We had plans this past weekend to get caught up with things in the rabbitry, but something came up that required us to put it off again. It had been like that for about three weeks, so Independence Day was the day we finally were able to get things done. I discussed my plans in  Thinking Out Summer Culls  about which of my breeding stock would be culled.  I offered Lancelot to a meat breeder who not only thought he was pretty, but loved his temperament.  I tried to offer Comet, because he was so sweet and smaller, but we had only one person who responded and then she did not pursue it. I knew it would be long shot for him.  Misty Blue was too old to offer as a brood doe. Her pelt is huge and the meat will be ground, because it is likely to be tougher. Black Ivy...I just could not in good conscious ever try to offer her to anyone. She just had too poor of a body type with her hips being as they were. Her kits were naturally weaned since we were delaye...

Since I started this blog to journal my journey in rabbit keeping to benefit others, I have to include the downsides as well as the upsides. So, I wish to confess that for the past several weeks I have been very discouraged about the prospects of showing my rabbits at all for a number of reasons, but yesterday I came to that pivotal moment of making a decision. A meat rabbit breeder explained to me recently that he does not even bother trying to fit in and avoided the "bullies," referring to rabbit breeders, who had no reservations about demeaning other breeders, particularly meat breeders who are not necessarily working towards the standard of perfection (SOP) for the breed. I knew there would be those types of people, who not only work to improve their breeding lines to meet the SOP, but practically demand that no one else sell a rabbit that is not show quality. My husband calls them the Silver Fox Rabbit Police. The SF Rabbit Police will say that selling a cull r...

The Good These past few weeks really  swooshed  by! So imagine my surprise that I had a reminder on my phone that Starry Knight and Twilight have completed their quarantine as of today. This is very good! I had them in a soft quarantine as this was my second buy from Silver Lox and I had spent quite a bit of time there looking over all her rabbits, which were quite healthy. I am so excited about Starry Knight, but I am very glad I did get some Kevlar sleeves, because he will seem to be calm after I first get him out of the cage and will seem relaxed after a time then suddenly he just goes wild trying to get away, even screaming, although I am not hurting him. He is not vicious and does not try to bite, he is just scared. I will be working with him even more now that I have these sleeves and, yes, they do offer quite a bit of protection. Even though I have kept his nails well trimmed, he is particularly good leaving bloody scratches, but not one scratch through the sleev...

I want and actually need to thin down the herd to make room for the grow outs and to reduce feed costs, so I am going down my list, bucks first and then the does. When we were breeding only for meat, our biggest concern was about health, good mamas, and fast grow outs. We were not interested in showing and Standard of Perfection, but that changed. While we have finally made the transition to Silver Fox only, we have chosen to now work toward show quality, so we need to cull with that in mind. I plan on keeping Canyon's three, two does and one buck, or maybe swap one doe for another. (I have yet to name them.) The Bucks I did an evaluation of my two senior bucks yesterday and it really set in how badly I did need a new buck with show quality type. I am so glad I decided to buy one. I had planned to keep one of the two I had and cull the other, but now I am leaning towards keeping neither one. However, I want to see how their kindles turn out before I make a final deci...

My husband is so cute sometimes. Last night he was asking me why I needed to buy any more rabbits at all, just breed the ones I had and let the young ones grow out to see what we had. I explained why, obviously in more detail than he wanted to really know.  This morning he helped prepare our van with one of the transport cages that had been delivered yesterday and to make the hour long drive to Silver Lox , but he had decided to go with me because at least we would be spending time together, which admittedly is not something we get to do much. I suppose he thought he would keep me from buying the more than I should, but we only had two holes in the one carrier we were taking with us and that is my limit for cages in my rabbitry currently. When we got there, however....the impulse buyer side of him came out... as usual . I was specifically looking for a doe to fill the breeding gap I was going to have in the fall with culling of two does after weaning, one is just old and t...

When Misty Blue produced a chinchilla buck, I really loved his fur and was toying with the idea of a side project, even though I knew I really did not have the space to devote to it. Still, I kept the chin instead of culling with the rest of the kindle.  I was not planning to name him, because I was not sure that I would be keeping him, but a name emerged: Chinner, the Chinning Chin. He chinned everything when he saw me, which is a rabbit's way of scent marking. It was cute, until he got just a bit older and his hormones kicked in. Then he began scent marking a different way: spraying pee.  I was his main target. That rabbit was somehow "in love" with me. He had always been the one who came to me first and stayed the longest when I opened the cage door to handle the kindle, but I had not had a rabbit stay so fixated on me as it grew older.  The spraying began to take its toll on my patience with him. I had to constantly be on guard and keep a shield between h...