Blog number...

Welcome back to the Tarax Stud blog page and as usual there is a gap between this and the last blog...Kim puts me to shame as she does her blog every single night b4 she falls asleep at the keyboard mid sentence lol...but at least she does do it i hear you all say...I get distracted lol...as i've said before...its a bloke thing :)
Anyway lets see what i can remember...August was surprisingly where the rabbits and guinea pigs were concerned...a quiet month, no visitors asking for stock no sales in stock what so ever?? I know the weather played a big part I think also the fact that many people went away through out August. We did do a couple of shows though :) my favorite and my first time there was Tendrin Hundred Agricultural show

Plenty to do and just as important...plenty to see :)

All the usual farm animals...and unusual ones. There was also vintage cars and plenty of tents to buy things...so all aspects of a family day out :)

 The most important thing for me was obviously the rabbit show itself and was great that Colchester held their show here...as they do each year

 Ray Everitt was the judge today and did a great job with some really nice stock on the day

 Lots of familiar faces made it a pleasant day

 Something which went down really well on the day was an introduction to the BRC with a very well run stand showing various breeds as well as a chance for visitors to handle them.

 The tent was packed from start to finish

Overall one of the better days in August :) what makes it a must for us next year is that there was a guinea pig show and a marque for the Guild of Essex Craftsmen of which Kim is a member ;) anyway the month of September picked up slightly once children were back at school One of the highlights for us was the visit of a well Known Siberian breeder from the 70's/80's a Mrs Rita Allen

This Lady had an amazing reputation with winning at the big shows with all four colours sometimes...as Laurel put it she is the Queen of the Siberians :) Rita had given up showing and breeding when her husband unfortunately past away quite a few years ago, but she came to a local show and Eddie Hutchings introduced her to me....we chatted and talked Siberians in which Rita admitted she would love to have a Siberian again...well who was i to say no to :)

About a month later Rita came along to the shed and assessed every single one of our animals (including looking at a few other breeds lol) as a thank you for her help in assessing stock etc. we mated the brown buck she liked best to the best lilac doe which we let her have and Rita went home a very happy bunny (I even persuaded her to take a young unrelated brown buck as well) Well it was lovely to get a phone call a month later informing myself and Kim that the doe had 6 kits...4 lilacs and 2 browns with which she wants to work with :).

The next thing to think about in the shed was The London' :) my favourite show of the year :) 2 days of chatting, walking around,eating, drinking, more walking around and of course looking and showing rabbits. Initially i was thinking of all our breeds in the shed and considering bookings had to be a month in advance the lops i wanted to enter...did not look good, out of the 4 i wanted to enter only one...our choc tort was just finishing his moult so i entered him. The Glavcots unfortunately were only 6 months old so would be 7 months for the show...they were to young to compete against the adults but as I dd not know what else would be shown i entered 2 in the adult class anyway.

The Siberians seemed an easy choice as only one adult lilac was in moult so i felt sure he and the others would be ok....all in all we entered 6 siberians (2 u/5) 2 Golden Glavcots and 1 mini lop. As the days ticked by everything seemed to be holding, my best 2 Siberians were looking very good..the Glav's were...ok? and the mini as he finished his moult...decided to go straight into another...aaarrghh! Rita Allen kindly offered to come down the week before the London to go through the rabbits and show me how to groom the rabbits properly. However as soon as i got what i thought were my best ones out...it was obvious what with the mild weather we were having my best Siberians were starting to moult. Rita did her best with what i had and because i knew not a lot were entered for the main show and the stock show i would still take them anyway.

Well the day of the show arrived and as Kim could not go i took all the rabbits and set them all up in their cages

 In the stock show and the main show i got best Lilac and best Brown which i  was really pleased with :)

But beating me in both shows was the Blue of Klassic Stud

 In the Rare Varieties there were some stunning rabbits on the day

Though i must admit still having a soft spot for the Thrianta's lol

Kim came along for the second day and unfortunately (depending which way you look at it lol) we did not get any time to walk around the agricultural show due to Kim being stopped to be spoken to lol....not that i'm complaining but it was funny stopping every 10 feet because someone wanted to chat genetics or rabbits lol. The funny bit of the weekend was the fact that we had decided to look through our shed and have a big sort out with the rabbits and being strict with our colours particularly in the lops. Which meant we took along 5 rabbits to the show to pass on to other breeders....which in theory...should of given us a lot more room in the rabbitry....in theory :)...the worst thing anyone can do is go to the London...talk shop and not come away with something...and in my case 6 rabbits and a brand new breed lol

 Now we had already been expecting a couple of new Lutino lops from our lovely friend Marianne and her daughter Cherie...the lops had stayed with our friend Tore in Denmark for a while before arriving with our friend Ivan in Holland....(bare with me it does end...) Our good friends Daren and Claudio were going to Belgium so were able to pick up our new Lutino doe..and our new Lutino buck

Akkasa

Azazel

After loosing our black self doe that Marianne had sent over we were desperate for another Lutino, Shadow or pink eyed carrier so Akkasa has fitted the bill nicely :) but as usual i digress the new rabbits from London lol. 

Well on the Saturday i had been talking to a couple of the rare breed committee and one in particular Judy LeMarchant who is well known for producing a new breed of rabbit 'The Sussex' and who is also well known for breeding and showing Giant Papillon rabbits, had already been working on showing and breeding Dwarf Papillon rabbits :) she mentioned that she had a stud of 11 Tri colour Dwarf Papillons in the car that she was taking home but was hoping some people would be interested in taking some on as well....not a good thing to mention to me...and soon I was standing by her car with that silly look on my face that rabbit breeders often get saying 'i'll have two...'. When i got home then realising i had not confirmed with the boss what i had done...I had the unenviable job of explaining why we were the proud owners of 2 new rabbits lol Well come Sunday Kim went to look at the new breed...and....we came back with 6 lol instead of 2 (grin)....anyway here they are

This is Rachael

 These are Amy's youngsters Les, Charlie & Skye 

 Mum Amy with her Kits

 The older buck Karl :) 

If you want to read up a little bit about them make sure you follow the link to our web site http://taraxstudrabbits.wix.com/tarax-stud#!project-two/c1w9z and catch up with what we are doing.

So there you have it lots has gone on in the last few months lol and ending up giving ourselves even more to do each day...i will mention in our next blog about the Lutino's again and i will catch up with all our other animal family :) so until then l8r's people :) xx

Blog Number 22 changes and additions :)

Welcome TS Bloggers to the next blog 'Changes and Additions' :)
Well Tarax Stud  has been very steady in the in the last 2 months with visitors, bunnies and the goats :) and to be honest we love it lol....whether the rest of the family love the fact they can never come and just visit without interruptions is another matter lol anyway we digress :) well June was an interesting month as we had a surprise where rabbit showing is concerned. To understand what i'm talking about we need to go back a few years when Kim saw her first chocolate tortoiseshell mini lop at a friends house. Nigel and Sue Shipham creators of Ibreed and Ishow had one in their shed and Kim fell in love with the colour :)

( one of Stephanie Chambers Choc tort bucks)

Well in a joint partnership with Lea Fletcher the colour became standardised in 2006. Now this is where the problem starts lol...because of the chocolate gene lilac tortoiseshell would pop up as well but because it was not a recognised colour that had gone through the breed standards process, the colour was not shown then recently i was going through the colour breed standards book and came across something by chance (looking up choc agouti's and blue agouti's....sorry another story)...now in the mini lop standards any colour can be shown as long as its a recognised colour in the BRC standards even if another breed....so where is he going with this i hear you cry...well hang on i'm getting there...on page 28 of the colour breeds standard i spotted 'tortoiseshell aa B.C.ee also in brown (bb), blue (dd) and.....wait for it...lilac (bb dd) :) so the colour has been recognised all this time! which caused quite a few smiles and cheers from the mini lop fraternity

(One of Steph's Lilac Torts)

As you can see its a beautiful colour so now breeders can show them as the colour they are meant to be :) the other plus is that hopefully it will stop people calling them Sussex Golds and Sussex Creme's which are breeds not colours! Anyway that was a plus as its a colour Kim has missed having in the shed so now when they pop up we can think about keeping them.

Well our next bit of news in the shed is another...new colour :) though to be honest its not exactly a new colour for us but it is in the mini lop for us...and that is the BEW or blue eyed white. Now our good friend and mentor Daren Morris has had this particular colour for a while now and Kim finally relented asking Daren to help us out with some stock so say hello to Hugo....

Now obviously we needed a doe to help start us off...and if you know Daren...and Kim lol...we ended up with 2 :) Tanti is a BEW daughter of Hugo's whilst Geisha is a dutch split.

Both are lovely doe's...just waiting for them to get themselves mated up now which is frustrating the hell out of Hugo lol 

as both girls just lay flat or play possum lol.

Our other addition was a lovely little super steel doe who we named Lady S :) she is such a  friendly doe

and we thought brilliant as she can help with our Lutino programme :) and then kim turned her over to check if she was ready to start mating....and we have now renamed her to....'Lord S' (grin) as she turned out to be a he lol not that it has caused us any problems as he is still going to be use full within the Lutino prog.

Our other changes is that we have been trying to source a decent pet hutch builder so that we can forward our customers on to someone who can build quality hutches. We eventually found someone through one of our other visitors who is called 'The Hutch Man' and has been able to supply us with very good heavy duty hutches starting from 3 foot up to 8 foot :)

The outsides have a tiger effect done to the wood and can be done with various colour preservative finishes

We also ordered some collapsible runs from him for our borders (and our own lol) they come as 6x2x2 foot  and 8x3x2 foot which are brilliant for children getting into to have time with their pets :)

There I've done my salesman bit lol i can deliver locally anything upto 5ft in length but Scott who builds them can deliver anything larger :)

Stock wise in the shed we have a few litters now at 4 weeks (just counted...25!) 7/8 we will be running on 6 are already reserved so there will be a few more looking for homes by mid August :) my favourites at the moment have to be my lilac Siberians which i have been waiting a while for :)

The other litters which we have been waiting for is in our Lutino programme; Agret our Lutino doe was mated to Sinclair our choc tort buck this produced 2 blacks and 4 sooty's and to be honest its still early to assess them. Our other doe mated up was our Black self doe from Denmark which carries the pp gene....she was mated up to Baal one of our Lutino bucks...this pairing produced 3 blacks, 1 sooty and our first Lutino 

not sure what the sex on this one is...but who cares lol its a lovely little thing, we are hoping for some more stock coming over from Denmark in the near future as Marianne has offered us 2 lutino's which have already journeyed the first leg to getting over here :) fingers crossed it will be soon lol.

The only other thing of note is we have even more additions to Tarax Stud but they are not rabbits lol...there something Kim and myself have commented b4 about and then after the London show we decided to go ahead and get them...we had to sort the garden out first....then build a new shed just for them

And here are our new additions to the family :) 2 African Pygmy Goats Petal (left) and Pansy (right)

Wonderful characters and have brilliant personalities lol....once the goat playground was built there a never ending source of entertainment...

especially for the dogs who get frustrated that they cant play with them....lol

So thats it for the moment :) we still have lots to add especially with our boarding side but i will leave that to chat about next time, so until then enjoy the summer and speak to all later :)