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.