News of all kinds, and introducing Serena.

Today is a day of news! Good news the first! Twilight has given birth to 5 big, healthy kits. She had 9 total, but 3 were under developed, and one was born dead it seems. Fortunately the rest of them are thriving, and for a single shot breeding rather than one morning and one night the way we usually do, that's not bad at all. 

The Lady of the House and I were concerned that maybe she'd injured the kits hopping up and down off the shelf, but Michelle Chandler reminded us what rabbits do in their normal wild lives. I'm still thinking to install a step so she doesn't have to jump so far to get up and down, even if she probably will just because she enjoys flying half the length of the hutch in a go. This batch of kits has 3 blue and 2 black kits with a surprising zero white kits. We don't mind at all since we're not going for whites in our lines, and love the look of the blue kits.The kits that have been born are already starting to show fur, and while they didn't as a whole gain weight today, the smaller ones are bigger, and only the larger kits lost any weight at all bringing them closer to the average. I don't think they'd been fed yet this morning though, so we shall see.

Neutral news the first, Halley and Comet who should be giving birth soon decided to completely fill their recently made nest with their waste. They just pooped on everything, so I took the whole mat of hay and dumped it out before giving them more to start with. Right the are looking at me with confusion, I slightly anthropomorphize and say they are annoyed I removed it. Either way, they will likely make a whole new nest over the day, and it won't be a problem but I am keeping an eye on them to try to avoid sickness in the nest through polluting it. They're really the only mothers we've had that have gone to the bathroom in their nest, so it is sort of an odd thing for us.

Bad news goes in the middle, I promise I'll end with good news! We have what may be our first fader. Left is a fairly normal mob scene in the growing out hutch with rabbits everywhere, but can you spot what we saw quickly? It's harder without motion and I'd thought to include multiple photos to make it easier. Top middle behind the silvering black kit is the runt huddled at the corner of the bracing strut. The baby is thin, and doesn't move much. Even when next to the food dish which is directly next to it, and none of the others are pushing it out the baby isn't eating at all which is very out of character. We did a thorough health check and found a split bottom lip in process of healing, so we hope that will heal up rapidly and he'll start acting like a rabbit again. Other than that he appears healthy other than the listlessness. I was considering separating him, but if I do so reintroduction won't be an option, so we are still deciding what to do in that.
Unfortunate but not sad news the second. Our poor sweet habenero just started flowering recently. It's not going to manage to fruit, much less ripen before the cold kills it. We are considering trying to transplant it to see if we can get peppers from it. We both have been really excited about the idea of sweet habeneros since the flavor is so good, and by toning down the kick I can use them more often than the full bore habeneros which I so love. So, it's not bad news but it is sort of ironic that it is just now flowering when the weather is about to kill it off. Part of that was not heating the tank we were starting it in, which we will rectify next year. I'm determined to have sweet habeneros!

And last, but certainly not least, Good News 2, Electric Blue Car. So, for the past few months we've been borrowing cars from VERY generous friends as we work to get a new vehicle, and finally the new vehicle has come together. Meet Serena, our new Honda Fit. We picked the Fit because it fulfilled all of our needs. It has narrow tires which handle snow better, passable gas mileage, good visibility so the Lady of the House is more comfortable driving, responsive and handles hills well, and very importantly, we can fit a LOT in the back. Bottom Left is two pallets in the back, and there is room for at least 3 more. I'm sticking with 2 for now because we're going to be picking up some 1x4s to keep our box spring from falling through the bed frame anymore which has not been my favorite part of sleeping.  So, new car, this will make transporting farm and house things much easier, and reduces our stress which we've been under borrowing our very generous friends and families vehicles. We're also looking forward to having good gas mileage again, while it's not a hybrid it is still fairly decent as far as gas use goes.

So that's our News in a bundle from day to day life. The last little bit of news, this is our 2nd month in a row over 1,000 hits, and 4 of our last 6 months have had over 1,000 hits with the two that weren't having in the high 900s for hits. I'm very glad to see people regularly watching and I hope we can continue to entertain and educate.