New Born to now

Warning this blog has many pictures, and will make you go "Aww" a lot!


Cristina and I knew that this would be the last litter of kittens we would have in many years, unless we rescue a cat that is pregnant. (which is not likely to happen
since we are at very comfortable numbers).

Anyway, we have taken pics of the kittens weekly...

All the other cats are fixed, and these 2 and mom will be shortly as well. I hope you enjoy! We have had a lot of fun with these guys. They are 7.5 weeks will be 8 weeks on Tuesday. The time has flown! I can't believe how fast summer is going : (

We've named them Dexter- the long haired dark tabby boy, and "Abby" the tabby tortie female. Their personalities are completely different. Abby is outspoken and outgoing, not afraid of most things. Dexter is more shy and reserved. He spooks easily and loves playing with his sister, yet he will cuddle right in for snuggle time. Neither kittens are overly cuddly(their mom was feral/is feral although is 100% fine with us now).

Lets start with Mom:




2 days before she gave birth we figured out she was pregnant. She is that small of a cat, and although she has been and is very healthy she is very petite. I think it helped being fed the expensive cat food throughout her pregnancy that we had no idea on. She had NO problems with the litter at all. 2 babies, no still borns or any sign of her even having them.


Born sometime on June 9th. 1 day old in these pics. Still that shiny newborn look.



1 week old

Getting cuter, more curious and starting to move around. Oh, I should put... They were born in our hay bin. When I realized that I thought she was pregnant we made a bed for her at the front of the barn. Then one in a empty solid bottom cage in a 5 hole stacker that she would climb through the feeder hole and go to sleep. Figured she would have them in there! Nope! She had them in the hay bin!! We had to buy new bales of hay to feed the rabbits and move them to the back of the room(the hay not the cats)




2 weeks old approx- eyes opening, starting to venture around even more.





3 and 4 weeks old- these weeks I think got jumbled into each other : )
There first time outside!
This is with the cheap digital vs the expensive one we normally use. So these pics aren't the greatest. Too bad since they were just getting so cute at this stage! : )





Week 5- no clue what happened on this week but no good pics. Added the couple I do have!



Week 6 and Week 7- lots of pics of these weeks. They are getting really frisky now, and since they are going into week 8 in a few days they are running all over the place. They are pitiful eaters though when it comes to Nutro Kitten food. They only like Royal Canin which is even more expensive(figures LOL)







And today.... Sound asleep... Too much playing and eating.... Hope you enjoyed their blog! I will keep blogging about them : ) And get new pics this weekend of them outside!

It should be easier!

With all of our downsizing, we should find things easier. Right now, we are finding the rabbits more of a chore instead of a hobby. And when it gets to that point you know that you need to either cut down or get out. We love the rabbits, the shows, and our friends in the hobby too much to sell out. We would be lost without them! however, we do need to cut down. Cleaning twice a week or more, 150 holes, then 92 holes, then 76 holes was/is just getting to be too much. We don't have time with websites, book keeping, Shar Kare, dog training, the wedding, rabbits, the cats, the dogs, watering eons of plants(for the wedding) to spend so much time with the barn. And we like a clean, tidy, neat barn that we are proud of. With all that is happening the barn isn't lacking but our "me" time is! The heat doesn't help because between 3pm and 6pm we basically have to plan to be at the barn if the weather is anything above 24 degrees Celsius because despite a soaker hose on the roof, 4 fans(including an industrial fan), and frozen pop bottles the barn still can climb up there(it never goes above 28, 30 if it is 36 or more out) but it is uncomfortable for us and the rabbits. Anyway, this will be easier, better, and more fun! If that makes any sense. I talk fast, and I type fast and sometimes it just doesn't come out "right". I'm sure Andrea will be laughing at that comment LOL

One 4-hole stacker is sold w/duratrays. One 4 hole is spoken for. That leaves Andrea's stacker's, and we have 4 more stacker's to sell as well. The website for sale page is constantly updated through the day so just keep checking it out! No more stock to be posted for sale, but more senior stock will be for sale this fall after litters I'm sure. Although quite a few ARE spoken for.

Anyway I figured out we are keeping 36 animals, and we will be keeping 5 babies from our 5 litters.. Possibly a couple more if there is anything "really" nice : ) Like Ava had to go and have 3 gorgeous kids... so we had to of course keep all 3 : ) And Steal My Heart has 2 gorgeous kids we are keeping.. Even though we keep saying- we can only keep 1.. yeah that is working SO well LOL
Anyway we have exactly 50 holes we are keeping. 42 hanging cages, and 2-24 by 30 stackers. They are these gorgeous stackers with legs and they are so nice to clean and keep clean and wire brushing is so easy with them.. They had to stay LOL

I should be going to bed.. But I think my brain is going too many ways to sleep yet. So much has to be done this month before the wedding.

Tomorrow I am going to take the time and give the dogs a bath, then advantage them again. I haven't seen them scratch but Star just started a 2nd ago so maybe she got a flea. Sigh!! Damn things!!

With the does we are keeping :
These ones will be bred in August and September... We will breed a couple of does each month. Even though we are cutting back so much! Some of these aren't senior until end of September so won't be bred until then.

Cassady X As You like it- rebreed of Good as Gold
Ada X Braxtin- rebreed of her awesome s.tip doe that she has now!
Ocean Pearl X Brayden- then after that litter to be bred to Imagine. Both litters should produce blue chins : ) We will fill the waiting list hopefully!(and our barn with blue chins that are gorgeous hopefully LOL) love the color!
Heather Rose X Turtle- half sibling cross- expecting chocolates and lilacs Turtle is a REG/GC Chocolate buck
Velotta's Broken steel doe- not until end of September X Braxtin
Maggie X Braxtin(rebreed of the 2 she has now which are awesome, then Maggie will be retired and live out her days as a pet)
Brooklyn X Imagine- expecting Blues, Blue chins, after that litter next spring we will breed her to Brayden.
Steal My Heart X Black Jack

Black Beauty X As You like it
Penny if she doesn't sell X Turtle- 100% chocolate and lilac litter
And Addison and a few others will be bred as well but they are all on the show team for this summer. Black Beauty may be shown trying to get that last leg, and Steel My Heart we would love to show but she is over the max weight right now just weaning her litter... we shall see!

Some pictures for the blog

Again, I really don't have much to blog about. We did get a few pics late last week and this weekend of some more juniors, we have about 1/2 the juniors on our website now.. Still have that many again to get pics of when they are more out of ganglies! : ) We have 29 junior holes, 25 senior doe holes, and 8 senior buck holes for a total of 62... This will be much nicer for us, as we can spend more time with the rabbits instead of constantly cleaning, hauling in feed, hay, shavings, etc etc. We still plan to have 2-5 litters each month. Although we don't have any litters planned for August. We are giving all the girls a good break. We will start breeding mostly first timers again in September.

I think we are planning to breed:
Ocean Pearl X Brayden
Audrey X Black Jack
Heather Rose X Turtle
Butterball X ?
Black Beauty X Next Best Thing(borrowing him from Amanda until mid August as of the 30th of this month, thanks Amanda! :)
And maybe a few more.. Then we will start breeding some more does in October etc. Olive, Penny, Milky Way, the new Velotta doe will all be bred later this fall plus a bunch more that I am currently forgetting! : )

Babies are all fine. We haven't figured out colors or sexes yet(maybe a week old now) but all 28 are doing great. We had 30 but Penny lost her 2(both broken lilacs) we are debating about how to breed her too next.

The pics are the new calico long haired cat- "Karina", Bear's 2 kittens and Bear herself. We couldn't afford with the 6 vet bills between Harley and Luke($1200) to get Bear fixed and thought we would be safe a little longer(this was this spring/early summer) as she never went into heat(or so we thought.. Anyway she had 2 kittens. We have been calling around to find out the cost for her and the 2 kittens.

And then a pic of the decks we have been staining!

Something to write about

I've been wanting to write a blog for a few days, but I haven't had anything to write about. Thursday I filled in for someone where I used to work for the day. I offered to work Monday through Thursdays for them if they needed extra help.

Most of the Book keeping and accounting work happens after 4pm or on weekends, so it should work out fine. Will give me Sundays off. Today I am painting the back stairs, just finished. And debating about starting to paint the fence. Mom and Norm are painting the ramp and decks right now.

Rabbits are all fine. Lots of broken blacks, steels, silver and gold, seal/siamese sable? babies in the boxes. Some chestnuts as well. Hopefully some "color" litters in September-October. we have not bred anyone for August litters.

New barn cats are doing excellent. We will post the pics of Karina tonight or tomorrow, our 2nd new addition. She is a gorgeous long haired calico. Kitty(the tortie) is doing excellent and the cats are all "starting" to get along.

It is quite warm already out. I haven't checked but probably 24-25. And it isn't even 1:00 yet. We have been very lucky with excellent weather for the past few weeks. It has not gone below 20 degrees celcius, and we only had one morning that was cloudy. It hasn't rained in weeks!

We are going shopping for the wedding next weekend- shoes and accessories!

The big duncan parade is this weekend, we are staying away from downtown. We have to stock up on feed before first week in August because it is the big games that are happening, and they are expecting millions of dollars of revenue. They are telling everyone if you don't have to go into Duncan when the games are on, don't. As parking will be a nightmare! So we will stock up well before that point until the 10th of August.

The wedding, what wedding?

We are getting that question a lot, what wedding? Who's? Are you getting married? How come we haven't met him? What is happening? When?

I figured I should write a blog.

Our mom(Cristina and I) and Norm (Selina's dad) after 16 years of being together have decided to finally tie the knot! The wedding is on August 30th at the farm, and we are expecting anywhere from 60-120 people.

Yesterday we were in Victoria and we picked up our 3 new Enumclaw bunnies, then we rescued a cat from someone who was moving and her dad had kicked her out so she couldn't keep the cat. Corinna is a beautiful long haired calico who needs some more weight and on the better food her coat should come in really nicely(Nutro cat food for barn cats even : )
Anyway, we will get pics of her shortly as well. Both these new rescues are fixed with all their shots etc so this really helps.

We had a very short visit with wendy of Manely Rabbits. We will have to go down and visit with her again soon! We just were running out of time as we had to be dress fitted last night as well!

Today we hope to get some new pics of the chin buck and Kiss and Tell. I am heading outside right now to wear the dogs out!

This week we hope to get pics of the Stackers as well that are for sale this week. We still have our 3 stackers, plus one of Andrea's for sale.

Anyway that is the wedding.. Our parents!

Busy weekend

We had a very busy weekend. I think Cristina wrote a blog about some of this already. On Saturday we had Patti and family come from 150 mile house to get their 6 Jerseys, and then we had Danielle come to look at the pet babies. She picked out a baby buck from Steel my heart's litter.

Then Sunday we took 3 presold rabbits to Errington, a dwarf hotot for Kathy, and 3 dwarf hotots to Wally. Then we had lunch and b-day cake with Wally and a great visit. Then we headed straight to the barn and did chores. The cats were very happy to see us-- they are pretty spoiled and even though they roam all over the property they would much rather have one on one attention!

So we cuddled all of them and gave them all the treats we bought them.. not spoiled barn cats or nothing! And then after feeding rabbits we headed home. We got home about 7pm so we had dinner and then I decided to start tidying up the back yard. We should be having a TON of company in August so we want to get tons done now. I got the back yard all cleaned except I have to move a whole ton of tomato plants(well not a ton but a bunch) and then a pile of scrap firewood needs to be moved as well. Then that yard is done. The 2nd yard needs some tidying and we need to put new plastic on one of the greenhouses.

Mom and Norm got the decks cleaned off and powerwashed for re-painting so that was a good job to get done!

Anyway onto the rabbits. Out of our 30 babies that we had 6.5 weeks ago we are keeping 14 to grow out. Out of those 14... Most are bucks!! We just had our next round of breedings born. We try to have 2-3 litters a month sometimes it works out every 6 weeks though. We want to go to Convention in 2009! Anyway we had 30 new babies born with one more doe due. We will do some more breeding in August for September and October litters.
I think the next does to breed will be mainly rebreeds- Butterball, Penny and then Audrey and Ocean Pearl still needs to be bred for her first litter. She is almost 10 months old... oops!

Today we are off to Victoria as soon as we hear that Jan is back to get our 3 new mini lops from Enumclaw, then we will be heading to Wendys to take her a stacker, and a few other stops. Then we have to go for a dress fitting for the wedding.. Busy day!!

New barn cat

There was an add on Used Victoria last week about this really nice person who needed to find a barn home/farm home for his cat. Autumn(or Kitty) bites and doesn't let go, and scratches as well. She is definetly a cat with attitude. He dropped her off at the barn this morning and right away her and Bear got in a huge fight. We sorted that out(a few new holes in my feet) and she was one unhappy cat for a little while. We gave her food/water/bed right next to the barn under the tree so she doesn't need to go in the barn if she doesn't want too. Hopefully this works out as I think she will really like all the wandering and exploring she can do around the farm!

I will get pics of her in the next day or so.

We spent yesterday morning before it got hot going through every rabbit we felt we should sell, including brood does. A couple of the does I would love to keep but we want to get down to 62 holes instead of 76.. So we had to make some hard, hard decisions! Plus, we are keeping daughters or sons from each doe we are selling.

We are very excited for 7 upcoming litters over the next week. Penny, Cocaine and Butterball are all due tomorrow. Godiva and Midnight on Friday, and Portia on Saturday then the following week Sara is due! In August we will breed Audrey and Ocean Pearl and maybe a few others. We are going to try to have 2-5 litters a month so we always have something to show. Ocean is a first timer, and Audrey will be going to her new home after one more litter.

We broke down what we can keep in 62 holes..
8 bucks- we are maxed out!!
25 does- we are maxed out!!
29 Juniors- I think we have 4-5 empty spots, but that is with all the youngest litters having to stay 2 per cage for 3-4 months. We are keeping those extra holes empty incase they don't get along. Some of those juniors will go into the senior categories as well, so it will all work out but boy tough decisions!!

Went through some of the barn

Well, we basically went through most of the barn. It doesn't take that long to go through 70 rabbits compared to 150! We are trying to figure out what to keep from Black Beauty X Burke litter. They are SO gangly. They were a really nice litter at 4-5 weeks and we typed them. From our list we liked ALL 9 of them. Some stood out more then others of course, but none had more then 1 1/2 fingers in the midsection, and they were just a very promising litter. Now, fast forward a few months they are 3 1/2 months old.. Should be coming out of ganglies soon... Nope! They are still in hard core ganglies. There bodies are funny looking and akward. They look like skinny kids with big heads (lol) Okay maybe that might be a bit harsh. Well they look like luke our golden retriever in his worst gangly stage. He was skinny and tall, his feet were too big for his body and his head kept getting more and more narrow. Now he will be 2 in November and he is looking beautiful! These guys don't have the skinny part but they have the narrow, great heads, long body look!

We went through a bunch of the other litters as well. We had 7 more does due next Thursday/Friday plus a couple the following week. We have 76 holes and already 80 potential keepers( with only keeping 3 max from Black Beauty) so we are still 4 over. That is even with the new ones we put up for sale.... Oh well, we will figure it all out down the road. We still have 3 empty cages though....

Today is our moms birthday lunch. We just finished her cake, and will be starting to make lunch soon.

We are very excited for our first chocolate litter due Thursday. We decided to sell Yayo and Heath because we are running out of cages quickly. We have Penny- daughter to Heath and sister to Yayo, and have penny bred back to Dad. Even if we just get super massive Chocolates with heads we will be happy as we have a new broken lilac doe coming and Godiva. Plus we have Turtle for August/September. (turtle lives with Tammi and Saskia, same with Q). Turtle is a chocolate buck, and Q is his daughter a broken lilac.

We also have chocolate carrier litters due, and various other colors. Although we aren't working on producing colors we just happen to get them. Lately we've actually been getting pretty typey REW's so that is kind of neat!

Anyway keep an eye on the for sale page because we are already 4 rabbits over the limit of what we can keep, and we have 3 coming from Enumclaw that will be filling up those last 3 empty holes!! So, we will need to make some decisions. We did figure out 3 youngsters to cull, they just aren't looking great and siblings are better. One was pick of his litter, and probably will be a very nice buck but these Jerseys aren't moving so I need to make cage space somewhere.

If the last few Jerseys haven't sold by next week I will probably cull the 2 younger ones, and put Tonka and Mara up as a pair for super cheap... As I keep saying just make me an offer!

The dogs!

We got some new pictures of the dogs the other day.

First picture is all 4 dogs together. Ben the yellow lab is 11. Star the Black Shepherd/Flat Coated Retriever mix is 10, River the Shih Tzu is 3, and Luke the golden retriever is 1 1/2(will be 2 in November.



Next we have Star and Ben... We had liver treats and they really wanted them!!



Then just Star showing her pretty self... Even if she doesn't like anyone else much lol


River and Star sleeping on the ramp!



Then we have Buttons our Tortoiseshell cat creeping through the laurel hedges.... : )



And last but not least, Star the dog again who had just got out of her doggie pool.. She is a happy old girl!


Tomorrow we will be spending going through the barn trying to make more cage space! An ongoing battle for everyone I know : ) And doing our twice a week cleaning as well!