December 4th, 2019

Fat Baby Bunnies

and the shingling is done now, too!

Fat & Frisky!

Their sire is Hillside Aster, our Ruby Eyed White buck and Hillside Daisy, a Ruby Eyed White doe. They were born November 26th, so they are a nine days old today. That's Daisy supervising their first venture out of the nest. I don't think she approved at all. Bunnies can't pick up their babies though, like cats can so all Daisy could do was grumble at me until I put them back where they should be.

This is a first time litter for both parents, not that the buck, Aster, has much to do with the day to day care of the babies. Daisy is being a touch skittish so we never did get an accurate count of the whole litter when they were newborns. Usually the mum bun is mellow about folks being near her nest, but Daisy would skitter into the nest when she was nervous. Which then can result in stepped on babies, among other things. Which is odd, a new mum will usually run away from the nest to draw predators away from the babies. Well, there were five to seven at the beginning. A week later, there's three. But at least there's still three.

This is the litter several days earlier. They're still pretty much a pile, they can't really move around much. In the picture they seem pretty plump, so they're being fed. There seems to be just three at this point, though. The remains of one were found, no exact cause could be determined as to why it didn't thrive. At this stage anything can happen to them. Which is why for the first week, I don't really try to name them or make future plans for them.

This is the first official count when they were two or three days old since it's the first time they were taken out of the nest and counted. So there's officially five, although I thought there had been more. It's difficult to count a squirming pile of small pink bodies. They were pretty thin, though, they should be round and fat. I'm not sure if Daisy had been feeding them up to this time or not. I did put the babies back into the nest and kinda kept her in there until the babies started drinking. She then started licking them, so maybe she got the mum bun thing figured out at that time.

At a week old now, hopefully the three will remain and thrive. At around ten days old, they should open their eyes. Which will be ruby, they are albino, after all. Not that you can see their eyes very well since they'll be angora bunnies.

We were hoping for two other litters around the same time as this one, neither one showed up. Phineas Phogge (lilac buck) met with Black Lotus (black doe) and should have had a litter on November 25 or 26th. No litter, although she was with him for two weeks so it's still possible she could have a litter. Looking less and less likely, although I know she was bred.

Hmm, that known breeding took place the first day she was with the buck. He's nine months old, she's eight months old. It had been pretty hot that week, though, with temperatures over eighty so he may have been heat sterile. Although Aster obviously wasn't. Aster was over in the other hutch with better access to the trade winds, perhaps he was able to stay several degrees cooler than DaffyDill? Aster also isn't as heavily wooled as Daffy. Athough one would think that would be insulation? Hmm, well, for whatever reason, that breeding didn't seem to work.

The other hopeful litter is between Sydney, a chestnut agouti buck, and Buttercup, a black tortoiseshell doe. That's not due until a day or two before Christmas, though, so we will have to wait and see how it goes.

We may have Olivia meet up with Sydney and Rose can meet up with either Sydney or DaffyDill, I think. I'll have to check the database and check the bunnies, too. We have a fairly small gene pool we're working with, but the levels of inbreeding have been kept pretty low. Eventually, there will hopefully be a few other folks keeping these bunnies in the islands who will share babies to spread the genetic pool around. It's pretty expensive to bring them over from the mainland.

It's been a several month project to get shingles on the outside of the Little House. Good thing it's a Little House and not a big one, although big spaces without anything to work around shingle pretty quickly. It's the little nooks and crannies which take the time when it comes to putting three tab asphalt shingles on the side of a house.

In Hawaii, the weather is pretty brutal, at least, if you're a house. Most houses need to be painted about every five to seven years, at least on the windward (weather) side of the house. These asphalt three tab roofing shingles should last on the side of the house for three or four decades, which will save tons of painting. It is much more time consuming and expensive to install the shingles in the first place, though. We bought a pallet full of shingles and still have half the pallet left for shingling the big carport/workshop up at the back of the property, but that's a project for later. We used about $675 to $700 worth of shingles on the Little House. Plus the time involved to do it, although it would have taken hours and hours to get the Little House ready for paint, had we gone that route.

Various repairs were made along the way while the shingles were installed so that increased the time to shingle. But once done, it's done and it should stay done, too. (One hopes, anyway). The niche for the refrigerator took an additional two weeks (if not a bit more) to create, although it does really open up the kitchen and makes the little kitchen feel a lot more spacious. Refrigerators are looming monsters in a small kitchen. Stuffing them flush with a wall does wonders for making more space, much more so than the nine square feet gained. Here's a picture of the inside kitchen with the refrigerator stuffed into the wall:

So a two plus week delay in finishing the exterior shingles in order to make the kitchen feel bigger. I think it's a pretty good trade off, although if we were paying folks to do the project, we may not have been able to afford it. But, when doing the work ourselves, little additions like this can happen. The eating counter between the kitchen and the living room will be a simliar sort of project, no doubt, but we haven't even thought about starting that one.

It was probably a good thing to have a lot of practice installing shingles before tackling the last little bit. Above the back door is a complicated space with just a little bit of area between the dining area window, the back door and the refrigerator niche. There's the round base of the light fixture plus the angled top to the niche to work around. Total fussiness!

Side of the niche at the top had an angle to work around, HOWEVER, I'd saved the cut off top of the wall so we had a pattern to work with. That was helpful. By this time - the very end of the project, of course - I'd learned that making up sections of several layers of shingles works pretty well and saves tons of climbing up and down ladders. Build the 'shingle patch' on the work bench where it's flat and the tools are handy. Then nail it up in one ladder climb instead of six or eight ladder climbs.

Finally getting down to the last patch of shingles! Woot! I'm glad I didn't decide to cut the decorative shingles between the racing stripes with a rounded bottom edge, cutting the round hole for the light fixture was fussy.

Well, technically, the shingles are done for now. There will be a little bit more at the front of the house once the new lanai is installed, but that will be one big flat square area so shouldn't be too bad. Plus, the old lanai has to come off and the new lanai built so that will be awhile. Not sure what the next project will be, either the bathroom or the lanai. But, effectively and for now, the shingles are done. Yay!

Guacamole, anyone? These things keep falling out of the sky, landing on the big workshop roof up in the back and making a racket as they roll off. Wham! Bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, thump! We get a five gallon bucket of avocados about every three days. That is a standard sized five gallon bucket and those are huge avocadoes. Not sure what variety they are, there's about two hundred different types of avocado in Hawaii. They are tasty, creamy and don't have many strings. There's also coffee I could be picking, but that takes too much time so we're not picking the coffee this year.