Hurricane Hector & Bunny Sorting
We're having a hurricane today, so it seems a good time to update the webpage, don'tcha think? Hurricane Hector, other than having a fun name, is pretty much a non-event. At least so far and here along the Hamakua coast of the Island of Hawaii. It's about dinner time and the hurricane was supposed to be directly off the island at lunch time, so we've probably weathered the worst of it. Mostly it was a very foggy day and the fog kinda condensed on the bunnies so they were a bit grumpy.
We also have less lava flow activity with Fissure 8, so things are settling down along the lava flow front, too. Boredom is good! We like it when things are nice and boring. One sunny day after another with rain at night and in the evenings works just fine for the bunnies. That's weather they can approve of.
Actually, the bunnies haven't really noticed any effects from the lava flow, it's over 70 miles away and down wind so we don't even get lava haze from it. One of our best bunny wranglers is near there, though, so he's had effects, but he's doing well so far. If the lava flow slows and stops, he will be a lot less stressed.
What has been affected is a lot of the tourist based businesses. Jack's Tours, which is a tour bus company and has been around for a really long time, had to close because of lack of customers. There's a few restaurants in Hilo that are keeping much shorter hours because there's much less customers. Anyone who works in the tourist industry - and that's the biggest type of employment around here - has less hours or no job left.
I think a lot of why the tourists weren't showing up was the media sensationalized it so it seemed scarey and violent. A lava flow is dangerous, don't get me wrong, but it's a fairly well behaved danger, at least the type of lava flows we have around here. Folks have plenty of time to get out of the way. There were two injuries, but that was from flying lava chunks from folks that were too close to the lava. There also wasn't a very good viewing site, if we would have had a way for the visitors to look at the lava flow, there would have been scads of folks here, scary lava or not.
Well, in any case, the hurricane and lava seem to both be becoming non-events. Hopefully they will stay that way.
Now that the babies are getting older, it's time to try to sort them out. There's a total of nine of them. Two of them, Spot & Blondie, are four months and one week old. (They really need new names, Spot and Blondie are supposed to be temporary names.) The next two, Reepicheep and Goldie, are four months old now. The five youngest ones, four blacks and a chocolate, are 5 weeks old.
What we really need in the herd are white ones to produce fiber for the Coconut Dream color of Hula Bunny yarn. However, there's absolutely NO new baby white ones. Sydney is the sire of the first four (two different dams) and Zorro is the sire of the last five. So neither Sydney nor Zorro have the recessive for albino.
We've can use one or maybe two more males, the rest should be female. But the only females are black and we have a LOT of black females. Over half the herd is black, we don't need any more black fiber at this time.
Well, we can only work with what's here. When keeping a buck, we need to only keep the absolute best ones since they have such an impact on the quality of the herd. Of the new bunnies, probably the best buck is the black one, Spot, but he has a Vienna mark right between his eyes, so he carries the Vienna gene. I really don't want the Vienna gene, but his fiber is exquisite, so we may have him sire one or two litters with the doe who has the absolute best fiber and see where we end up. A line of Ruby Eyed Whites from him wouldn't show any Vienna marks since they'd blend in with the albino white. Shoots, we could even end up with "BEWs" which are Blue Eyed Whites. Personally, I think they're kinda spooky looking since I'm much more used to the Ruby Eyed Whites, but a lot of folks like them.
Spot's brother, Blondie, is a nice bunny, too. Even if he did do a gender change on me. He has a delicate 'doe' type of face, other than that he seems a nice buck. His wool is not quite as silky as his brothers, but it's still real nice and soft and silky. There's not a whole lot of difference between the two on fiber quality. I think Spot has a bit more crimp in his fiber, but not by much. Blondie doesn't have a Vienna mark, I've not checked for any white toenails yet, though. If he doesn't have any white marks or white toenails, he may not have the Vienna gene.
When he was younger, Reepicheep had been our leading prospect for 'best buck'. However, unless his adult coat comes in more maintenance free, he's no longer a major contender for 'Best Buck'. AND what's with that ear?!! So, even though he's got a great temprament, he's no longer the top dog, er, bunny. As a lilac, though, he has loads of color recessives, so he may sire a litter. We will see what his adult coat looks like, although, adulthood isn't gonna fix that ear!
Reepicheep's brother, Goldie Fawn, has the same sort of coat. It's really soft and lovely fiber, but it also matts more than the others. Goldie & Reeps are both very, very friendly bunnies, that's a huge plus. Almost absurdly friendly but that kinda goes along with how absurd they look just in general. In full coat, they're just a big ball of fluff, how can that not be absurd?
Zorro and Suzie's babies are five weeks old now. They're almost weaned and they nibble on a lot of solid foods. Suzie is still feeding them so they are well fed.
They are still pretty young so it's pretty hard to tell, but I think two of the black ones are females and every bunny else is male. They could still do a gender change later, though, that's a very bunny thing to do.
They are still young, so I don't know what their adult coat is going to look like. They're the first of the hybrid bunnies. Their sire, Zorro, is half Satin and half German. Their dam, Suzie, is 100% English angora. This makes their babies one half English, one quarter Satin and one quarter German. They won't show the super shiny of Satin since that takes two recessives and Suzie doesn't have them. They may be a little larger than Suzie, perhaps, with the German genes. They may have more guard hairs in their coats, at this point they're too young for us to notice much difference.
Quite a few of the youngest babies are showing Vienna marks. The chocolate one has a big white dot on his head. Several of the others have white marks or a few white hairs. I've not checked for white toenails yet, but I'm sure there's some there. Depending on how their fiber quality turns out, we may or may not keep them.
Bunny sorting with really young bunnies doesn't work all that well, but of the older bunnies, we should be able to figure out who is going to go and who is going to stay. A lot of it is determined by fiber quality, but there's a whole lot of other factors to take into consideration as well. Fiber quality, conformation, health, fiber color, size of litters, temperament, who they're related to, how thy integrate into the herd, etc., etc. I should make a spreadsheet to try and figure it all out.