On a separate note, we will be listing a few sable does in the next couple of days. One is a junior and one is a senior doe who is ready to be bred. We can sell with a pedigree to the right home. I've been seeing a lot of people filling their rabbitries with baby Hollands lately. For me, on a personal note, this screams out that you don't fully understand what it is you want in your rabbitry. You can not know, nor guess what a baby Holland can offer, therefore it leaves me to assume, you don't care, as long as you just own a Holland. That is surely anyones choice, as I agree they are adorable babies. But I would prefer our pedigreed stock go to someone who is carefully selecting their traits and very concerned with the standard. There is so much more to breeding than just growing up a cute baby and putting it with the opposite sex.
Well, I started out December fully prepared to share lots of cute pictures of our darling juniors. I even took the pictures, yes Santa hats and all. However, that next step never happened. I got wrapped up with holiday frenzy. So rather than letting these cute faces get lost I figured I may as well still post them. I must mention, we have some very incredible juniors growing right now. Boos last litter has produced some of my favorite stuff. I am loving the heads and body length. They are definitely unlike anything we have produced so far. I am hoping this turns out to be in a very good way. On a separate note, we will be listing a few sable does in the next couple of days. One is a junior and one is a senior doe who is ready to be bred. We can sell with a pedigree to the right home. I've been seeing a lot of people filling their rabbitries with baby Hollands lately. For me, on a personal note, this screams out that you don't fully understand what it is you want in your rabbitry. You can not know, nor guess what a baby Holland can offer, therefore it leaves me to assume, you don't care, as long as you just own a Holland. That is surely anyones choice, as I agree they are adorable babies. But I would prefer our pedigreed stock go to someone who is carefully selecting their traits and very concerned with the standard. There is so much more to breeding than just growing up a cute baby and putting it with the opposite sex. On that cute note we would like to wish everyone a Happy, and healthy wonderful new year. We will return next year with our review of last years goals, and our upcoming ones.
Well the day has finally come. We have our first official singleton. The dreaded single kit. In the brink of winter. Sigh. We of course followed protocol and had another doe due, but she missed. Our doe was due today, but I knew she had a tendancy to kindle early. So I woke up at 6 only to find 3 very cold stiff kits. The doe did not pull any fur for them. One was a peanut, the other look stretched. But I figured I would still try to warm the other one up. Worst that could happen is it never revived. Well to my surprise, about a minute under warm water and it began to slowly wiggle. I was stunned. I really in all my days, never have seen something like this. It really seemed dead. So I continued warming the baby, and it was struggling for the first 20 minutes, but then, it snuggled up against my husbands overly warm stomach, and went to sleep. We have set up an incubation area for it. Not sure how this is going to work out in the long run but for now our little "Zombie" is hanging in there.
It's been a funny season of Juniors for us. We have found ourselves with an overload of bucks. And not just any bucks, they were all looking rather nice. As they neared the 5 month mark a few things began setting them apart. Zilla, our Grand Champion, has a nice buck, however he is so small. He is clearly never going to grow into a large herd buck that we want. Nixie produced a very nice buck, however he is also smaller than what we had wanted. Honey produced 3 bucks. All 3 of them were very large as babies. So much so that I really thought non of them would stay under weight by the end of the uglies. We followed the typical rules of not looking at them. Until one day I couldn't resist getting one out. He was just stunning. We pulled him aside to watch him closer. Well as the month has gone on he seems to have stopped growing. So the largest of the 3 bucks has become less hopeful. So while going to photograph the other to list for sale I realized he had doubled in mass. It was so strange how these two bucks completely switched places in a matter of weeks. The third little buck ended up being the smallest we have produced so far. Here a a few other Juniors we are watching.
We have decided to list several rabbits available for sale. 75-100 for Pedigree. 40.00 for pets
1 Jr. Doe. Solid Tort. Beautiful rabbit. Full chest, nice bone, will be an amazing brood doe/ possible show. Will be Sr. November 19th. Excellent pedigree. Carries the Sable Gene. 75.00 1 Jr. Buck. Solid Tort. Beautiful Buck. One of our best we have produced so far. Really nice crown definition. Slightly pinched HQ, but other than that very balanced. His litter mate bit his ear, decreasing his ability to be shown, however he would be an amazing addition to your herd. Carries the Sable gene. 75.00 1 Jr. Buck. Solid Tort. This guy is stunning. Could be shown. Has really nice type. We are keeping his brother and have been undecided between these two for some time now. Great curvature of head, nice balanced body, full hindquarter. Carries the Sable Gene. AMAZING. 100.00 For many who get into this hobby, it is all too often, about the babies. Understandably so, as I feel Holland Lop babies are not only some of the cutest of all rabbits, but of all animals on the planet! I adore them. They never become boring to me. Perhaps because we have so few litters that we still find so much joy in them. Studying them has become even more enjoyable than the babies. It didn't take long for us to comprehend how much more there was to the hobby than just buying two nice rabbits and putting them together. It is my opinion that I could buy 2 top notch rabbits and still only end up with average stuff. One reason is this, I feel that even though you are buying nice stock from breeders you still need to have the smarts to know what to breed to what. So even if you get a pair from a breeder, it doesn't mean that breeder would ever breed those two together. I think it is so important to pick apart each rabbit and decide what you would like to accomplish out of a breeding,more so than just babies.
We recently kept a doe who was not as typey as we would like. I wrote a blog on her in the past. We chose to keep her because of her very large crown, her very full hind quarters, her very heavy bone and her extra white sable coat. It would be our first line breeding. We knew we were taking a risk that we may end up with nothing but poor quality. The babies are now only 4 weeks old and we still can't fully assess how they will turn out. But so far we think we have one male that we like. Much more growing to do before we will know for certain. As far as babies go, this is the cutest one we have produced, which long term could mean nothing. The interesting part will be finding out how well this litter turns out. Because a good many breeders would have gotten rid of this doe. Too many breeders it seems, only keep what they think they can show and don't seem to focus on what they could use to improve their herd. We like to find balance between the two and hopefully over time we will have something to show for it. When we first brought Buddha home from the Ormonds we fell in love with.him. I fel in love first with his sweet nature. His ability to pose for hours. If I put him on the posing table, he will truly remain posed and stay there for a solid hour if I were to leave him. If I put him down inside he finds a comfy area and sits posed and does not move. The more I photographed him and admired him, the more I fell in love with his adorable large round eyes. For me they became the perfect eyes and I want all of our Hollands to have them. After he sired a couple of litters I started to see more of those eyes, even if in small numbers I was elated. And a new trait became so apparant. He has a wonderful cute round head to go with those cute round eyes, and has done wonders to improve the curvature of skull in our rabbitry.
This is one of the wonderful reasons to watch your lines and fine tune them to your liking. You can read as much as you like on standard and when to cull for what reason. Small feet, long ears, fine bone. But it becomes an art to pick and choose your own personal favorite traits that years from now you hope your stock exhibits. Our babies are finally to the age where the happily bound in and out of their nestbox. It is an adorable age and completely captivates me every time I walk past. They are now familiar with my voice and bound over to the cage door for affection. Our little sable litter is so pretty but are truly about half the size of our multi shaded litter. Makes it hard to believe they were born on the same day! So far Kait is in love with the light tort, whom she has named Finn. The other two are does. In our sable group we have two bucks and two does. Quinne has been elated to finally have her own litter to work with. Now for the long waiting game to begin.
In the past we have let our first mix lop Ginger, roam free. It was a fun experience for all of us, when it was just Ginger. As we had more rabbits, we learned Ginger would get aggressive toward certain bucks and they would latch on to each others faces through the cage. Didn't take but a second to realize this didn't work so well. So if Ginger was free we had to continually supervise any other bucks we put out in the play pen. It quickly lost it's joy. Well just recently for the fun of it, I let 2 litter mate sisters go along with another doe. In the course of just a couple hours they established territory. One took over a small corner of the yard, one a nook by the swing set, and one nestled into the raspberry patch. They would graze head to head in the yard without conflict. However, if one were to venture too close to the others zone they would give chase. It didn't take much and the others quickly understood their zones. They have a common ground and their private area. Very amusing how quickly they established this. I so love waking up and pouring my coffee looking out my kitchen window and seeing the rabbits playing on the lawn. It instantly brightens my day. Letting them run free brings out this different personality in them. Our black doe is usually not very friendly and I have not gotten very close with her. She was truly one of the most boring rabbits, seemed void of personality. When I set her free she was cautious at first then began to race about the yard. She would run and binky so high in the air it made me laugh. After a few days out running free she is so enjoyable. She is the first rabbit that comes to greet me when I go out in the morning.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2016
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