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...

There are three big milestones in the life of a kit.  Being born alive.  Thriving until about ten to twelve days old when the eyes open and ears start lifting— so  very cute!    Weaning at around six to eight weeks.  Of course, the first one is very important, and all of them are wonderful, but I think I am partial to day when we can see each other eye-to-eye  and they begin to look and move around more bunny-like with their quick and not so controlled hops. It is kind of like the day a baby begins to walk. I am fairly confident in the colors I am seeing now, so here is my list of their phenotypes (how they appear so far): BMB1 - Chinchilla Agouti BMB2 - Chestnut Agouti BMB3 - Black Gold-Tipped Steel BMB4 - Solid Black  BMB5 - Solid Black with SF fur This is the first time I have had Agoutis, so it was fun to find tiny kits with white ears and bellies, but it was not what I was hoping to see thrown from NZW-B for my...

Our weather has been unusually cold for the Southeast, actually the entire country. Here it has been dipping into the teens at night and hung in the 20s to 30s during the day, so we placed various materials around the cages as wind breaks, which also reduced the available light in the rabbitry. That is why I did not see, until this week that BGG4 was not just black any more, but it seems she is beginning to show a color on the tips of her fur on her sides. I thought silvering that would be highly unlikely because most sources claim that two recessive "si" genes are required. Her father was a NZW that would hide all such genetic markers, however I have learned since that there is far more to the silvering gene concept that I might address later. Anyway, when I first saw it, I was thinking I was seeing steel. That did not make any sense to me, because I thought steel would show immediately, while silvering can begin to appear as early as four weeks and can take m...

Goal: Determine if NWZ-B carries the "En" (broken) gene. Result: No Brokens in the four offspring. Conclusion: Not enough evidence to prove NZW-B does not carry the "En" (broken) gene. Another test breeding with a self (solid colored) doe would be provide more evidence. I knew it was unlikely, but I still tried a breeding with one of our new junior NZW bucks, NZW-B, and our youngest brood doe, Golden Girl, on September 9th. It did not take. The buck may have been too young as he was just three months old at the time, but Golden Girl had an entire year off from breeding, so the fault could have been one or the other or both. Usually, I would not try breeding a buck quite that young, but we have had accidental pregnancies from NZW bucks about that age and I had no bucks older. So, I rebred the same pair on October 9th and got results on November 9th! Golden Girl had not kindled as little as four kits previously, but I was pleased with their sizes and health. ...

When we first began crossbreeding our NZWs with Silver Foxes, we would get variety of coats, mostly of brokens. Brokens look mostly white and have spots of color. I just thought it was typical when a person has a white rabbit crossing with a colored rabbit to get about half as spotted and I really did not give it much more thought since our rabbits were mostly for meat, until the one kindle that had two rabbits completely different than anything we had previously.  We had only three colors of rabbits at the time: whites, blacks, and blues, but two from this one kindle had some variation in the skin color. One was black but not quite as black as her all black sibling and one was blue but a bit lighter than the blues typically are. Later when their fur grew out, the nearly black one had variations on hair shaft itself. The other looked like a lighter blue, almost frosted in comparison to his Blue Silver Fox mother. (He probably was a Gold Silver-Tipped Blue Steel. ( Edited...