I keep in touch with Hannah at Renaissance Farmstead ; I just love the two rabbits I got from her! Lancelot is a very nice size and just looks like I think a Silver Fox should although his silvering has not yet fully come in and he looks a bit light in most areas yet. I have no plans to show him, but if I was going to show, I would pick him and take his half-sister, Denim, for comments. She has the most luscious fur, even now while she is molting, it is impressively thick, but I am wondering if it so thick and wool-like that it would be a disqualification for showing— I still love it nonetheless . Hannah has high standards in her breeding program and a good eye for buying rabbits. I would buy more from her, but that would make three closely related and I plan to only have six or maybe seven breeders. I also had been looking for a rabbitry on Black Ivy's pedigree, but Hannah found out the name had been changed. I had contacted Beth at  Silver Lox Rabbitry (previously High Rock...

I weighed the BMB-5 bunnies yesterday. They had gained an average of 42% this week which is more than the 35.7% that the previous kindle BGG-4 gain in their 5th week of age. I fed both kindles the same pellets and hay but for the second group I added some Calf Manna and Black Oil Sunflower Seeds not only to them but to their mother's feed as well. I started that when they were about a week old. They are all doing well, even BMB4, who injured a toe as discovered last week during weighing. She favors it some now and it looks bad, but it is not infected. I take a good look at the toe every day and put salve on it. She handles pretty well. I clipped their nails today, a first time for them. The one that handled the best has been the Chinchilla BMB1. He comes to the cage door to greet me often. He is still the smallest, but also still the cutest. The largest is BMB5, the black with Silver Fox fur. His size and steady weight gain has been impressive! He was 6.3 oz. over the ...

I have spent quite a bit of time with Black Ivy the past few weeks while doctoring her sore hocks. I have been watching how she hops, walks, sits, and lies. I have felt all over her body, particularly her hips, back legs, and hocks.  She is walking more on the hocks rather than always on her toes and even standing up on her back legs which she had not done since we got her. When Ivy would sit, she is still purposely positions her legs to be close together when settling, but she is doing that less often now. Her hindquarters, hips, and legs are still thinner than they should be. Her hocks feel narrow. I believe she has pinched hips with a narrow frame. All these things could contribute to or even cause sore hocks. In the picture below, she is stretching up with more pressure on her back legs than she would tolerate previously. Her back legs are still kind of close together, but I am wondering now that she has no pain walking and standing, if she will begin to hop and stand up...

This being my first (and hopefully my last) experience with sore hocks, I really did not know what looked better or worse as they were healing. However, understanding that sore hocks are quite similar to bed sores, so the main concern is to get pressure off the area. I have been searching on the Internet and found some suggestions, including a plastic mat I could order or perhaps find at a store like Tractor Supply. I was looking around for a small wood board or even just heavy cardboard and then I recognized a plastic cage mat among some things in the garage. I had completely forgotten that my husband had bought one of those plastic mats to test in a rabbit cage a long time ago, but we did not use it because it did not fit well with the floor wiring. That is probably because the cage floors are not perfectly flat. They do not sag in the middle, but rather they are made of such a strong wire that it was practically impossible to make them perfectly flat coming off of the roll when b...

I decided to create a page to keep our Cull Records  that can be accessed on the side sliding menu. I wanted to keep all the records together to see the comparisons of live to bone-in dressed weights between the different kindles.  Three rabbits of BGG4 were culled yesterday at 15 weeks old. (One of the four rabbits was passed on to be a brood doe for another breeder when she was 8 weeks old.) The average live weight of the three was 6 lbs. 6.5 oz. and the dressed weight average was 3 lbs. 4.8 oz. so the average percentage of dressed weight to live weight was 51.6%.  These rabbits were NZW/SF 75/25 hybrids on organic pellets without a supplement. This is a starting baseline that sounds reasonable to me. Now I begin working toward my goal of 55% to 60%.  The breedings and age will be watched for best dress weights, but I also am going to be playing with supplementing the rabbits' feed to see if that makes a difference as well.   We end...

We did not weigh our rabbits in the first years. We did not keep records beyond breedings, births, colors, and number in each kindle. We really did not have any need to do much else. Looking back, I am thinking that all that time we could have been working toward improving our lines and dress-out weights or just keeping records to compare now, but I was just happy with the meat in my slow cooker because when we started with rabbits, we were financially struggling, as nearly everyone was then. So, if keeping records of the developing weights or determining the cost of feed vs. the dress out weight is not a big concern, there really is no reason to do it. We knew that natural rabbit meat was going for $9.99 a pound and raising the rabbits cut down our grocery bills and provided raw meat for our dog at a time that we were cutting back on everything. When we decided to basically restart our rabbitry, the first thing I did was look for a good scale. It seems like it is every meat-rabbit...

Sunday was bunny weight day for BMB-5 as they are now 5 weeks old. I love bunny weighing days,  but there is no day that I love to see an injury...and I saw that BMB4 had what looks like a broken toe. I do not know how or when or what, but I imagine it happened within the day as I handle the bunnies every day and I would not have missed it. I saw how swollen and bruised it was, and with the nail in such an odd position, it was quite noticeable. It did not appear to have any broken skin.  So, I plan to keep an eye on it and just allow it to heal naturally with a little of my homemade salve to help reduce the swelling and reduce the risk of infection. Today the toe was looking less swollen and red. She is getting around and not favoring it. She even allowed me to touch and feel around, so it is not too sensitive to touch, which makes me wonder if it is broken or was caught and twisted I can only wait and see how looks once the swelling is completely gone. ...

I am resolved to breed Silver Foxes, but those sweet grayish-blue eyes peering out of that gorgeous silver-tipped fur on that little Chinchilla hybrid are making me think strange thoughts. Like, I wonder what a Chinchilla with the SF stand-up fur might look like. Now that it is out where I can see it, there are three options: Ignore the recessive c chd Chinchilla that will not show with a dominate "C" on the C-locus. What is the likelihood that I would ever run into another Silver Fox with it? Eliminate the recessive c chd  Chinchilla that should not be in the Silver Fox line by striving for "CC" in the C-locus. Use the c chd  Chinchilla by breeding with a double recessive "cc" REW or at least a recessive "c" White carrier to possibly get another Chinchilla. In other words, work to develop it. I was thinking if my Chinchilla is a doe, so I would either need a Silver Fox REW buck or a SF buck at least carrying a recessive "c...

The problem with having breedings on rotation with only one kindling suite— still wanting two, so very much —and the cold weather is that it only takes one miss to lose the momentum I have been trying to achieve since we started this breeding season. To be honest, I have not have that momentum yet, but I thought I would have it by the end of February and I keep striving for it. The plan is to breed the next in line when the last kindle opens its eyes. Therefore, I should have bred Golden Girl when the kits of BMB-5 opened their eyes, but I held off because of Whoops and her possible new owner. I wanted to be sure that the breeding took and I did not want to move Whoops and her kindle twice, once from out of the kindling suite and again to their new home. Had I gone on with the plan, Golden Girl would have been bred with Comet and be at least a week into her pregnancy, hopefully. However, knowing now that Whoops did not take, I want to rebreed Whoops, which was the contingency that...

Whoops is turning 4 years old on March 2, 2018 and with age comes some challenges in regards to breeding and kindling: Older does tend to have smaller kindles. This makes it rather difficult to know whether Whoops was actually pregnant or not as rabbits, particularly meat rabbits, really do not show their pregnancies. However, she was rather cranky about me touching her...she even grunted at me this week, which completely out of character for her and common with pregnant does. Older does tend to go past their due dates. I was not too concerned about her not kindling on the 31st day after her breeding, which was Saturday, February 3rd, 2017, but it is still a wait full of anticipation and then impatience. Mostly because Whoops was bred to NZW-A and is promised to start up breeder who is also getting the last of my NZW-B, who is unrelated to the sire of this kindle. That way they could pick a doe or two to develop and breed with NZW-B that would not be related to their brood...

I have two SF purebred bucks that are three weeks apart in age. The breeder of Comet, SH, asked me about his weight, as his sister just won Best of Opposite Sex, but his brother was given comments of being small. She hoped that Comet was closer to his sister in size.  When we first compared the brothers that SH was offering, both born on August 22, 2017, they were about eight weeks old and close to the same size, but I felt Comet was just slightly larger. I also saw some signs of pinched hips, which are common at that age, but I was happy to take him. At the time, I was not as picky for SF buck and his hips still look a bit pinched to me, but I am happy with the purchase. Comet's cage is close to the gate, so he always comes over and follows me. I have handled him a lot, so he is kind of my little teddy bear. Lancelot came from Renaissance Farmstead . He was born on September 11, 2017. His cage was on the other end of our rabbitry as I had not moved him since we got him, e...

Have I mentioned how much I love the bunny weighing days? Probably have and probably will again. But, what is not to like? Every weighing day is quite important to see how the bunnies are progressing but I think the first one is the most exciting!  BMB-5 is a fun kindle because I really do not need to mark any bunny's ears to know which one is which, but I decided to mark BMB4 and BMB5 because although one had normal fur and the other Silver Fox, both are solid black. I have noticed with prior kindles that at first, it is very easy to tell the difference and then when the bunny fur comes in completely, the difference is not as identifiable, unless they are together. When they get to be a little older, the different can be seen at a glance again. So I began their page at BMB-5 Bunnies . I really like the size of BMB5, the Black with SF fur! He is a monster with a full ounce more than the next to largest and 2.5 ounces more than the smallest, which currently is my f...

I needed our kindling suite for Whoops this week but I wanted to give kindle BMB-5 a few extra days because it was cold and because one did not open its eyes until a day later than the rest. The drop nest is in a area of the cage surrounded by wood, so they are not used to light and they tend to stay in the nest longer than a conventional nesting box, I have noticed. Moving Day was actually yesterday afternoon and I had to do it solo this time. First all of BMB-5 were placed on the side of the kindling suite with their mother and I slid the board that separates the compartments. I then placed the floor board to cover the nest.  I rather not move a pregnant doe in the last few days of her pregnancy, but it had to be done. I was very careful with Whoops as I carried her from her cage to the nesting compartment of the kindling suite. She is a good doe, but she does not like being handled when pregnant, understandably. Then I prepared a nesting box with fresh ha...