Another Drippy Hurricane! But, it's just drips
Just one hurricane after another. We've gone from Lane to Olivia. Not that long ago, we had Hurricane Lane out there spitting rain on us and making everything a drippy mess. Soggy ground, soggy bunnies, just a generally wet mess. Grumpy bunnies! Although, that was the worst of our hurricane damage at that time, so I suppose we shouldn't complain. This is Hawaii, though! It's supposed to be lovely all the time! At least, that's what the bunnies tell me, but they're pretty spoiled.
So Hurricane Lane was towards the tail end of August. We only had about two and a half to three feet of rain in the several days Lane was hanging around. The soil still hadn't dried out from Lane, but now we have Hurricane Olivia. This time, she's over annoying Maui much more so than Hawaii Island, but I'm sure they have more rain than they need at this moment.
Even though they have the hurricane off of Maui, there's still plenty of rain to share. We've had a couple days of drizzly drips going to occasional heavy splats. The ground was already wet, so now it's more slithery than one expects ground to be. The bunnies totally disapprove. Another drippy hurricane, but so far just drips.
The young bunnies are growing well. There's five of them left here after the others have gone off to their new homes. They finally have official names, now, too! Woot! They almost got named after hurricanes, but soggy bunnies are grumpy bunnies so we decided against hairycane names.
The bunnies here at Hillside Farm Hawaii pretty much subsidize our travels and this year we're heading off to Rome, so this year the bunnies can have Roman names. Plus those Romans were always scrapping with each other with constant murder and mayhem. Seems proper names for these bunnies since Julius and Ceasar have gotten into a big argument and I think Julius won.
Julius is still a young bun, he's just made five months old on the 5th of this month. He'd been happily living with his brother up until about a week ago. I went to feed them one morning and they were both all scratched up, although Caesar was more beat up than Julius. So much for 'brotherly bonding'. Julius had some light scratching on his face, it's mostly cleared up by now. He'd had some of the wool by the side of his face gnawed off, bunnies do that sort of thing sometimes when kept in groups, although usually not very often.
Jules got checked over pretty closely and got his toenails clipped for good measure but he didn't have much damage other than the few scratches on his face. Caesar is about the same size, but I guess he's not as aggressive or something since he had a lot more damage.
Julius has nice conformation. Good wool, nice temperament (at least with humans, don't ask his brother), good color, nice ear carriage. If it weren't for that sneaky Vienna gene, he'd be a prime canidate for a herd buck. He will still be a herd buck, but not to the extent he would have been without that white dot on his head.
He's actually looking much better than he did a couple days ago, he'd been pretty beat up. He had a bite on his nose, scratches on his face and more scratches above his eye. He'd gotten his ear bit, too. He had chunks of wool pulled out of this coat and he was a pitiful thing. Julius and Caesar got into quite the scrap and Ceasar was much the worse off of the two. I did check him over for broken bones, and big cuts, the one on his nose is the worst. He's still eating and drinking fine, though, so he will heal up okay. Maybe he should have been named "Scarface", though? He probably will get a scar on his nose, I've not had them fight much before so I'm not sure how much scarring or if any there will be. Guess we will find out.
This is actually kinda unusual for the bunnies around here to get into fights of this intensity, we've kept them together until up to about five or six months without trouble before. But, not this time! Not sure why they got grumpy with each other, although there were four young bucks in two hutch spaces side by side. They may have egged each other on. Who knows what young boy bunnies are thinking? Julius was with Caesar and Augustus was with BunBun. BunBun has since gone off to live with one of our best bunny wranglers so he will be a happy bun. Now all the boy buns have their own space so that should keep this from happening again.
Julias and Caesar are both pure English angoras, but they don't seem to be getting the feathering on their ears like I'd have expected them to. You can see how much feathering is on Augustus' ears in the picture lower down. They are of similar ages, so Ceasar & Julius have very little feathering on their ears. Which may be why they have better ear carriage? They're still young yet, so perhaps next month their ears will be fuzzier. Julius is a better buck as far as conformation and wool go than Caesar, although Julius does have a Vienna mark. That's why his name is "Hillside Julius VM" and Ceasar is "Hillside Ceasar PVC". The PVC part is not in reference to a type of pipe, but means "Possible Vienna Carrier". He doesn't show any marks, but he has a 50% chance of having the gene.
Actually, all the bucks here are pure English angora. A buck has too much influence on a herd, so only 100% English for the bucks. There's only two hybrid bunnies here at the moment, two young females. We will see what they look like before letting them meet up with any bucks.
This is Hillside Augustus who had formerly been known as "Goldie Fawn". He has a totally deplorable ear. Plus his coat is very soft and a touch on the cottony side so he gets mats more often than the others. Not sure if he's going to be a herd buck or not. He will probably get a haircut in the next day or two and then we can see what his coat looks like after completely regrowing. He does have a nice color and he's the friendliest little guy, but that ear! He is pure English, all the hybrid bucks have gone to new homes so the only hybrids we have here are the two black hybrid young does.
This is Hillside Olivia Hybrid. The hybrid bunnies will have 'hybrid' as part of their name for at least the next three or four generations. Once they've been bred back to English for that many generations, they're pretty much English again. Depends on if they look like English by then, of course, too. They also seem to have clean ears. It may be nice to have some bunnies who don't get matted ears. Both of the hybrid girls have pretty nice wool. It's soft, somewhat silky and doesn't mat. At least so far other than a little bit behind the ears.
We're currently being dripped on by Hurricane Olivia, so we may as well have an Olivia as a bunny. "Livia" would be a much more Roman name, but we will have to make do with "Olivia". Olivia likes to wander next door to visit her Auntie Sirocco. Sirocco doesn't seem to mind too much, but girl bunnies get along with each other much better than boy bunnies. Especially boy bunnies of a certain age. Testosterone, I guess.
I put Olivia back in with her sister Cassandra and mum bun Suzie and 'Livy had to stand up and check things out before getting friendly with her sister Cassandra. Olivia is a bit bigger than Cassie, but not by much. Olivia seems to have a tiny bit more feathering on her ears and Cassie seems a tiny bit darker than her sister. They're gonna get tattoos though, for certain identification since after awhile, one black bunny can look a lot like other black bunnies.
As you can tell from Cassie's totally tense posture (NOT!) she's not overly concerned with her sister reappearing from visiting Auntie next door. Also, Cassie hasn't come anywhere near into growing into her feet yet. Nor her ears. They've just made ten weeks old, so they're still very young buns. When does adolescent start in bunnies? These are probably still kid buns since they're not adults until they're about six months old. Guess they's be adolescents at about twelve to thirteen weeks old?
Sorry about the slightly blurry picture, but this is just to compare the two. Oliva is slightly larger than Cassandra at this time. A bit of difference in their ears and otherwise, it will be hard to tell them apart.
