Our hearts and best hopes go to everyone who is and has been impacted by the Covid-19 virus.
Just because we're doing non-Covid things, doesn't mean we have forgotten the folks suffering from the virus.
We also really, really appreciate all those folks out there keeping things going and keeping everyone as healthy as possible.
It's still out there and getting fiercer! Be vigilant and continue to be safe!
Wear your mask!
Wash your hands!
yeah, I know, it sucks, but do it anyway.
There is now a vaccine, several of them, actually. Soon we will hopefully be done with this wretched virus. So hang in there and be safe for just a few more months.
Muddy!
Must be wintertime
Wear your mask!
Wash your hands!
yeah, I know, it sucks, but do it anyway.
There is now a vaccine, several of them, actually. Soon we will hopefully be done with this wretched virus. So hang in there and be safe for just a few more months.
Must be wintertime
Agouti Again
Vincent, being rude?
Vincnet, the new agouti Buck
sassy guy, isn't he?
Since we lost Sydney to old age, we had been without any of the agouti color pattern in the herd. Which, considering the agouti color pattern is supposed to be dominant over what is called 'self', that's kinda amazing. In colors of bunnies, when they have the white around the eyes, in the ears and the whole undercarriage is white, that's called 'agouti'. It comes in different shades of color, from 'wild gray', 'chestnut', 'lynx', 'fawn' and such, but they will always have the white.
This is Hillside Vincent, Hillside Sydney's grandson. Like Sydney, he's a friendly guy and will be extremely helpful in bringing back the agouti colors to the herd. He's the offspring of Hillside Agustus & Hillside Violet who moved to a new home several years. He is related to the herd, but not inbred to the current females who are being bred this year. He will not only bring in some new colors, but lower the ratio of inbreeding as well. We're really happy to have him here.
Vincent has already been busy on buck duty. He was a bit tentative at first and didn't quite know how to manage things so we let him meet Lotus. She has already had a litter so she knows how things are supposed to go. Vincent seemed downright amazed afterwards, very much a 'what just happened?!' look was on his face. Lotus, of course, just rolled her eyes. Hopefully, on March 3rd, we will see some little ones with Vincent's face. Newborn agouti babies have a much lighter color inside their ears so we will know right away if there's agouti babies.
Before Girl Bunny meets Boy Bunny, they each need to get a haircut. Otherwise it isn't effective since there's too much wool in the way for them to actually meet.
Depending on where they are in the 'growing a new coat' process, they will either get trimmed with scissors or plucked. Since it's wintertime and kinda cold - well, for Hawaii anyway, I was hoping that by plucking she would have some new growth left on her to keep her warm. It's pretty sparse, but hopefully she will have enough to stay warm.
Lotus usually has a lovely thick coat, but she plucked down to near naked this time. She will be staying with Vincent for a week or two so she will have some time to grow some new wool before she goes to a newsting hutch. She can snuggle with him if she gets cold, I'm sure he won't mind.
Aster is kinda miffy since his girlfriend, Veronica, has moved out. She had been with him for several weeks and he was kinda happy to have somebunny to hang out with. Bunnies are social critters although they are territorial as well. Kinda odd, they want their own space but want friends, too. So Aster is kinda moping around a bit. He is sitting in the last big feed bin. Those had been made several years ago as an attempt to make it easier to feed the buns, but since we have so much humidity around here, the feed just mildewed so we don't use the big feed bins anymore. It does make a handy wall between Aster & Vincent's spaces, though, so it's been left in place and Aster sometimes naps in the bin or sits on the top of it on the narrow one or two inch wide ledge at the top.
Veronica is now in her own space, although it's not rat proof so as soon as we get a bit more organized, she will move to a rat proof nesting site. We only have three proper nest sites at the moment. Rose and her six babies are in one. Vanna White is in another one and she is expecting around February 19th. Since Veronica is expecting around February 15th, she should have gotten the space but Vanna has escaped so when we picked her up, it seemed a good idea to put her in a more secure area. She had been with Phineas Phogge, yet twice the door hadn't properly shut and she had been out and about. I think they push each other out when the door isn't properly latched since a bunny by itself in a space with an open door never falls out. I've fixed the latch and moved Vanna to her own space so either of those should have fixed the problem, by doing both it should be doubly fixed, I hope.
Rose & DaffyDill's babies are two weeks old now. They have their eyes open and they're wandering around outside the nest. They are starting to nibble on grasses but Rose is still feeding them, too. Rose is eating a lot, but she's feeding six, so that's understandable. The next two weeks is the hardest time for a mum bun raising a litter since the little ones are getting bigger and eating more but most of their food is still from mum. So, Mum Bun - whoever she may be - always gets as much as we can stuff into her so she can take care of them.
Rose and her babies will probably move to the rat-proof side hutch this upcoming week. That will give them more room to run around and then Veronica can move into their nest site. I should probably make another nesting hutch, but other things have been keeping me busy.
Shearing tools have changed over the years. Orginally, we started out using embroidery snips. The little ones that look like hand sheep shears. Which is a good choice since they're bunny sized shears, but they're pretty slow since they only take s amall snip each time. But, since they only take a small snip each time, it's a great way to start out shearing since any learning accidents will be small. Once a shearer has some experience, then upgrading to barber's scissors can happen without any "Ooops! Sorry, bunny!. It is faster with scissors.
I'm also trying clippers again, although just with some standard hair clippers. So far they haven't worked really well, the bunny wool is too fine and too dense. The clippers can't get in there because of the density and can't clip it well when they do because of the fineness of the fiber.
Also this year, we're starting to tattoo the bunnies again. At least, the ones who stay here will get tattooed. I really don't like these clamp type tattoo pliers, but at the moment, it's all we have. I may try getting one of those makeup tattoo guns that folks use for tatting on eyebrows and such. It may be less invasive than the clamp type. I don't know if the bunnies have many nerve endings in their ears, though, they don't hardly jump when they get their tattoo, but it makes me wince.
The green ink shows up better than the black, especially on a black bunny. It's still kinda hard to make out the tattoos, although I've discovered that shining a flashlight behind the ear while trying to read the tat helps a lot.
I do plan another fairly aggressive breeding program this year, there's a waiting list for bunnies plus we could use a few more here. As they get bred, it will be noted on the "In the Nestbox" page, at least, we hope so. At the moment, there's three possible upcoming litters, so I should go update that page.
I also hope to update the webpage and farm blog more often, although so far this year it's not been weekly like I'd hoped.
Almost a driveway?
at least we can get there now, sorta
The sheep have eaten enough in their pasture that we can drive the truck up to the carport now! It's very exciting. The sheep have been in their pasture since last August and they're finally making a pretty big dent in the amount of tall grasses there. This is the first time we've been able to drive up to the Work Shop without using the neighbor's driveway next door.
The Work Shop is actually more of a carport, but we will use it more as a workshop than a carport once it gets finished. When it was owned by the neighbors on the other side of it, it used to be accessed via a driveway from the their lot. When it was sold, the driveway was not on the same property so it wasn't includeed with the work shop and the shop lost it's access to the road in front. Since it's directly next to our sheep pasture, we can access it through the pasture, however, we had to wait for the sheep to eat enough of the grass that we could drive through it to get to the shop.
Starting early next month, we hope to have a driveway built from the road to the Work Shop. The new driveway will be on the same property as the Work Shop so things will be proper again. No disturbing either the sheep or the neighbors to drive up to the Work Shop.
We've got a new routine with weeding the garden now. The sheeples come down by the fence and I pull the weeds and poke them through the fence. The sheeples pull them the rest of the way through and eat them. They snack on a lot of different weeds than the bunnies do, so they are very helpful with weeding the garden.
The biggest hurdle this year with the garden has been keeping the chickens out of it. Last year there was a short fence of old refrigerator racks around the garden and that was enough to keep the chickens out. This year, they decided that wasn't a deterent anymore and have been flying right over it. So, now there's chicken wire around the garden. At the moment, it's just kinda tied or pegged on there, depending on what was easier, but I'd like to make some sort of gate sort of thing that lets me access the garden easier than having to remove the chicken wire. Not quite sure how to do it yet since if I put a bar at the top of the wire, the chooks would just fly up there and land on it.
At least two of the hens are laying eggs now, although I think we may only have two hens. There's the red rooster, the white hen, the black hen and there was another black chicken but I don't know if it was a hen or a rooster and it seems to be gone now anyway. There's still Ricky the Rooster, who is an araucana rooster hatched out from our friend's eggs. He met up with White Hen who is still here and is half feral hen and half White Leghorn. The green eggs were laid by the new Black Hen, who is the offspring of White Hen and Ricky since they eggs are a pale blue green. Had White Hen been Araucana, they'd be a deeper color. Since she lays white eggs, the eggs laid by the offspring between her and Ricky are a blue green color. Had White Hen been a brown egg layer, the eggs laid by the offspring between her and the Araucana rooster, Ricky, would have been an olive green color.
The hens are using a rabbit nest box to lay eggs in. And, it's even in one of the big bunny hutches, too. But, this has been the only area so far that we've found for them to lay eggs where the mongoose haven't been stealing the eggs. So, since we want to steal the eggs ourselves, we will let the hens use the bunny box.
Another new garden site has been determined, athough - as usual - we have to remove tall grass before we can build it. I've been cuting it down and tossing it to the sheeples, they're really handy for clearing a garden site as well as weeding the garden. Once the tall grass is removed, then another raised bed garden will go in here. It not only gives us more gardening space, but it terraces the hillside at the same time.
One Leaf
well, one leaf and a flower sheath
The trouble with palm trees is that their leaves are too big. There was this enormous Royal Palm tree up by the Work Shop. It was about sixty feet tall and dropped enormous leaves on the Work Shop roof which were damaging the roof. This is also where the new driveway will go. So between damaging the roof, being in the way and possibly dropping leaves on any cars or people that will be up there, the Royal palm had to go. Kind of a pity, but a twenty foot long leaf isn't anything you want to land on your head.
Looks like the rain has slacked off a bit, the sun has come out, guess I'll go see how things are out there!
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