Babies exploring, and food transition.

Today's post is going to be a little shorter than normal due to the scramble of getting the Lady of the House out on her way to Otacon where she's selling this weekend. The unfortunate part is with me taking the photos there aren't the good quality photos of the babies first wanderings outside of their nest we'd usually have.

First Butchering Done

Yesterday we did our first butchering, and over all it went very well. We have one of the first two litters we are holding aside for potential breeding to bring Sunny's strengths into our American Blue lines if we can. As you can see Above he is still in the growing out hutch, and seems to be enjoying being able to eat without fighting off everyone else.

There are no photos of the process below the cut but there will be detail about the killing and butchering process.

Bears are a Problem!

Bears. This seems to be the time for them from what we can tell. Last year we didn't see a single bear on our property, but this year we have seen them many a time. I'm now starting to see potential correlation between bear visits and lack of weight gain for the day. 

(Picture from http://www.weforanimals.com/free-pictures/wild-animals/black-bears/1/black-bear-5.htm)

End of (this) Heat Wave

The heat wave finally broke fully a couple days ago much to everyone's relief. All of the rabbits made it with liberal application of shade and frozen water bottles. In the aftermath of the storms that marked the end of the heat wave, we got to see the beautiful side of our driveway on the way out to get some supplies. The Lady of the House got a good picture so I figured we'd share it with you.

Making the Growing Out Hutch, and HEAT!

Work continues on the hutch, and despite my desires it isn't quite done yet due to some in process design changes to account for reality. The other part of it not being done is just how hot it was yesterday. Temperatures in the mid to upper 90s with near 100% humidity doesn't mean you can't work. It just means you should do so slowly and with awareness of your body. Between that and needing some new materials to do this properly, we are currently 2 doors short of a hutch.

A Busy Weekend and Data Sets!

Things have been a little hectic since the last post what with settling into the new job which is great, the Lady of the House being out of town, working on the studio, and life in general. I don't have a lot for you today because of that, and because I spent most of last night when I would normally be working on writing the blog creating data sheets and putting data into said sheets. That said, here is a cute photo for no reason.

Baby Growth, and the Bear

We've had a lot going on this week in the homesteading department, the baby rabbits being the obvious major part of that. The other part of what has been going on is that on Saturday we got a bunch of herbs, some vegetables, and some grape vines and planted them. I don't have pictures of what we planted, nor do I even remember exactly what all we planted since that was mostly the Lady of the House's project. I just know we've got a good number of cooking herbs growing, and 4 grape vines planted in the side of the hill. The babies are getting tough to take good photos of because of how much they move.