Babies everywhere!

Just did a head count on babies at Southern Treasures in Georgia and we have a total of 29!  Most babies are Holland Lops. That is unreal. Usually have more ND babies born. My start into Jersey Woolies has been slow. Have had quite a few misses so far, but I just keep breeding the does back. They will have babies eventually, I am quite sure. So excited about all of our new upcoming juniors! Cannot wait to get to a show to see if we are suffering from acute barn blindness, as that seems to be the case every single time we get excited! Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas this week and a Happy New Year next week! And hope everyone's nest boxes are as full as ours are. :-)

Getting Over Convention

Well I don't think we've quite gotten over our trip to Convention yet. Wow! Thousands of rabbits trapped in one huge building.

 It was amazing. Though I enjoyed myself, I don't know if I'll do this again. Going to convention is very stressful on the rabbits. I didn't realize how much so. A national breed show would be so much better on them in my opinion. I think our bunnies fared pretty well. We ended up bringing home a total of... wait, I'm not gonna say it out loud. It hurts too much! I did end up getting several new woolies and I am so excited about venturing into this breed. I have 10 woolies total out there and I would love to stick to within 10-20 of these creatures. I would love to duplicate Roger Roth's example of how he maintained his herd. He only kept around 25 animals at a time. And we all know the quality of his Netherland Dwarfs was astounding. (Sigh...) If only we could get down to 25 in each breed. That would be a WONDERFUL feeling. A bag of feed is only lasting for 2 days now. It is time to cut back and cut back again! The lack of successful litters this time around must really be a hidden blessing. We have had so many misses and several dead litters. Very frustrating. We are expecting litters out of our new Holland Lop bucks this week!! I am so excited! And very nervous that we'll end up having misses AGAIN. We have the absolute WORST luck in breeding Hollands.  We picked up 2 bucks from Brocks Fallen EArs and 2 bucks from DTL rabbitry. Very pleased with all of them. Can't wait to see what they produce for us. We will have them working hard for us in both barns!  Also picked up some very nice ND bucks from Lisa Monk. Our old herd buck CM's Northwest(everybody knew him simply as 'HT2' LOL) really made an impression on our herd and we are excited to have CM's Southeast!! Hoping he'll leave a mark like our other man did. Mike also got a REW buck from Lisa. Very nice to be working with REWs again. Still trying for BEWs in the NDs...Very slow go at that. Ton of misses and when we do get that litter it's full of mismarks and either the BEWs are dead or there are none to begin with! How's that for trying to get one particular color??  Crazy. We've been trying for those for almost 7 years now. It's exhausting. Speaking of that,I am pretty exhausted and better head to bed. Got to get up and go to church in the morning! Great start to the day! ;-)

Convention and Non breeding does

I am so excited about attending my first ARBA Convention this year. Mike got to go 3 years ago and he really enjoyed it. Said it was very overwhelming. It will be so fun to see all the different breeds in such a large place like that and curious to see how what we show will place. That will definitely be an eye opener either way it goes. I am clueless to the quality of what we'll take. Barn blindness has been running rampant over here in Georgia. With the exception of that fine rabbit I've been staring at the last few days, HT's Zulu. Oh yea, his mommy sees him as a pet, but I'm totally seeing something else. What a fine animal he is. He and Garrett. Too excited to have them over here. Now if I could just convince the two or three does I've been trying to get bred all week that these guys are all that and a bag of chips, it'd be perfect! Time to throw some apple cider vinegar in the does' water bowls and get them in the mood. Worked wonders for us to do that several years ago..time to try it again!

Yippee! New bunnies in the barn!

Lisa just left outta here and dropped off a couple of bucks that I can't wait to start using! One of them is her AWESOME herd buck, HT's Zulu. Here is his pic:
 I absolutely LOVE this buck, and don't worry Lisa, I won't let anything happen to him. Mike kept saying, "All of our does are bred, we don't have anything to breed to him." I just wanted to stomp my feet, I was thinking to myself, 'Don't let her take that buck back home!' I know sure as the world spins round and round, that we will have some misses when these Holland litters are due, and whoever does is going in with this guy. I love everything that has come out of him.  She also brought over Lil' Bit Farms Garrett! I am so in love with this little sable point buck. Here is his pic:
 He still has a lot of growing up to do, but I am VERY patient. ;-) I can sit on him for a really long time. He is the shortest bunny ever, and actually has a HQ on him! Something that's really lacking in our bucks. And Lord knows well, that we don't need any more bunnies. But I got an email from a very nice fella who got rabbits from us a couple of years ago...he is getting out of rabbits and wanted to know if we wanted to get some back from him. Wow. He has a buck that we never should've sold and some blue eyed white does that go back to the best BEW buck I ever produced. How very exciting! I cannot wait to get started back on the BEW Hollands. Also, we are getting a lilac and a pointed white from Mary Justice. I cannot wait to get them! Wanted to do pointed whites so long ago and never got the chance to. Also wanted to do chocolates, but that fell through , too. Picking up very nice choc carrier and assorted does from Kristen Clifford in FL soon, too. It is amazing to me how my dream color projects have just fallen right into my lap over the last couple of weeks. It is very hard, as every Holland breeder knows, to stare at a barn full of tort all the time. Although, truthfully, if the bunnies are NICE, doesn't hurt the eyes at all...just sayin. I have yet to find the 'perfect' buck in our barn or herd. Never had one either. This is probably normal, too. If we all had the perfect buck, what is there left to strive for? I love our does. We have some great great brood does that are to die for. Picked up a couple of AWESOMe brood does from the Smiths a couple of weeks ago. ONe is bred, the other one on her way to being bred...if that doesn't happen, Lisa is gonna have to take her home and work some magic!  Well we were planning for the FL show this weekend, but it doesn't look like we are going to make it. So next show will be October 8 in Perry, GA. Much easier trip for our family, especially for the baby. She is not an easy traveler. Well, until next time....I'm outta here.

Clean up, clean up everybody everywhere...

My poor husband has been working his tail off all week on his VACATION trying to get our barn cleaned up. We are almost moved out of our house "completely" in Cordele.  He finally moved the rest of the rabbits here to Ashburn this week. No more feeding bunnies in two places. That takes a tremendous load off of him. Of course from now on, I've got to step it up a notch and pitch in with the feeding and watering. I did a head count today on bunnies and the total was 126! Wow. We said we'd never end up having that many rabbits when we first got into bunnies in 2005. On the positive side of it, we do have 3 different breeds in the barn, so that makes the number sound better. Only about 7 Lionheads, and the rest are divided equally between our Hollands and Netherlands. The bad thing about us is we never move bunnies out after we're done using them! We keep them forever and ever. We have two 7 year old bucks out there. Saynora's Sam and SF Oreo. They are SOOO sweet! Probably could've moved them out, but never did. It's okay. They are very lovable sweet buns. We have probably over a dozen 5+yr old rabbits. Is this normal? I don't think we've quite caught on to the breeding and culling process. We don't breed NEAR enough, but when we do, we keep it all! We have a flush clean system in our rabbit room, which I really don't care for, but MIke does all the clean up on it. He pressure washed the top row today and moved bunnies around. We cleaned and sanitized all the crocks and water bottles and feeders. Can't wait to get out there tomorrow and get fresh pine shavings out on the dirt floor and print up some new cage tags to go on all the feeders. Mike installed a new countertop and sink and added water to the rabbit room. The sink isn't plumbed with a drain yet, that's a whole 'nother job there. Just fine though, at least we have a water hook up for a hose in there now. I am going to get pictures of all the work he did this week tomorrow. I will try to post them here. Looking forward to going to the show in FL in 2 weeks! Even if we do get whooped, it's all about making the breed better and improving your herd. Lisa is picking up some new rabbits we got this weekend. I cannot wait to see them. It's been a couple of years since we bought any Holland LOps. Don't know why I'm so excited about that. Guess it's all about having something new in your barn.  One GREAT thing about Mike cleaning up the barn this week and bringing all the cages and buns home from the house in Cordele, is that there are SO MANY EMPTIES! ;-)  Anyone that's ever been to our barn knows we hardly ever have empties....if we do, it's only 1. Takes a big load off of your shoulders to see empty cages in my opinion. You  know you've got somewhere to stick those juniors! That's another thing we are so bad at. Getting those juniors off of mama. We leave them too long, and mostly because we don't have a cage for them. We need some major culling tips!  Oh me.... guess I will quit babbling and write again later.  

Blogging

Well, I have never blogged before so I am looking foward to it. Hope this will be fun.  I am so excited that we have established a new co-op with our friend Lisa Reynolds. It breathes new hope and excitement into our hobby. That is what this is suppposed to be; a hobby. I know all too well about forgetting that. I look forward to breeding new bunnies and sharing new bunnies and going to new shows with our new partner.