Good fortune, and good growth.

Today we have a lovely example of happy accident. Down at the border of the parking area, and the slope we plant on, the Lady of the House planted what turns out to be an Evening Primrose from the seedling swap. The happy accident isn't the planting so much as where it's been planted. Evening Primrose usually blooms in (you guessed it) the evening. Ours blooms all day due to the shade it's been planted in so we've been able to really enjoy it. I'm not usually a flower person, but it's a sweet little flower. Of course lots more is worth noting at the moment.

Happy rabbits eating greens.

It's the time of year where the rabbits can be fed mostly, if not exclusively on greens from the yard. I've been putting as much greenery in the hutches as I can, though I probably shouldn't have started with the favorites and moved to the less favorite as I have. Favorites right now are plantain and raspberry/blackberry plants. They eat the raspberry and blackberry stems and all, barely anything was left of the stems even except the woody center. I'm being very careful about what goes into the hutches this year because of a couple of reasons. First is last year when I accidentally poisoned a hutch of babies, and caused the deaths of a couple, the other is a friend with rabbits who has recently started having kits die off on her, sounding like poisoning. Being careful seems to work out, and the greens save money And make the rabbits happy at once, double win. 

Growing kits, growing chicks, and another broody hen?

Ok, I'll be honest, the baby picture up front is mostly just because they're cute, and why not. We've been very busy so we haven't done rebreeding yet, but it's time. We need to get that done this weekend so we can have an appropriate number of litters this year. Especially since we're introducing The Critter to solids, and he finds basically anything we feed him delicious. I didn't know such a small person could drink that much milk AND eat that much food!

Checking in on the rabbits after much needed rain.

Having finally had some rain, things have cooled down a little much to the relief of the rabbits, next week also looks like it will be very nice weather, so it's probably time to do the next breeding of the season. It also happens to coincide with the kits being at a good age to be separated from their mothers soon. As you can see, Dawn has taken over a lot of the care of her daughters kits, though they actually seem to be sharing quite well. I'm sure dawn will be happy with her own kits with this next round of breedings.

A frost after the furnace, weeds, and a final push on the barn Sunday.

After a few days of near 90 temperatures, this morning we had frost on the ground, and the chicken water had some thin floating ice. I can't say I actually object to the lower temperature even though I didn't object to the higher temperature. The kits are much more active in the cooler temperatures, and while we have having a cool break before the heat of the summer drops in hard again we should get the next round of breedings done. Again though, before I can do that I have to get Dawn and her daughter into the larger hutch, which means finishing it. Which reminds me I HAVE to get the wasp nests out of that hutch before I go in and work on it. Things to do tonight. Too much going on! I am not even going to be able to get too much going on this weekend other than the seedling swap and finishing off the barn. I need more time at home, especially with some things that are coming up.

I also wanted to take a moment to thank another new contributor on Patreon, the generosity is greatly appreciated from all who are contributing at any level.

Hot weather, healthy kits, a broken egg, and asking for rain.

Having missed Spring entirely, or so it's seemed for the past few days, it was nice this morning for it to look like it might rain. We'll see whether it does or not, but I am hoping we see some good rain today. The kits have been sprawled out at the hottest part of the day getting the best of the breezes we have up the hill. Without that the weather would be much more unpleasant, and in the valley where I work, it is that much hotter and less pleasant. I've been taking my exercise during lunch so I've come to really appreciate getting home to the slightly cooler temperatures and winds.

As you can see Above Dawn is just as gentle to, and protective of her daughters kits as her own. The three in with her are doing well, and should be getting moved over to the bigger hutch shortly. A few weeks straight of sickness has slowed so much down.

Recovered in peace, preparing to move rabbits around, and healthy babies.

We're getting ourselves back on track after some serious gastroenteritis fun. We Still haven't gotten a lot done because of that, but now we're just now recovering, but at least we're starting to do so! It's a good thing we're getting back on our feet now because we have a lot to get done and some of it is urgent.

Mobile kits, warm weather, and moving on despite sickness.

 Splash's kits have opened their eyes, and it's a very nice thing to see after a rough week or so here on the homestead. So far all of the human inhabitants here have been sick at least part of that time. I am sick enough that I'm home from work, and this is going to be a text light post with mostly just baby photos. What's going around isn't life threatening with modern medicine, but without it, food poisoning followed by gastroenteritis is bad news. The good news is I think we're all coming out of it.

Kits, brooding hens, and planning for an overwhelmingly busy season.

I figured I'd open with a good shot of Dawn's Daughter's kits. Still searching for a name for her by the way so if you have any suggestions pass them on. As you can tell they are doing well. What I don't have is solid weight charts because this weekend was crazy busy, and I neglected to get weights. This morning was also a running way behind day so I don't have them from today either. I'll try to get back to that tomorrow, but no promises since there are some changes going on right now.

Before I move on to everything else though I figured I'd mention that Streak who bred with Remington Steel had her kits. She had 3 big kits, one of whom was born dead. A second of them died Sunday, probably pulled out on the wire still latched on which is unfortunate. With the other deaths in the shared nest with Splash, the nest as a whole is down to  7 between both. Twilight's nest on the other hand is going strong with 7 kits that are doing Just fine as we expect from Twilight. They're big, strong, and move too fast for me to get any decent photos of them to share today for which I am sorry. I'll try to have photos of Twilight's babies for Thursday, but again, no promises.

Splash's litter, snow, and a chicken in on the game.

It's nice to have lots of babies on the ground again, especially at this point where we're watching them get bigger day by day. These are the three that Dawn's Daughter gave birth to.

 I'm actually going to be soliciting everyone for input on naming Dawn's daughter. We've mostly stuck to lighting phenomenon for naming our rabbits, but we're happy to branch out with Dawn's daughter. So far her babies are doing incredibly well. Today at 5 days old they are 116, 111, and 106 grams. That's an average weight of 111.00 grams, and an excellent growth rate of 113.65%. For 3 babies an excellent growth rate is to be expected, but we also have Splash and Dorado's litter on the ground right now, and some time soon we're expecting Twilight and Streak's litters to hit the ground which should be good. There's a lot more baby rabbit photos below the cut.

Surprise kits, disassembling, and garlic sprouting.

Surprise, rabbit kits already! We were expecting our first litters on the 22nd and the 23rd, but it turns out I was correct that I took Dawn's son out of the hutch with her and her daughter later than I should have. Interestingly enough, it wasn't Dawn that was bred, it was her daughter. Fortunately she was old enough I don't feel bad that she's having kits. There are only 3 kits, but they're all healthy. They were born 76, 76, and 69 grams. Today they were 90, 89, and 87 grams just after feeding so they are doing well. We are expecting 2 sets of kits tomorrow or the next day, and another set the day after. We'll see how that goes, but we should have lots of baby rabbit pics. That said, we had a lot other than that going on over the weekend.

All is well as the cold passes through

Well, as of this morning just at the absolute worst of the temperature and wind had passed, I went out for farm chores. Everyone was alive as of that time, and seemed relatively healthy if not happy. You can tell that rabbits aren't doing optimally when they are eating less than their normal daily consumption rate. That means they aren't getting enough water usually, and are probably huddling together. My design for the hutches has again been confirmed to me as all of the rabbits, even the ones that usually avoid the private areas were using them when checked on. Talking to them when I go out brought them out to their water bottles where they get as much as they can before they ice over.

Dawn's kits, and still waiting.

Dawn gave birth Tueseday night, and when I got home I reached in and felt around. I felt a couple moving kits, and Dawn was unhappy with what I was doing so I left her alone, and checked again in the morning. When I checked then I found one cold and dead normal kit, one dead kit with the back of it's head missing and the brain showing, and two normal healthy kits. The rabbit with the part of the skull has anencephaly which means a large part of the brain or skull missing. The Lady of the House promptly did some research, and found that there may be some correlation between tomato blight, and the kinds of birth problems we've been seeing. There is some correlation between feeding alkaline plants and the kind of problems that we've been having so we want to do more research into that.

Chickens, wood, and babies. Now with pictures.

As promised, today we have photos from around the homestead. We've finally been letting our chickens wander the property and do their thing, and they are quite different in behavior than the chickens we had around before. They don't have to be coaxed to come to garden beds with scratch, they're curious, and they are an unruly bunch that make quite a rapid impact on the grounds.

Chickens, rapid blight, and dark mornings.

Meet our new chickens! I know, it's a horrible blown out picture, but it's getting dark in the morning, and I got home after dark last night. So, for the time being photos are going to be fairly meh for the blog since it's camera phone in the dark, but anyhow. Chickens. After the moving of the coop over a week ago Saturday, this past Thursday night we went and got our new hens. We were given 4 Cinnamon Queens for our wedding, and our friends generously held on to them until we could do more to secure the chickens, and another friend gave us a trio of layers that were older and thus leaving her farm one way or the other. Those are a pair of Black Australorps, and a Rhode Island Red. Hopefully when we start letting them out the Lady of the House can get some photos of them that are worth sharing.

Overdue update

A new day, a new set of baby bunny faces. Well, really right now it's the same set of faces, but as they grow so fast it can feel like a whole new set of faces. Above are three of Twilight's current brood.  Much like their mother they are very engaged with anything involving food. That naturally includes us since we're involved with the appearance of food. I wanted a photo of Twilight hovering over them, but all of them were blurry dark gray mountains that didn't look so good sadly.  Overall, Twilight's kits are growing the crazy rate we expect, and we're happy to see that. Everyone is going to get re bred soon, so they'll only be with their mom for another few weeks for which she will be profoundly grateful, the're eating her food!

Back to the normal life, plants, and rabbits.

The Lady of the House is back, and I'm very happy! The rabbits are still very active and hard to get good photos of, but at least I was able to get a couple of the Lady of the House holding onto fast moving babies so I could get photos. The one above is from Sunshine's litter since I still haven't gone after the wasp nest in Dawn's hutch. Below the cut will be more baby photos.

A merry chase

I figured today was a good day for baby bunny photos, unfortunately I forgot that when trying to get photos on a rainy day you A: need to be out of the woods, and B: a corollary, you need a second pair of hands. The Lady of the House is out of town right now since she was selling at Otakon this past weekend. This promptly led to a game of find the blue gray 2 week old rabbit in the tall grass and raspberry bushes. Before doing the cut, I assure those of you who just came for the baby bunny photos, all turned out well, and no babies were harmed, and there will be more (well, one more) photo below the cut.

Late summer garden, a visitor, and new litters of babies!

Kits have been born! These three are Dawn's current set of kits, I'm not sure if she was done fully yet, so I'm hoping to see a few more in her nest.  Twilight also kindled today, but I wasn't going to reach in there and try to get kits out without a second pair of hands, and the Lady of the House is not feeling well today. She's doing ok, just a bit under the weather so I was on my own for kit checking. So, let's talk about what's been going on other than babies being born.

Ground running tomatoes, peppers, and a turtle.

Alright, so it's not yogurt. Again. I'm sorry! I didn't have the time to get the photos off the card for that. Last night ended up being sort of a long one, and I ended up with less time than expected. The Lady of the House and I have been considering goats for some time, and some friends due to personal circumstances need help with their goats for a while. So, we're going to be helping out 3 times a week with goat feeding for some Boer goats. We'll see how it goes! Lesson one, don't go head to head with a buck. Also, don't go back of knee to head with a buck. Really, don't go back of knee to anything with any creature, it's a bad plan. But, back at home, we're starting to feed greens we're %100 sure of again. The rabbits are happy.