Hope everyone is getting less rain that we are lately. The bunnies have been a bit grumpy since they're not all that fond of dampness, but at least it's not snow like some places on the mainland are getting. I'll take a grumpy bunny over a Noreaster any day.
The bunny grooming and hair cuts are just about all caught up. Which is a good thing because it's almost time to start harvesting wool. An 'official' wool harvest is usually when the bunnies get a total haircut and end up looked funny afterwards. I haven't a clue how the official pet groomers manage to get their clients so pretty afterwards. Maybe they're not concerned with getting the fiber off in the longest length possible? Oh well, fortunately the bunnies don't mind a horrible looking haircut.
Other than the what seems to be un-ending rain, there's been some other odd things so far this year. Way back in January, we had an 'alert' that wasn't actually an alert.
January 18th, a Saturday around 8 am. My phone beeped with an incoming text. "Extreme Alert" "Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill". Of course they send this before we're done drinking coffee. Fortunately, we were still at home which is really close to the civil defense warning sirens. I'm reading their warning text, but don't hear the sirens. So, given an option to panic or drink coffee, well, that's a no brainer. So, what's to do with a text like that? Drink more coffee and think about it, obviously. No sirens, nothing on the TV, internet is silent about it as well. Another cup of coffee is obviously necessary. Since the only thing that showed up is just the text with no other civil defense alerts going on, we decided it was a phone glitch and continued with breakfast. About a half hour later, there was a second text that said the first one was a mistake so no worries, but not everyone had been where they'd been able to get additional data as to if it was a valid alert or not, so there had already been chaos in some places.
Should it have been real, we are supposed to go shelter somewhere for a week to ten days so radioactive fallout won't land on us. This is Hawaii, folks don't even really have basements, let alone fallout shelters. And what about the bunnies? They wouldn't want to glow in the dark, either. So we will have to consider organizing an under the house space to move everyone and every bunny into in case the next one isn't a false alarm. Maybe staying inside with the windows shut would be enough? Well, drink more coffee and think about it, I guess.
Other oddities so far this year has been Jack the Cat doing something odd with his eye. This was about three weeks ago. He's looking particularly demented in this picture, although he's not really the smartest of cats on a good day. He's great at catching mice, but he's no brainiac. Generally he has a dirty nose, so the dirt on his nose in the picture is more or less normal. The one eye with a huge pupil and the other one with a small pupil is not his normal thing, though. He also seems to have a swollen cheeck on that side of his face, too. He was fine when we left the house and we weren't gone for all that long, but when we got back he was looking like this. Of course it's late on a Sunday and all the vets are closed. He didn't seem to be in pain, didn't seem to be concerned with anything other than the state of his food dish, which is more or less his normal behaviour. So, we fed him and had him stay in a dimly lit space so his dilated eye wouldn't be damaged by bright lights and by the next day his pupils were closer to normal and by the day after that he was back to his usual self. He's a strange cat, but that's normal for him. He's about twelve years old now and this is the first time he's done anything like this. Maybe he fell on his head somehow? Ran into a wall? Got into an argument with some other cat that whacked him up alongside the head? He didn't seem to have any damage anywhere other than the enlarged pupil and he didn't seem to wince if we touched his cheek, so either it didn't hurt or his sense of hurt wasn't working? His concern for his food dish was still active, so we figured he wasn't in that dire of straits and waited to see how he'd be the next morning. Also, several online searches indicated he'd get better on his own and there wasn't much for a veterinary to do other than check for bleeding and broken bones.
We also have had a lot of rain earlier than just this week. There was over five inches of rain one night so the shop where we sell Hula Bunny yarn got flooded by a lot of really muddy rainwater. The floor in that picture is an offwhite ceramic tile floor. But, since it's ceramic tile, it was okay after a good mopping and I suppose we did need to do a bit of spring cleaning.
Our shop, Honokaa Treasures, had the mud flood as well as the shop next door, The Green Chair. That's Molly's shop and she sells interesting vintage things. She scooped up lots of mud and mopped and got her shop all clean, too. The quilt shop on the other side of Honokaa Treasures, Topstitch, was flooded deeper, but with clear water. So the whole row of shops got an enforced spring cleaning.
As for current Hillside Farm events, at the moment we're treating the entire herd for Vent Disease. It's essentially a closed herd so I haven't a clue how they may have gotten it since usually it's a sexually transmitted type of disease, but it's also a bacterial disease, so it may spread easier than one would think.
This all came about because several of the young bunnies who had been bred late last December and in January didn't have their litters. These were bunnies who had always eaten organic feed and yet they didn't have a litter. So, apparently, my theory of feed contaminated by being harvested after being sprayed by a herbicide to ripen it evenly probably isn't the reason why no litters are showing up. That brings up the question of "if it isn't the feed, then what is it?" After all sorts of searching around online (what did we used to do before the internet? I don't think my local library would have had much detailed information on possible causes of rabbit infertility). Anyway, after extensive searching, multiple sites cited "vent disease" as lowering rabbit fertility, causing litters to be reabsorbed, not showing up at all, much smaller litters if they do show up and still borns. They also showed some weepy sores around eyes, noses and genitals as signs of it. I've not noticed it around noses or genitals, but some of the bunnies have had sores around their eyes which I'd thought had something to do with wool mites. It may have been Vent disease which may be why it was slow to heal up with the Ivermectin used for mites.
We are now treating the whole herd for vent disease which is cured by shots of penicillin. Every bunny has been getting a shot once a week and they will be getting their fourth shot tomorrow. Then one more week, and that should finish up the penicillin since five weeks was the recommended length of time. There's actually quite a bit of latitude with the penicillin. Anywhere from - if I remember right - 42,000 IUs to 84,000 IUs per kilo of bodyweight and anywhere from once a day for seven days to once a week for five weeks. That also depended on which type of penicillin was used. There's one which lasts longer than the other. The short duration is best for the once a day for a week shots and the longer lasting penicillin for the weekly shots. There's also options for intra-muscular as well as sub-cuntaneous. Oh, and NEVER give penicillin orally to a rabbit. All the websites agreed on that one at least. Since the rabbits are around five pounds they're getting .35 mL of Durapen penicillin once a week for five weeks. So far I haven't seen any specific changes although they seem to be eating a bit less, but not by much.
Rabbits being a laboratory animal, there's been studies of how or if penicillin affects pregnant rabbits. They found no tetrogenic effects or loss of pregnancies in rabbits during their testing. With that in mind, several of the bunnies have been bred since they could be having a litter about the time the treatment is finished. If they don't have a litter, then nothing is lost in trying but if they do, then we will know sooner that the shots worked.
I should go update the 'In the Nestbox' page with more details, but I'll just list the hopefully upcoming litters here as well.
Possible Litter #1: a young black doe, Ziggy Stardust, who has met up with the hybrid Satin/German black buck, Zorro. If she has a litter, she is due on March 30th.
Possible Litter #2: a black doe, Jessie, who met up with an agouti buck, Sydney. If she has a litter, she is due on April 3rd.
Possible Litter #3: a tortoiseshell doe, Tootsie, has met up with an agouti buck, Sydney. If she has a litter, she is due on April 1oth.
I should go update the other sections of the website so more details about the possibly upcoming litters and add in some pictures, too.