Week 13 'The letter S'

Hello TS bloggers and welcome to another enthralling episode of Tarax Stud blogs :)
well as usual its been a busy week mainly because of Kim having a 2 day craft event which meant cleaning out was out of sync especially with Ellie off on a school trip, we did get it done but I didn't finish until Tuesday evening so not as much time as we would of liked in the rabbitry :(
One of the main jobs in the shed was to split some of the litters up, this is done mainly to separate the bucks from the does, it also helps to decide what we want to keep and it helps any bucks who have a parent who is aggressively amoras. This weeks litters where the Siberians, our first doe was Lillie who has had 2 lovely browns....here we have Sebastian and his sister Ennys

 

 (Kim is quite excited with these 2 obviously because of the colour lol)

 

Our next Siberians to be split up had already been separated from there dam and their own gender siblings, the 2 doe's Levyn & Torys are still together as we don't foresee any problems with them sharing yet :)

 The two bucks on the other hand we thought it would probably be best to separate from each other, both had been to two shows to see how they would be under stress of people and handling. They didn't do to well in their first show but Relizon did win a CC in the next show.

                                 Relizon

                                                                                                                   Vorldan



 

Other news in the shed is that we have other litters happening all at various stages, on the mini lop side we have India a chocolate tort who we got from a lovely friend down near Bristol (Stephanie Chambers) she had 4 kits 4 weeks ago 2 chocolate otters and 2 chocolate tort otters :)

 

 

The next few rabbits have all recently had litters, Charlie our F1 was mated to our other F1 line and produced 9 kits :) unfortunately we lost 4 of the kit's over the week but the other 5 are thriving and it looks as though we have a cinnamon 3 opals and a lynx...there eyes have just opened and we will take pic's as soon as they are old enough :)

 

Our next rabbits are the Glavcots.....the 1st being Agnes who had 5 kits :) she goes over board with nest building and feeding so we tend to have to watch her condition at this stage.

Beatrice is our next doe and she is our oldest Glavcot doe being an 09 ring. SInce we had her she has only ever produced one baby with every mating though with her age we don't begrudge her :) we are hoping this latest kit is a doe so that we can retire her to outside :)

 

Beatrice with her 1 kit (top left)



 

3 other Does who have had kits include our best Lilac Siberian doe Vivienne who was mated to Sib's our original brown Siberian buck. This is another mating we have been waiting for and again Kim is pleased as it looks as though we have 3 browns that will be ready for the London later this year :)

 

Our last 2 rabbits are Borage and Saffron. Borage is a black self and is one of our original does from our own line, she was mated to one of her previous sons who is also a black self....she gave birth to one black self kit lol.

Our last doe is Saffron a chocolate tort doe who to be honest we thought had missed even though she pulled fur. Kim palpated her but no movements and to be honest Kim was not happy with her condition so said we were to leave her to rest and gain condition over the next few months....the next morning she had 1 chocolate tort kit which unfortunately was still born :(

 

Other news is that we have a new addition in the rabbitry....she is called snowball and is to help with the lutino programme to make sure we have some carriers. She is 12 weeks old very friendly and we are looking forward to seeing how she will be of help to us

 

Snowball our little Nethie dwarf :)

 

Finally we have a few rabbits for sale which need to move on we will be putting them up on our Facebook pages but I thought I would put them up here as well :)

 

The first is a very small but good type cinnamon buck called Solo born 10/12/2012 both parents cinnamons as well anyone interested in him obviously contact us through usual channels

 

 The next buck we kept back as we wanted an orange to use for our argente programme but his colour has turned out to be to dark to use and not orange enough as you can see in the second picture. His called Sammy born 18/1/2013 sire was a cinnamon the dam was a black self (choc carrier)

 

So that's it bloggers for this week except I shall finish on one more picture on how I have totally lost my garage space to our hobbies. I found a hay supplier reasonably close to me that could do a better deal than our last supplier on needed to £50 for a free delivery...so I thought 3 or 4 extra bales on top of our usual....except this farm only charges £3 a bale.....add up the maths and that's more bales than expected.....                                                          

                                                                     21 bales lol









 



Blog number 12 :) shows...shows and more shows

Hello TS bloggers and welcome back to the Tarax stud blog page. Well I cant believe so many weeks have past since the blog 1st started up a few months ago :) the idea was that we could put more pictures up, add extra info about showing and breeding rabbits, as well as move stock on if needs be. Our actual web page https://sites.google.com/site/taraxstud/ only allows so much info which was the reason for the blog. So the web page has stayed as it is which gives information about Tarax Stud as a whole. This weeks blog is on the shows we have been to recently.
On Sunday the 9th we went to the Harlow Rabbit Show unfortunately Kim's Miniature Lops are moulty so none of them had been entered, we did enter our 2 adult Golden Glavcots and for the 1st time 2 lilac Siberian rabbits

Here is Miss P Otto with the Glavcots

 

Mrs L Keith was judging fancy & lops

 

the choc tort in the picture was best Mini lop

 

The following 3 pictures are from a Dutch rabbit club

 Even have the chance for younger members to judge which is always a good thing.

 

 

I really enjoyed the day especially as i got to chat to 2 Fur judges who have both bred Siberian rabbits which meant i was able to pick there brains on the breed, main advice was the same...leave them to mature b4 showing them again....which i was hoping to except the following weeks show had an actual Siberian class but i promised not to show after that lol.

The Following Sunday i went to East Herts, this was my 1st visit to this hall, what was nice was the fact that some of our friends were going to be there as well :) Kim came with me which made a nice change as she has been busy during the last couple of shows.

 

 This was a really nice little hall, not as many entries or people as i had expected but it was good :)

 This is Jill of Trilogy Stud who helps keep the important part of the show going...the canteen

The judges on the day were Kirsty Thompson who was doing the one star show

 This is Lisa who was judging the Essex Rex club show

 and lastly we have Maureen Embry who was judging the whole of the 2 star show

 

Well the day worked out great as I got a CC on both shows for the same u/5 Siberian and got a CC on both sides for the Glavcot. What was really good is that we got best Fur and 3rd BiS on the 1 star side with a Glavcot :) i got best adult on the 2 star side but an u/5 satin got best fur .

Best in show was our good friend and mentor Daren Morris with a stunning sooty fawn mini lop

So thats it for this weekend...oh we also aquired another rabbit to help with the Lutino project (will sort pictures for next blog) we have had some litters and some sorting out within litters, but again i will leave that until the next blog :) I hope you enjoyed the pictures...if you want to see more of them you can go to my other facebook page and look up the albums https://www.facebook.com/LondonEssexRabbitBreedersexhibitors

 

 

 



week 11 'dont ya just love a chocolate snowball!'

Hello ts bloggers and welcome back to our on line diary :) this weeks topics vary slightly as i don't have as much to report as usual...but there is enough to keep you all satisfied we hope :)
Our first bit of news concerns our 2 mini lop does who have given birth recently, we were so excited thinking we finally had lilacs in the nest that we should of known better to assess stock to early. Our first litter is from a chocolate otter doe called Bess who was mated to another chocolate otter (Harry) because of the lightness on 2 of the youngsters we thought we had a couple of lilacs in the nest...one being an otter.....what we got were snowballs lol

 

they are also known as frosty points (please excuse the pictures as they were taken on my mobile) many novice breeders often sell these on thinking they are of no use in the shed....but don't do that people...they end up 90% of the time having the best coats once the frosting fades away. We are obviously pretty pleased with this litter of 3 chocolate otters and 1 chocolate self (no lilacs lol) and obviously cant wait to see how they progress with their coats....and i promise to take better pictures :)

 

The second litter of interest is from India our Chocolate Tort Doe who was mated to Parsley's son Bernard a chocolate otter....again we jumped the gun thinking we had a lilac otter definitely....but no...what we have are 2 chocolate otters and 2 chocolate tort...otters :) As soon as they are old enough we of course will post pictures up.

 

So apart from that nothing else is really happening in the rabbitry the 2 Lutino's are still OK especially Lillith the little doe which we thought we may loose but she is eating and drinking fine :)

 

The rest of the rabbits are growing (obviously...) one little youngster that is turning out to be a surprise is a little agouti buck from one of our cinnamon does...his a lovely little chap and looks as though he is going to be staying with us now.

 

say hello to Hugo :)

 

The other rabbits i am keeping an eye on are the glavcot matings and our last mating from our maiden doe Fanny (i know...) anyway she had 7 babies 3 of them Glavcots

 

 They are a lovely litter, all extremely friendly and love being stroked, the down side at the moment is that they are all small for there size, so until they fatten up a bit as they get older i will have to wait before i can assess these guys :) though whether they will last that long lol  i am not so sure as so many visitors to the shed keep being attracted to them.

 

Outside our other rabbits are all changing as well....and for the better i might say :) the first is our F1 doe Charlie mated to our Perlfee buck Mr G the youngsters are now 8 weeks, good bone and weight but have a noticeably softer coat compared the their sire...the ticking seems to be coming through nicely as well which is a pleasant surprise.

 

 

Lastly we come to our Argente Creme Princess and her F1 babies...now these have taken it seems an eternity to show a change of any sort, talking to Argente breeders we learnt the silvering starts mainly around 8 weeks or slightly earlier...and finally this week we noticed the change in their coats :)

 

 The orange youngsters are starting to show the silvering now

 and as you can see, each rabbit shows it in different degrees

 at the moment its hardly noticeable with the agouti's

 

Another breeder down in Devon is also working with this colour variation and hopefully between us we can start seeing some good results :).

 

Other news is our round of visitors throughout the week, one of our choc tort does went mid week to a slightly older lady than we are usually used to visiting the shed...she did have the pick of the litter but the first one we picked up had decided to have a mini explosion between its legs which meant it was sent to the back of its hutch in disgrase lol. The said rabbit was cleaned up and today when we checked ...has turned out to be a nice little buck lol so another rabbit we are running on.

Another lady turned up with her 2 grand children who wanted a doe who they could use for mating...the older of the girls want to breed mini lops to lion heads and produce lops with lion manes.....ok i think personally i did very well by not saying anything...and better still...i walked away lol...i.m not into fluffys but kim did point out the genetic problems if they want to go ahead with their idea...they left with leaflets and loads of info so we will wait to hear from them...maybe :)

 

Our last bit of news concerns something we use in the shed, when we first came into the fancy back in the 90's we came across an American product called cage tags which simply put was a clip on plastic tag that you clip onto the wire fronts of hutches. The tags were used as a form of identifation and had the brilliant benifit of being able to follow the rabbit around the rabbitry instead of printing up and laminating new labels all the time.

 

 they come in diferent colours and have different purposes

 we even aquiered mating boards which are brilliant as you can see at a glance whats going on in the shed, whose been mated and even when kits are ready to go.

Well we ordered loads for ourselves ages ago but had so many friends asking where we got them from that we decided to import some more over...over 700...which all went in the 1st 3 days. Needless to say we are ordering more lol. Anyway i think thats enough pictures and news for this week. I do have a few more bits of info but that is mainly show stuff from the last show and another show for next week which i will take photos of :) so until then people chat to you soon.