Blog 18/19

Well its been even longer since our last blog for which we apologise...absolutely loads going on so I got side-tracked...a lot...which if you talk to Kim is nothing unusual lol. What makes it worse is that you forget all the different things that have happened because of the time lag but I will do my best.
                         

Our Argente programme has progressed to the next level as we mated up the lovely little agouti 'Lil Kim' we got from Sue Burgess to our f1 buck Snoop Dog. The result was 3 very different colours

This is the little cinnamon, as you can see the silvering can be seen here but not as distinctive as the black

The black shows the silvering off very effectively and at 8 weeks this is very good, 

The tort or sooty has the least amount of silvering but has the better ear at the moment so we will have to run all 3 on before we decide on what we need for the next stage of the argente programme.

Well once the excitement of London was over we only went to 2 other shows East Herts and Harlow...the lovely surprise at East Herts was that we got best in show on the day....with another Siberian lol so a lovely finish to the year before we stopped showing and concentrated on the rabbits.

Which brings us on to our other news and that was that we decided to open up our outside area to a more professional approach; having boarded our own pet stock over the years we decided to advertise a boarding service. First was deciding that we needed new hutches...the original out door block is over 15 years old and although a little tatty looking is still holding together :)

 We ordered 3 new blocks from a local hutch builder and they suit our needs really well, nice size, well put together and although i had to trim an inch off the feet, went in to the outside area quite snugly.

The only down side is that you have to bitumen the floors yourself which doesn't take to long actually..

 its the painting that takes the time lol. I got one block painted and transferred the Argentes over before starting on the second block except we then got a call for our boarding service and had a boarder for 16 days which was brilliant :)

We had advertised our service that same week so to get a call that quick was impressive, we had even built a web site http://stevetoltonst.wix.com/the-warren which was where the owners had come across us :)
So we just need to order the next set of hutches which we will do after xmas then we can remove the old blocks and put them somewhere else ;) Having built the web site we decided to produce another Tarax Stud web page as we were being restricted on the old site http://taraxstudrabbits.wix.com/tarax-stud we had great fun building that one as well though i do need to update some more pictures on there.

Well it has been hectic here since then...we have had some mating's done though there have been some ups and downs :( 3 does had kits but unfortunately lost them but  our next 2 does successfully had there's. Sweet pea did have 2 but lost one straight away so has been going overboard with cleaning and feeding....every 20 mins lol...the baby looks like a baby sumo...its so round it cant turn over so sleeps on its back.....as you can see below lol, all you get is a slight twitching of all 4 legs :)

Well thats the run down for this months blog do look at our boarding web site and also our Tarax Stud site and let us know what you think :) The next blog will be after xmas so to all our followers, readers and lurkers, have a very Merry Christmas and of course a very Happy New Year 

Steve & Kim

Blog 17 The excitement builds :)

Hello TS bloggers and welcome back to the Tarax Stud blog page :)well its still been a little quiet in the shed at the moment...since the Walsall show there has been no showing as the stock has either been moulty or in between ages so to young or gangly lol. other things going on at home has also meant we have had to sort those things out as a priority so another reason for no shows :( but the plus side is that I am still forging ahead with the painting of all our hutches....yaaayy...the problem is that I am having to repaint hutches because they have gone so yellow and finding a paint that does not go yellow is quite hard to find :(

 I finally found a professional paint though it is a lot more expensive to any other white gloss paint on the market but as you can see...the difference is amazing:)

 Just a shame it is a slow process as i have to move one rabbit each time before i can paint lol.
We have had a couple of boarders over the last few weeks, both rabbits that originally came from us the first is a lovely orange broken buck who is a real character his only quirk is he will not drink from a bottle only from a bowl lol....but his owner is fine about that :)

 Our other boarder was Lenny a stunning Perlfee buck who stayed with us whilst his owner went up to north to look at potential universities, i forgot to take a picture but the link will show you what he looks like :)  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152329538219572&set=o.388421277843271&type=1&theater

The following week Lenny had a 'friend' called George come to stay with him :)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152390769984572&set=o.388421277843271&type=1&theater

We nearly kept George except Kim put a ring on his litter brother so we are keeping him instead lol (no name yet)

The same week One of our colour program rabbits gave birth to her first litter...to say the colours were unexpected is pushing it lol. The buck is an F1 cross between Silas our cinnamon lop to Princess our Argente creme....this produced 'Snoop Dog' :)

The St Hubert/ lop cross of Sue Burgess 'Lil Kim' had 3 kits which we thought were initially 3 agouti's have now turned out to be a black self, a tort and a cinnamon lol oh well :)

There have been some other mating's in the shed The lutino's don't want to play ball at the moment and will not mate up :( in the shed our Glavcot Beatrice and 3 of the lops seem to indicate they are pregnant 'sweetpea' our cinnamon, 'Bessy' our choc otter and 'India' our choc tort seem to be indicating a positive result...there all due end of October so fingers crossed  :)

Last bit of news was 'The London' show which Kim and myself went to :) this is a 2 day show held over at Peterborough. Our first day was on the Saturday and we got up at 4am to take 9 rabbits and 3 guinea pigs. No mini lops cane along as either to moulty or just not up to age :( so it was all our fur rabbits instead, 2 Lilac adult Siberians (this is one of them)

we also took 2 u/5 Brown Siberians (the 3rd one here went to another breeder at the show) 

We also took 2 adult and 2 u/5 Glavcots

 and we also took our new addition to the shed an u/5 Wheaten Lynx :)

Overall we didn't do to bad with all the rabbits, my glavcots were entered against 4 Hotots and another 2 glavcots and came 2nd out of 8 one of my Lilac Siberians got best in show in the Siberian show (more rosettes)

and one of the guinea pigs won a rosette as well lol. Anyway the following are a few photos from the show :)

 These are all photos from around the show over 2 days...lots of judging etc.

 More photos can be found on the London & Essex link https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.348575685287997.1073741832.153450214800546&type=3

So thats it for the moment, the only other thing in the pipeline before the christmas holidays is that we are hoping to sort out the outside area for new hutches as we are hoping to promote our bunny boarding so as soon as the hutches are up and painted we will get some pictures up to show everyone :)



Blog 16 Zzzzzzz has he fallen asleep?

Apologies TS bloggers this has probably been the longest gap in between blogs that i have done but i have a really, really good excuse....i get side tracked very easily :) plus there's been lots of other things going on which have meant there has not been the time available to sit down (even though i'm off work lol).
Considering the gap between blogs...there has not been a lot going on in the shed as our mating programme slows down this time of year especially with the larger rabbits. Our last 3 mating's unfortunately did not do to well, our little orange mantle doe Sally missed; we had mated her up as she is a maiden doe she is also part

of our argente program but because the buck we have for her is not ready yet we mated her up to our orange buck Seville (who will also be helping with the same program)

 Sweet pea our cinnamon doe had 5 kits 3 of those were peanuts so we lost them then we lost the other 2 over the next 2 days :( Sally our chocolate otter doe had 3 babies and we lost them as she scattered them each day :( so not good.
Bess our other chocolate otter doe is due in a week and is running around with straw in her mouth so fingers crossed especially as its her 1st litter.

 A couple of weeks back we had a doorstop visitor for a rabbit, a gentleman called Rob and his daughter Emma originally came to look at mini lops and Emma ended up falling in love with one of our Perlfee bucks as well lol she has called him Lenny and judging by the pictures we have received on our Facebook page is now definitely part of their family (as can be seen here...watching Friends on TV  with Emma lol)

We also had a surprise visitor visit the shed earlier this week....'Rosey' was a harlie coloured doe that Holly got from us last year, and came to get her nails done :) here she is learning to do meerkat impressions

(which she is supposed to very good at doing so Holly and mum inform us lol). In the shed we do have 3 youngsters who are now 4 weeks old, the first we were very excited about as it was a colour we have not had in the shed for nearly 7 years and is a blue self this was a dark beige to a black self mating and what makes it even more important as its related to a fantastic blue self buck we originally had called Mariner...its not been sexed yet but if it is a buck it will take the same name :)

(even if our helper Ellie keeps coming up with strange names for it lol)

The next litter is from a chocolate tort called Tess (related to India) this is her first litter and she has produced two scrummy little cinnamons who seem to be developing really well :) not sure which one Kim

is keeping as the other has been promised to Emma (Lennys owner) if she decides she still wants another.

My other surprise is i have another rare breed in the shed (another one! lol) yes another one....we now have a Wheaten Lynx :) here we have a lovely little doe which we acquired and although she is here to help with a program that we are working on, I know its a colour i have always liked  so there might be more of the breed turning up lol. I am hoping she will be ready for the London so who knows :)


The last bit of news concerns the show scene, Bank holiday weekend has me winging my way up to Walsall for a big 4* show I must admit i was so looking forward to going to this as its been around 9 years since we had both been here last. I didn't think i would actually be going as Kim had a prior engagement but luckily our young helper Ellie came to my rescue so i could go to the show :) i had rabbits entered in for two stock shows National Miniature Lop Rabbit Club and National Siberian as well the main show....10 rabbits were originally entered but as the days went by rabbits dropt out due to moult so much so that we had no Mini lops going to the show on the day....just my Glavcots and Siberians :(
On a positive note i was able to bring two guinea pigs up for our friend Laurel Benson (helped us with our Lilac Siberians and Argente doe) and i also brought up 2 Glavcots for our friend Simon Vizard who has decided to have a go at Glavcots himself :)

The show was brilliant especially seeing so many friends past and present

We did ok as we got the CC in the AOV RV Fur beating 2 Hotots which is always good lol as it promotes the Glavcots (grin) but the surprise for us was in the Siberian stock show as we got best lilac

 then we got the best Brown also Best of breed in main show then to top it all we got Best in show in the stock show all so totally unexpected but as you can imagine we were immensely happy.

The Browns were all our own lines which made it more rewarding and the lilacs were a credit to Trevor Rawlings (RIP) who we acquired the original stock from :) This has given us the nudge we needed now as our next big show for all of us in the Rabbit Fancy is the 2 day London Championships show in October so Glavcots, Siberians, Wheaten and Mini lops are hopefully being assessed and entered this week...(love the social side of this) but obviously i will be posting another blog b4 then so can let you guys know whats happening so l8rs until blog 17 :)

Blog 15 'Partaayy!!'

Good day TS bloggers and welcome back to the mad house :)
It has been a couple of weeks since the last blog but as with many hobbies unfortunately real life sometimes ends up interfering :) usually for good reasons.
So where to start, well the main thing as with all studs is that you have stock that moves on or new stock in the shed. The Siberians saw 2 adults move on to a lovely older gentleman who used to breed New Zealand's for meat and pelt about 40 years ago and turned up with his daughter and grand daughter a month or so ago for a pet mini lop, suffice to say he fell in love with the Glavcots, Hulstlanders and especially the Siberians ''proper rabbits!!'' as he called them lol anyway out the blue he asked for a couple of breeding adults so 2 lilacs now gone :)
Next to go was all our young stock of mini's, Sandy our choc otter doe had the 4 snowballs

as they were not the best of type we decided to let them go....in a week all 4 went :) which meant as the others were already spoken for we had no more youngsters left. We had 2 more enquiries and as we only had a couple of older rabbits to move on as well as the fur breeds...these went as well lol.

Our favourite was Solo a cinnamon agouti buck that had come back to us a few months back, who we were going to keep except another buck Hugo turned out to be a bit better than Solo. a lovely young lady who works at tropical wings down the road came for a youngster and ended up falling in love with him

 Which is why we have him on our main fb page lol as you may recognise in the picture below :)

A few of the Siberians ended up going as well, which actually helped us gain some hutch space which was nice....for a while :) with Kim's 50th birthday the other weekend we ended up with 5 new additions lol

The first was a rabbit that i had asked for to help with one of our mini lop lines. Our very good friend and mentor Daren had a little black doe that i needed to help our black otter and black self lines with...when he knew it was Kim's birthday he gave it as a present (she is a very lucky lady) :)

Her coat and colour is gorgeous (the picture here does not give her credit) so am very excited as we have 3 boys waiting to meet her :)
Our next surprise was with our Lutinos, unfortunately our lovely buck Baal was found dead in his hutch the night after a really bad thunderstorm :( he was a fantastic looking animal and was getting used to being handled, what was worse was the fact he was about to be used on the breeding programme that week. Another of our friends Darren and Hannah were coming down for Kim's birthday party and informed me (before knowing about Baal) that they had a Lutino buck rabbit as a birthday present for her :)

 As you can see he is the same intense colour with the red ruby eye

 he is smaller and younger and he his a little timid (though he does growl at me sometimes lol)

 he has a slighter longer ear which is a plus for us in our future programme.

The next surprise was two fold as we were expecting a replacement for our Lutino doe who had a weepy eye, well Darren informed us that what we were getting was a 'Shadow' and an agouti doe that carries Lutino. Well the 'Shadow is certainly impressive, in the pic below you can see the difference in coat colour (though she is moulting which is why the eye mask lol) she is absolutely lovely and cannot wait to work with her. 

 The doe that came with her is a typical Netherland Dwarf good body, lovely bold eye, very intense colouring again quite timid but easy to handle once picked up lol

again a very nice rabbit :) so a very big thank you to Darren & Hannah for these lovely rabbits.

Our last rabbit was a swap :) as in our previous blogs we have mentioned about our Argente lop programme :) well a lovely lady down Devon way called Sue Burgess is also working on Argente lops but instead of using Creme's as we were, she is using the St Hubert's which is a bigger bolder rabbit than the Creme's. After communicating with her for some time we found that another of our lovely friends who lived down that way was coming to Kim's party and was able to pick up and drop off our rabbits. Our last new addition is 'Lil Kim' :) she has a lovely shape head and body and the ticking is very good.

The difference with our Creme line is as you can see here in this litter, have a snippy narrower head...the plus is that with the Creme crosses...the ears are lopping straight away when they get to around 12 weeks :) (Will add some pics to the next blog)

So thats it for this blog :) sorry its been a while as a lot of health problems have happened which effected the whole family...that and Kim's party lol oh and i could not upload pictures onto my blog or face book until today grrr! but sorted now lol. Anyway off to clip rabbit nails ready for next week so until the next blog l8rs!