabbit breeding. NZW-B will be going with her as he is unrelated to any does in her kindle, so her new rabbit keeper can chose one or two to develop as a brood doe to begin breeding with NZW-B after the summer.
Hopefully, Whoops took. I am planning to weigh her within a couple of days to see if she is gaining weight which would be a good sign.
I made him available as well as my NZW/SF junior buck BGG-1, who has a very firm body and would be a good brood buck. I did get an inquiry on the junior but after talking with the prospective new owner, I decided to offer him Whoops and NZW-B. Whoops should be two weeks along in her pregnancy, which would have been okay for her to make a move to someone set up and with experience, but this was a buyer just starting out with rabbits and he did not have cages yet. With the temperature swings we have had, I wanted to make sure the kindle would survive and thrive.
I made the proposal that we would keep NZW-B and Whoops until after her kindle opened their eyes and had enough fur to keep warm, which will be around February 15th. Whoops was bred with NZW-A, who was not related to NZW-B. We explained that Whoops is an older doe, but she is such an excellent mother and has always had the best temperament of our NZW purebreds.
In fact, we have a design flaw in two of our connecting cages so that the wire separating them did not go completely to the top in the hay feeders. (My husband tells me he will fix it.) At first I thought I had mistakenly placed the kit in the wrong cage after handling it as I try to do every day. I realized there was a gap with enough room for a kit in the adjoining age to climb into the hay feeder and squeeze through to get into the Whoops' cage. Now, female rabbits are quite territorial, but Whoops never pestered any of these kits.All of BGG-4 visited her, sometimes alone and sometimes together, and that old doe just let them have their play time with her, while she would lie along one side of her cage and watch them like a nanny. I am not so sure any of my other does would have tolerated an uninvited bunny visit like that. This continued until they were too big to squeeze through that opening.
For me, this was to be Whoops' last season with us at the end of spring and, even though I had scheduled one more breeding with her, we believed she had a few more kindles in her. She could be bred two more times before summer so we thought it would be better for an experienced doe, as sweet as she is, to start out someone new to rabbit breeding. NZW-B will be going with her as he is unrelated to any does in her kindle, so her new rabbit keeper can chose one or two to develop as a brood doe to begin breeding with NZW-B after the summer.
Hopefully, Whoops took. I am planning to weigh her within a couple of days to see if she is gaining weight which would be a good sign.