A quick check in, an interesting coloration, and weather considerations.

Sunshine's babies are moving around a bit, though mostly they as you can see below huddle in the hay and fur and stay warm which is sort of their job in life right now. That said, the kit Above is sort of a mystery. As you can see it's already developed the silverish ticking that we see on the crosses between Umbra and any Creme, but it's FAR early, and much more pronounced than the norm.

Now we haven't had time to thoroughly think about the genetics of it yet, but it's interesting and could say something about the genetics of Starry Night (The new blue buck), Sunshine, or both. The Lady of the House's first reaction was that it might be tort, but I'm not honestly nearly as up on rabbit color genetics as she is (or I should be).  But the important information is that the kits are doing really well, and all of them that survived the first 2 hours have survived so far. We've been blessed with warm weather for the time of year. There are of course disadvantages longer term to the warmer weather if we don't get real solid cold, but that'll happen soon enough.

One of the disadvantages of warmer weather is sort of odd, and it's why all of the latches are facing out at this point. I was trying to illustrate that with this photo, but at this size that didn't work out so well I guess. Anyhow, the warmer weather when it's 32 F and raining all day long or any sort of day like that where it's rain and freezing means that if you're not careful the latches can freeze shut! So for the rest of the winter at least we're still latching the hutches but we're leaving the latches pointing out so I can grab ahold of them easily and twist them around to break the ice off and open the hutch doors. Not being able to open a hutch for a day isn't always a huge problem, but if you can't open the hutch and the rabbits inside are being fed in crocks they don't get food for the day, so you HAVE to get it open. Right now with the hours I'm working I don't have time to fight with anything, so thinking ahead for convenience and time saving is really important and that's part of it along with bringing water bottles in for the night.

Last but not least checking in on the older kits. I was going to have a photo of Twilight and her kits but she wasn't holding still for anything, so we only have photos of Halley and her kits. Yes, that's her looking fairly put upon buried under a pile of black kits. She is a very tolerant mother unlike Twilight who will fire her kits across the hutch if they're stealing something she wants. Twilight's a good mother still and makes sure all of the kits are healthy, clean, and have eaten, but only after she has! Sorry for the quick post today, but it's going to be that sort of month I suspect. I hope everyone is having a good week, stay warm and dry out there.