What a nutty week!

Since last Friday it has been INSANE around here. I'm talking shakes head crazy!!

We were in Ucuelet all day Saturday, then Sunday we were up super early to unload our dads truck of tools, and our truck of "stuff" from his RV trailer, as he is moving back home(he worked on the West Coast for the past 4 months, but because of his health has had to become a "travelling mechanic", then after that we cleaned the barn, and worked on a whole bunch of pics.

Then Monday we get a phone call at 5am that our dad is really sick and needs us to go get him. So we drove all the way up(3 hrs one way) and picked him up and took him to Nanaimo hospital. Our mom stayed with him while we came home and dealt with a few little things, then we fed rabbits and did chores, they got home and we went to bed pretty darn early! Yesterday we spent all day working on various things we needed too like Champagne and New Zealand Sanctions from the April 5th show. With being sick all last week we didn't spend any time on the computer, and I had some things to do. I've also been busy e-mailing judges and trying to get things organized for Luxton and Cowichan Fairs in September as catalogs need to go out pretty soon for those(because they are fairs, and Cowichan is the biggest fair on the Island).

I had to go to the post office on Monday and yesterday for stamps, and we mailed Valerie Uptagraffts show towel back(hand towel) she had forgotten at the show, then we had to mail a bunch of other things, and finish up the show stuff(all done now)(everyone had their legs weeks ago, but with being sick last week things got postponed!)

I had to research a course that my uncles logging company has to take, and today we worked on our taxes and got them finished. Plus we put a new oxygen sensor on the truck and went to the feed store.

See? Crazy!

Tomorrow we have to work on the oxygen sensor on the truck- long story, and one I am too lazy to type out. I just finished (in the oven) baking a cake for our Uncles B-day tomorrow, and it is also our good friend Sylvia's b-day as well in case she reads this before I send her a b-day greeting tomorrow : )

Rabbits are all doing fine. We will have some Champagne babies available if anyone is interested. We are keeping the buck, but both does in the older litter will be for sale, and we have another litter of two as well. The one doe is very nice, we just don't want more then 4 Champagnes. We will be selling the seniors as we replace them with juniors we've bred as well, so inquire if interested in senior stock down the road!

The only things left on my "HAS TO GET DONE THIS WEEK" are the Luxton and Cowichan catalogs, and my delay on both is I STILL don't have judges for Luxton. I've e-mailed over 20 judges in the Northwest and for the ones who have written me back they are all booked, and some I haven't gotten a reply from. And Cowichan show the judges are all booked, but, we are still waiting for sanction numbers.. That was mailed off the 7th of April. This mail system is SLOW.

Well better run and check the cake!

Picture and website update, and other animals!

We've been slowly getting caught up on website updates, although they won't be published for a couple more days yet. We've done over 100 pics in the past week, and have been adding them to the website. Mainly Mini lops, as everyone is coming nicely out of "ganglies" and some are maturing beautifully! We are looking forward to showing them.

As we've been taking pictures, the dogs and cats have been having fun annoying us and getting in our way! Here's Cassie, one of the 4 barn cats deciding it was "her turn" for pictures!



Also included is a pic of 2 of Andrea's dwarf hotot babies- so cute! And a pic of a Bear we saw eating on the side of the road the other day driving from Ucluelet.





I've sexed my litters... Boy did I have luck with BUCKS! ugh!!! Fantasy has 2 gorgeous bucks and a doe that are looking really nice! the other one buck is actually pretty nice too but is a blue point so unshowable color.

Maggie Mae and Hero have 2 dark smoke pearl bucks, and a dark smoke pearl doe.

Leapin' Miss Sierra X Leapin' Rock N Roll- a tort buck, Blue point buck, Smoke pearl buck and Blue point buck.

Leapin' Panache X GC Jentle's Hero- 2 blue bucks

Schultz's SEcret weapon X Leapin' Munchkin- dark sable point doe and siamese smoke pearl doe!

We've gone through tons of Mini lops and mini lop litters. I mean the barn is soon going to be full we have so many babies and juniors we are growing out. For now we are fine with quite a few empty cages(at least a dozen I can count off the top of my head, BUT! we have 8 more does bred, with 3 due in a week... That is the end of breedings for us. I have 2 more Champagnes to breed, possibly 3 and then that is it for sure this time lol! I bred the last Jersey wooly on the weekend when we bred the other mini lop does, and one Champagne doe.

Fair weather rabbits

In the past couple of weeks, I've had more Jersey babies born then any other time since last October. We've both decided the jerseys are "Fair Weather rabbits". The mini lops bred all fall, all winter, and now all spring. The Jerseys have been a whole other story!!

We've been sick this week, with bad colds so haven't been on the computer or writing blogs. We are feeling much more human now, so thought I should write a blog!

Leapin Maggie Mae X GC Jentle's Hero have 3 kits left- not sure if blues or smoke pearls.

Leapin' Panache X GC Jentle's Hero- 2 kits- blues

Leapin' Ms Sierra X Leapin' Rock N Roll- 4 kits- 1 tort, and 3 sable points and blue points

Schultz's Secret Weapon X Leapin' Munchkin- 2 kits- dark sable point and a smoke pearl we think? They keep changing!

I've been trying since last October for Secret Weapon and Maggie to have litters. Maggie had 2 dead litters in the box, in a row, and she has the live litter now(she was proven before) so it was just winter!

We had a new Champagne litter today as well, 2 HUGE babies. Doing great. About 3/4's the size of our hands! They are big babies! Still waiting on the other Champagne to kindle.

We will do some more breedings in the next week, and I will hopefully find something interesting to write about : )

The 5 babies from Fantasy X Cowboy are doing great. I will see about getting some pics this weekend. 3 of the 5 are looking really nice with great bodies!

The sable point buck from Foxy Lady and Cowboy is doing fine as well, he is fostered to a mini lop(Rosalind). Its looks so funny this tiny Jersey against these huge mini lops who are just a week older then him, but are 3 times bigger then him!

We did a whole bunch of new pictures last weekend, but haven't felt up to doing website updates.. We will hopefully start working on them tomorrow.

Our dad is moving from up Island back down here, to travel with his job instead of living at his job(and towing the trailer) so we will be busy this next week organizing him, and helping him move everything back down this way.

It bugs me!

When people say "wow, you are doing another breed?", Or, you "Sure have a lot of different breeds". Or you sure have a turn over on breeds etc.

What better way to know a breed then to BREED AND SHOW the breed. This is my opinion but it just bugs me when people comment, on something that is really not an issue to comment over!

I can think of many Nationally winning breeders who have more then one breed of rabbit. In fact, a lot of the ones I am thinking of have at least 2 breeds, some have 3 or 4 or more.

For me, I don't think raising more then 4 breeds does anything for all the breeds. Unless you have hundreds of extra cages and time to devote to the breed.

For us, Mini lops ARE the main breed with 72 holes for them. Mini lops have been here the longest, besides the first few years we spent with Holland lops and French lops. We had French lops for 3 1/2 almost 4 years, and Hollands for 3 years.

Since then, yes, we have tried various breeds and yes some didn't stick around for very long but every breed we raised so far, before we sold out we won a Best in Show with it! French lop, Holland lop, Mini rex, Netherland dwarf. We really haven't had many breeds.

I know of a breeder who has had rabbits here on the Island, has incredible stock especially in their one breed, and has 7 different breeds of rabbits. Has had rabbits since the mid 70's, and has raised many different breeds. Although the breeder doesn't have a big turn over of breeds, some of the breeds they don't do all that much with(having just a pair or trio or up to 5 animals at times).

We have a huge pet food industry here on Vancouver Island, with no sales of rabbit meat for human consumption allowed, a lot of breeders are going for the pet food industry. In fact, the pet food industry on the Island is so good we have all our culls sold for the next YEAR.

Yes, we are getting 3 satins coming from the US. Why ? Because our meat sales are so good, it would be nice to help pay for the feed bill some more with these meat sales. And we've always thought the red satins are beautiful. If you want to see more judges, and better judges I think you better want to see those judges raising all kinds of breeds, the more hands on experience the BETTER THEY ARE!

My opinion, as always : )

Litters coming up

We have 2 Champagne litters, 4 Jersey wooly litters(one doe is sold, so will be 3 litters) due this next week. All the does need to get boxes put in tomorrow. I've already put one Champagne box in as the doe has been nesting for the past week. And I will put in the other boxes today or tomorrow.

I am looking forward to these litters.

Secret Weapon has 2 babies- a Siamese Smoke pearl looks to be a doe, and a Siamese Sable also looks to be a doe.

Panache has 2 dark smoke pearls or blues ( I think blues) by Hero.

Mara, Maggie, and Ms Sierra are all due this week.

The 5 babies of Fantasy X Cowboy are 4 bucks and 1 doe. Blue torts, Smoke pearl and Blue points.

The one baby from Cowboy X Foxy Lady is a Sable point buck- SO CUTE!

I think we may work on pictures today. We also are hoping to get the pet site finished this weekend. Tomorrow we do a shipment of 6 Jersey woolies to Ontario. On Tuesday 5 Jerseys go to Alberta, and then throughout the next couple of weeks a bunch more will go. That will be nice for cage space. We have 72 Mini lop holes and 52 we are keeping so far(not including the youngest litters) so we will need as many empty holes as we can get!

We decided how to work out our holes:
72 Mini lop holes. The mini lops are a really fun breed that we both enjoy, and they are our main breed. 4 holes for the Champagnes, and 4 holes for Red Satins as we have a huge demand for meat for the pet food industry, so we NEVER have a problem selling our culls. 8 holes for the Jersey woolies.

There are some breeds we would never try again, and we are offically finished with cavies for life(sorry cavy breeders) just not for us. (we haven't had cavies since last fall. I've tried them 4 different times in the past 8 years, but I just enjoy the rabbits that much more.

Well I should go and get my butt in gear... We are having a very lazy morning. Our mom is sick and usually we hear her early in the morning working around the house, but with being sick she didn't get up early so we both slept in, and then we've been getting caught up on e-mails etc. Now, I must go get some work done!

They are coming today!

It is a bittersweet story. Today is the last day we will see Andrea for a full year. This is going to be a tough day! : ( Her Dwarf hotots come today, for the next year... We will be breeding them for her, and showing them for her as well etc. We are both looking forward to it, as we've never worked with Dwarf hotots and will be something different!

There are 6 does, and 1 buck coming. She is also bringing 2 brand new stackers, 2 carriers, nestboxes, dishes, and their toys and pedigrees : )

We will get pics of them in the next few weeks to blog about : ) 2 of the does Classe and can't remember the other does name have litters of 2 each. And 2 more does are bred.

I will blog about the dwarf hotot experience as we go along over the next year. Keeping Andrea updated etc.

As I said it is bittersweet. I am happy and sad at the same time. I am really happy we can continue for her, as she put so much work into them the last 3 years genetically as well as breeding to the standard.

Can you keep a secret?

I had to tell a white lie. That is my secret. Why did I have to tell a white lie? Well, I'll tell you!

So, after a year of sitting I decided to sell my pick up. A really cute 91 Chevy Sonoma(pic attached with all of Andrea's cages from moving her from our farm to Wally's last year). So we charged the battery on the truck, and started it. The truck sounds FINE! Totally fine.

Now, what I haven't told you yet is we took the truck in and had $4000 of work done on it a couple of years ago. Last April we took it in for a tune up and everything was GREAT! Last May we had to sit the truck because we thought their was a noise coming from the engine (they had just put a new used engine in the October before (6 months before), and the truck ran beautifully. As soon as we heard the noise we took it to Crofton Auto who said yes, there is definetly something up. No warranty.. 3 month warranty ONLY on used engines. So of course, CRAP( or well, more terms for that but I won't write those ;) Beginning of May we drove the truck to Monroe WA, all the way down to Toledo I belive it was called to get French lops from Lynn and Patrick Eden. Something like a 5 hour drive. NO PROBLEMS with the truck.

Anyway to make a long story short we sat the truck for almost the last year, and had to start it once last fall to move it, and again it ran great no problems no noises.

So, I decide you know what? Screw it. Sell it! Norm was going to give us the van to use anyway, as he is buying a pickup in a few weeks. So, we thought sell the truck, keep the van and all is well. Well, now that the dumb thing sounds great I will drive it/put insurance on it for 3 months (will only use it for up to a month as then I will sell it as soon as Norm get his pick up). And get the other 2 months of money back. So, I put an add before we started the truck, on one of the sites for $1500, put about the motor occasionally making a noise etc. I've now had 3 phone calls, and 6 e-mails about the truck.

WELL! Now we've decided to drive it for a few weeks, because if it isn't the motor and isn't expensive to fix I will take it in to the auto place and get them to fix it and get more for it.. Then we will sell the Van, and put the money from the p/u and the van for a Ford F150 that I REALLY want ;)
I'm done with Chevs!

Anyway, where does the secret come in? I had to tell everyone that phoned and on the site that due to a family emergency I wasn't able to sell the truck for 2-3 weeks. Now, part of this is true. I have one family emergency I can't talk about, and another my step sister has cervical cancer and just had surgery this week in Alberta. That is all true.

So in 2-3 weeks we should be down two vehicles, up one vehicle for Norm, and then hopefully by beginning of May up one vehicle for me!! : ) Oh.. I can't wait : )

On rabbit news now... I will either blog or Cristina will in 2 secs on one thing, but Panache finally 3 days late had 3 babies, one doa peanut, and 2 either blues or dark smoke pearls doing great! Maggie and Mara are due on Monday, Sierra and the 2 Champagnes and Sophia(didn't take I don't believe) next Wednesday.

Off to either write the other blog.. Or get my butt in gear to wash a truck... Then off to the barn... (our other blog is about the barn)