I'm half tempted to set up a nursery page, but since we dont' do babies all that often... it's kind of pointless.  It's just a rare event that we happen to have several nest boxes of kits and boy are they cute!  The shaded menagerie has played non stop tricks on us.  We had a silvery dark dark gray kit, that got ticking and was really looking like a smoke pearl.  Then more fluff grew in and it is clearly another blue tort.  That gives us 4 sold blue torts now!  Then our Siamses Sables, that were nearly black, have suddenly morphed into beautiful creamy little kits.  So I am going more with sable now... until they morph again I suppose.  On the bright side, all beautiful showable colors!  
Now colors aside, something that was more exciting about these litters, was the line breeding.  We have a couple projects going on here.  Belle, is line bred to her sire Little Buddah.  She is our biggest boned girl and very full bodied.  We are anxious to see how this works out.  So far the kits are all very balanced, and almost tiny.  I know that could surely change.  Our other fun project is studying traits and genetics.  Not color per say, but eye, bone, length, etc.  So we have 3 does:
Clover who is out of Nixie x Fibonacci
Honey who is out of Nixie x Henry
Trouble who is out of Nixie x Buddah
Clover and Trouble were line bred back to Buddah, and Honey, was bred to Fibonacci, as we  have already had a litter out of Buddah.  It will be very interesting to watch these 3 litters grow and compare what is dominate out of this line.  We have retired Nixie as she has out produced herself with 3 beautiful does.  Our line breeding project is hopefully going to produce something that also out produces their dams as well. However, as we are learning, more times than not, things dont' go as planned.  It took a lot to get to this point so hopefully our efforts will pay off in the long run.  
In the meantime, while we endure the waiting and growing game... look at all this cuteness!!

One of my favorite things about our rabbitry has been the learning process it has offered for our girls.  It is a big eye opener to see that things aren't always easy.  There's been life lessons learned and tough decisions to be made.  Our youngest has been hit the hardest with every one of her animals turning out to not be show/ type worthy.  She has had to bid farewell to every rabbit she has grown and loved.  She was only 7 when we started this, so that is a difficult and sad thing.  Yet it has made her stronger.  She can sit with a litter and evaluate it's strengths and weaknesses and she knows when it is time to say good bye, even though she doesn't want to.  She understands we can't keep them all.  
Our other daughters have managed to love while keeping a distance to the rabbits.  They try not to get attached.  With our last litter from Boo it was such a tough call.  We had 3 beauties in the litter.  With us being so small, it's just not possible to keep an entire litter and improve our herd.  So she had a tough call and has decided to put Puddin up for sale.  She is a beautiful doe and her dam has produced our favorite kits so far.  She carries sable, and possibly also the dilute gene from her sire, Little Buddha.  She is still a little fur chewed on one side from living with her siblings.  She's been away from them for over a month, but it's a slow process to getting it all grown back.  She could definitely be shown once her fur comes in.  She is a nice size, almost at 3 pounds and will grow a bit more yet.  

When you first obtain anything with a pedigree, it's always interesting to review the generations past.  With our herd buck, we were aware that there was dilute 2 generations back.  We had not, however produced anything with dilute..  Well, we can now attest to the fact he does carry dilute and so does his daugther.  During a recent line breeding we produced 2 lovely blue torts.  I am half delisional with every litter thinking the lighter shaded torts are blue torts.  My kids enjoy making fun of me.  Well, now I have no doubt because there is a huge difference.  The blue cast is so apparent.  It's a funny world, this rabbit hobby, because I have been dying to have blue torts.  And yet, I don't want to have a blue project or even a dilute project.  This is absolutely when the emphasis comes in on type.  No matter what color these rabbits are, they must display type. 
Now with this new discovery of dilute... it possibly didn't end with just the blue torts.  Our sable baby has a very blue cast to it, which already makes me feel like it could be a blue point.  Along with this we have 2 other mysteries all from the same litter.  I am hoping they are possibly just really really dark sables... but they actually appear to be more of a smoke pearl or a siamese sable.  
This being said, depending on how this litter matures we will likely have some stock available, as we don't plan on running with dilutes.  This was a much anticipated litter, as the doe is our beefiest boned doe with the largest head.  Hopefully these traits have also passed on to her offspring.  
We will be doing a fun photo shoot with these guys once they open their little peepers!  Stay tuned and in the mean time, here's a fun montage of Nugget, Cream Puff, Little Buddha and Finn.  Hard to believe 2 of those are only 4 months old.