We also have a litter of 4 healthy chunky sables that we are excited to watch grow. For those of you interested in Sables please let us know so we can make sure to notify you as we decide to part with a few of these cuties.
You may remember awhile back we had a solid tort doe bred to our sable point and she surprised us by producing a little sable baby. Well, it takes a tort carrying sable to produce sable, however it was nowhere in her pedigree, as far as we could see. Meaning, it was recessive further back than 3 generations. Well, the same doe just produced quite a fun litter for us. A solid tort, a sable point and our first blue tort! So not only does she carry a recessive sable gene, she also carries a recessive dilute gene we had no idea about. As elated as I am (Love blue torts) it is also a little sad as dilute isn't always a great combo for the sable program. But at the same time, this is great for us to learn, because now we know, when selling any offspring that she carries sable and dilute. This has been a fabulous lesson for the girls in learning recessive genes and also in better understanding our own lines.
We also have a litter of 4 healthy chunky sables that we are excited to watch grow. For those of you interested in Sables please let us know so we can make sure to notify you as we decide to part with a few of these cuties. Our first adventure into Hollands would soon become one of our biggest lessons to learn. We quickly learned never to buy from a breeder who is selling babies. I had wanted a couple of Hollands for our girls to be able to show. I wasn't as concerned about breeding, as I was mainly wanting them only as a hobby for my daughters. So I did what many of us do and look online for local breeders. I was thrilled to get that call saying something was available. I could not wait to surprise my girls. I purchased two show quality rabbits. One with the full knowledge that the doe may become a brood animal, meaning over weight. But the buck, I was told, should remain smaller and become a great "Herd Buck". I had read about the crazy Uglies. So I gathered that ours were just having a long go at them. Before our doe was even 4 mths old she already weighed over 4 pounds with the buck not far behind her. Besides weight, there were other very obvious problems. Our dear little show Hollands, actually didn't look like Hollands at all. One day while talking with the breeder, politely expressing my concerns they simply laughed. It was then that I obtained a full insight to the type of breeder this person was. A close friend of mine asked the other day about this situation and just for fun I took pictures for her. She instantly said, Wow, that doesn't even appear to be a Holland Lop. At almost 6 pounds you can easily see the facial structure is not similar to our cute little round headed Hollands. While researching different rabbit types, this facial structure is almost identical to a rex / lop mix. Due to his tremendous length he is unable to even attempt a cute Holland Pose. And it was never a matter of over feeding. All of our Hollands get 1/3 cup of food per day.
Prior to breeding I would have chalked this up to a mishap. But after breeding for almost two years now, with nice stock, not once have we produced anything that resembled this. Yes we have produced some big stock even out of tiny stock but they were still able to maintain type. So in the end the fault lies on me. Had I read further I would have learned that responsible breeders do not sell babies at all. Responsible breeders may have sold this animal as a pet for pet prices but never as a show prospect or with pedigrees to promote breeding such terrible stock. So it's important to really do your research before obtaining your stock. If you are in the market for show stock, please read up on how important it is to wait until your rabbit is closer to 5 mths of age. Since then I have purchased stock from multiple reputable breeders. Not one of them has sold me anything under 5 mths of age. We have shown and done well at shows. However to this day I do not feel qualified to sell a rabbit as show quality as of yet. We are working towards it and the day will come. And when it does, we will likely have shown that rabbit hence validating it's show quality. I know I know, I have posted pictures of funny looking juniors in the past. What I refer to as the Ugly Duckling phase, is really just natures course of removing all the cute baby fluff and letting the true rabbit fur be shown. While watching this little one play he kept coming over to look at me. I noticed, his molt pattern resembles a rabbit head. :) Before long all the light colored fur on the rest of his face will be gone as well and his head will start plumping up and taking shape.
As Fall approaches this means we will lose some of our natural supply of treats. A favorite here at our rabbitry is Raspberry leaves. I also use Comfrey for my nursing does. Along with that I learned grape leaves are a wonderful treat as well. So before they dry up and crumble away I like to harvest them and dry them myself. I have found the rabbits love them just as much after they have dried. So once they are dried I like to keep them in paper bags. I have found if you store them in plastic totes they often have enough moisture to mold. And we all know what that would mean for our rabbits. Another great thing to harvest right now are apple leaves and branches. Lucky for us we just cut down a crab apple tree so my rabbits have snacks galore. We believe in organic gardening which makes it nice for all our animals to use worry free.
I am hoping to do several fall photos of our rabbits but for the time being I only managed to get a few of Kamis bucks she is growing out. There are a couple others that are so incredible, but they are in their ugly duck phase. I'll be honest, when I first started looking at Hollands I actually fell in love with the looks of a smoke Pearl, or an Opal, Or even a Lilac based Frosty! I would look at a tort and think, ewww how ordinary. However it didn't take long putting our hands on a cute little tort before we realized there was more to it than ordinary. So while learning so much with our tort program I kind of fell out of love with any other color. I honestly even now feel like sable is almost becoming more of a boring trend than anything with substance. People seem to want one just to have one, more so than because it would be of any benefit to their breeding program. They are blinded by the color in a way. So this huge desire to have them, has made me annoyed by them. So when our cute little tort had a little sable baby, I wasn't nearly as excited as my daughter. In fact, I kind of ignored her. I loved her sweetness but that was about it. Well today I got them all out to check them over... and I think I can't ignore her any longer. She is actually looking quite pretty. She's still a tiny little thing with much maturing to do but so far she looks to be going in the right direction.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2016
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