A busy time to get back in the saddle.

Today on Hillside Homestead, we've been very busy things that are a bit out of the ordinary. Specifically the Lady of the House is preparing for selling her art, and a new genetics centered collectible/game at Anime Boston. I also had a wisdom tooth extracted yesterday which is somewhat distracting as well. The up shot of that is, no new photos for today which I've been really trying to keep from happening since I've been trying to make sure to give the blog the attention it deserves consistently. I also wanted to take a moment to do a monthly mention of the Patreon and Amazon Wishlist links off to the right, and thank everyone for reading, and their support.

Below the cut I'm going to be talking about getting back to breeding rabbits, and thoughts about that.

Some of you may remember this post from October. At the arrival of the Critter the juxtaposition of his birth within a day of teaching friends how to kill and butcher rabbits. Since then due to time, exhaustion, and everything else going on I wasn't the one to do the butchering of the kits we had on the ground during the winter. Michelle Chandler of Blessed Acre Farm who has been so instrumental to our getting started with rabbits, and being successful with them was kind enough to butcher 6 of our rabbits for us when they were ready to go and I didn't have anywhere to do it. Given how long it's been, and due to some of the profoundness of the timing of Critters birth I was actually somewhat concerned I'd have trouble, or be unable to kill the kits that were in Dawns hutch with her over the winter. I ended up only killing one of the two of them, but that wasn't because of an inability to do the killing, but because of the overall quality of her conformation which may make her a good replacement for Dawn when she no longer breeds. We will obviously have to see how that turns out, and I was hoping to have a photo of her to show today, but that'll have to wait. On the butchering side it was interesting, I definitely had the anxiety and unhappiness pre killing that I've had for some time, but I actually didn't have the problems I was worried I'd have. I've been putting off doing the killing because I don't like doing it, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to anymore. I didn't hesitate, I hadn't lost the skill, and things went very smoothly. I've lost some of the touch on skinning the carcass, but that'll come back. I still don't like killing, and it still is upsetting, but I haven't hit a point I'm unable to carry out the process. Even after the very profound life/death connectedness experience of the Critter arriving.

Back to the note about Dawn for a moment though. Something that's kind of difficult to remember due to how fast life has gone by is that Dawn and Twilight are both no longer young. They are actually potentially near the end of their productive breeding lifespan. With Twilight that's somewhat problematic because we really don't have any potential replacements. Dawn on the other hand we have a few options between her current daughter that's with her, Splash, and Streak. We're going to do a little renovation on the big grow out hutch and turn it into a double breeding hutch, and put Dawn and her daughter who we really need to name some time soon in together. I hope that Dawn and her daughter can live and have kits together like Halley and Comet were able to, and like Splash and Streak will if both of them ever have litters at the same time.

The next couple weeks are going to be extremely busy with Anime Boston, starting up the Lady of the House's new venture, the Critter, and helping tear down fence and barn that is going to be coming here once salvaged from its current location. That's something I'll be trying to keep everyone updated on because depending on weather, luck, and timing there may be some big things going on this spring and summer.