Luna moths, leaving rabbits.

I'm always glad to see the arrival of our first Luna Moths, they are a beautiful if fragile species with a short visiting time. To me they have a lot of the charm of fireflies except during the day instead of dusk and night. They are also incredibly sensitive to pesticides so they only survive in areas without any real pesticide use. To me they are a sign of living in a healthy environment.

Welcome rain, warm nights.

Despite the challenges right now we're moving along with life as we address them. Lately our predator concern has come from the hawks that are out a lot lately. The electronet doesn't help with that, but the chickens have been sticking to the tall grass and weeds to hide from the aerial threats. I'm always glad to see animals doing the smart thing to stay alive when I can't be there to preserve them 24/7/365 since I'm at work during the day.

On the funding side of things, the furnace situation is rough, but the go fund me has been incredibly helpful, and people have been generous, kind, and helpful with money, advice, and love. Our strength and wealth is in our community and friends, and this has really highlighted that.

Learning to better time manage as life shifts.

It's interesting to me that for most of the history of this blog I think that the pictures have featured rabbits first, and everything else later, and yet lately things have been focusing on the garden, or other things. It's not that we haven't been thinking about the rabbits, and nearly as much as we ever have. It's just that we're doing a lot more as well. The garden has been a particular focus because we'd let it go last year much more than we should have, so the weeding has obviously been a priority. Right now we're also starting to figure out what we have too much of that we do want, and need to control. For instance, bee balm which you see above we have a LOT of. If you want some we can absolutely get you seeds or transplants of bee balm. That said, even with everything we've thinking about with the garden, and the chickens life still moves along with the rabbits.

What did we learn from our first big hutch.

I'd like to start with an apology for the photo quality, I didn't have time to get photos with a real camera today so this is busted iPad photos. It'll work for getting the point across at least. Today I want to talk about a couple things, but the first thing I want to do is talk about what we've learned from our first grow out hutch, and the things that I want to do to modify it. If you haven't been following since then this was the construction post for the grow out hutch.
Before going on to talk about the grow out hutch, and learning experiences from it I'm going to touch on our seed starts. Obviously our peppers are doing well, and we started them very early given the short season. Just this past weekend we started the tomatoes, and last night when I took a look, a bunch of seedlings have started their thready sprouts. I'm really happy to see them coming up so quickly, and so many. Looks like I dropped some extra multiples beyond the two I intended to toss in to each seedling pot which is normal. No matter how closely I work to try to only drop one or two seeds in a hole I always end up with some extra seedlings per hole which is fine since I'm going to be splitting them out to larger pots anyhow. Just wanted to touch on that briefly, before going back to talking about learning from the grow out hutch.

Ground, chickens, and an influx of blog visitors.

Alleluia, we can see ground on the slopes!

I'd like to take a moment to welcome those of you that found us through r/homestead yesterday, I'm glad to have you here, and I hope you stick around. Feel free to ask questions, comment, and enjoy.

Back to the ground though. The slopes are the first areas we see dirt other than where we shoveled, that's normal. I was looking back through, and despite how cold it has felt this winter, we're not far behind our norm if you look back to 2013 around this time, though 2012 snow was already long gone by this point. Either way, we're starting to get the world back from the snow.

More snow here, and even more on the way. Spring planning.

After a brief warm up, we've got snow again. More is on the way tomorrow so Thursday we'll be able to show more deep snow beauty instead of the couple inches of making the trees pretty, and the roads terrible that we got yesterday. Even with the snow coming, it feels like spring is on the way. The smell of the air in particular smells different even though the temperatures aren't significantly different. It's something I've been peripherally aware of in the past but am much more aware of now.

Long nights, deep fog, and rain in the chicken coop.

The longest night of winter has just recently passed, and we're looking forward to seeing just a bit less of this sort of scene as beautiful as it can be. We definitely prefer getting home when we can get by without the lights being on for a while, and that just isn't the case at the moment. It would be the case even without working far too much which is the norm right now unfortunately. We've had some very strange weather out here lately as well for this time of year. First there was the snow and more snow, and that was fairly normal. The Thursday post of the conquest of snow was fun because it is nice to feel like we have the snow under control for the first time. Note to mother nature, that isn't a challenge!

All sorts of new!

So many new things I wasn't sure what to start with so I defaulted to baby rabbits, even if it is blurry. Sunshine's litter is all alive and well, and have opened their eyes! I missed my favorite day of them with eyes half open. It's been a busy few days since the last post before Thanksgiving thus all of the new!

Bunnyday: Introducing Sunshine, babies, and a new hutch.

Today I'm beginning with Sunshine since I promised we'd meet her, but there's a lot going on rabbit wise. So let's get on with it so we can get to everything! Above and Below the Cut are Sunshine. She is Dawn's sister that we got from Michelle Chandler since she is downsizing her herd.
Sunshine is an experienced mother who we hope will have a slightly more even temperament than Dawn who, while she's a great mother tends to pass on her nervousness. Sunshine seems to really enjoy the cooling stone that we have in her hutch, and has been spending most of her time there after the traditional rabbit exploring the new space period. One thing we quickly noticed about Sunshine is how differently her face is shaped.


Right is Dawn, due to the slight angle differences it may be difficult to tell, but her face is wider than her sisters. A solid broad head, and a thick front of the head. I don't know what the standard for showing Cremes says, but the Lady of the House and I agree that the broader head is probably a better thing for health in the long run.

Conformation wise Dawn and Sunshine are very similar other than the head. As you can see from the photo of Sunshine Top and Dawn Right, they are both very blocky in how they're built. Dawn is a bit broader abeam due to being just about to give birth, possibly as I'm writing this. As you can tell though it really is mostly the head that is different between the sisters.

Then there's Dorado.

Sadly for his studly pride, Dorado looks terrible right now. He is blowing his coat all over the place, and thus looks patchy as can be, he also wouldn't pose for a conformation shot for me. However, we can show off his meaty block head and Dorado Special (TM) flop ears that sometimes pass on to his offspring. For all of his strangely shaped head, he is a solidly built well conformed rabbit otherwise. He also has a huge benefit neither Dawn nor Sunshine have, and that's temperament. Dorado love people, being petted, and more being petted. He is our ambassador rabbit when people come by and want to pet one of the rabbits. If we have babies they're obviously happy to interact, but of the adults Dorado is the happiest to be around people and turns into a bunny shaped puddle when you pet him, only to hop up, upset when you stop.

But, as I said, conformation discussion is actually the least of what's going on right now.

First of all, and I don't have photos for this due to concerns for my safety, Twilight has given birth as of this morning. I only found 3 kits, all healthy. We don't know if that's because there's only three or if I caught her mid birth which is unlikely. If it's just three we'll live with it, and just hope she isn't retaining dead kits. That is a slight concern for us because she's been taking flying leaps up and down from the second level in apparent joy, and we're just hoping she didn't hurt anything doing so. Those of you who have been following along are probably going, "But wait, her babies were in with her last Thursday!" And you're correct! I sort of slipped up some on timing which led to a bit of a scramble to get the new growing out hutch Below done.

I'm actually fairly proud of this monstrosity in no small part because I got it together purely with work on Saturday and going in 2 hours late to work on Monday. Thanks to this I'm a bit sore, and I got all of the babies into their new hutch Monday morning before Twilight decided she needed to dismember them.

This new hutch is an example of learning from experience every time, this time it's 7 feet long to allow a bit of overhang on each side to keep the food covered and prevent as much moisture from getting in. As you can see from the photo Right I incorporated a second level to allow the rabbits more room to move around and have a good time. The back wall is made of 2x4s, not so much because they're ideal or what I wanted to do, but because I didn't have the time to pull apart the 3 pallets it would have taken to get the wood for that. The second level is made of pallet bits, but not gotten by carefully pulling the pallets apart, I took a circular saw and cut the planks out at each support member since I didn't need long boards. The funny part is, even with the mad rush due to being an idiot and having to get everything done Now Now Now, this is still my best hutch. There are ways it would have been better if I'd had an extra 3 hours to pull pallets apart, but even with the hurry I did things as correctly as I can when doing it on my own. The babies seem fairly happy in it, but I'm already seeing ways to improve, and in the future hopefully I'll have two hutches for this many babies, so expect to see another hutch springing up in the next six weeks before the round of babies currently being born needs to be put into grow out hutches.

My newest creation, IT LIVES!!!! Muahaha . . ahem.

It's a new week, and life continues to move on. The stresses of last week while not entirely gone have been mitigated, and we're getting back on track with our lives. Not entirely coincidentally it's stopped raining for a couple days, and while it may be hot it has allowed us to get back down to business with the rabbits.
Specifically, rabbit hutch creation which leads to happy rabbits. As you can see, barring being painted and the angle braces I'm going to put on around the legs when ever I have a few minutes and some scrap wood, the working prototype of the new model of breeder hutches is up and functional. Above is actually some rabbits in said hutch. The ladder to the left of the hutch in the photo Left gives a nice size comparison for you. As with everything, there were learning experiences involved in building the hutch. For one, make sure when you do measurements, make sure in getting the ideal measurements on one side you don't throw off the other side so much you have to do significant modification to make it work. The side with wire on it had to have 2 extra 2x4s cut and added in to give the wire something to be stapled in to because the front of the hutch is over 3' tall. I figured this would allow the rabbits to be able to utilize the second level I made for them better, and I'm sure it will when they start going up there. Just in the future I will have to make certain I don't make it so tall the wire is floating in the wind.

 On the up side, there is plenty and more than plenty of room. The smallest portion, the nesting area is clearly big enough for Twilight to fit in as you can see Right. I made the nesting area smaller and tighter to make the mothers more comfortable with it since smaller seems to be just as good if not better according to them. I made the small side hatch so I can get in to check on the babies easily. The first night the hutch was finished it got its first test, we had a clever pest visit last night, a raccoon. The Lady of the House heard thumping around down from the rabbits and grumbling about "They're just being playful late at night" I went on out to check in a towel and unlaced boots. I promptly came back up for the dog, pants, and a rifle after seeing a raccoon on the tree next to the hutch, running up and away. Everyone's ok, and it's good to know the hiding spot serves its purpose of making them feel safe, but I'm not happy to see a raccoon for the first time since moving in.

Speaking of pests, let's move on to the squash which seem to be the epicenter of a bugsplosion. We've finally resorted to stronger options than hand picking because we don't want to lose the plants! We're still hand picking and killing the beetles ourselves, but as you can see Left we also got our hands on yellow sticky straps, and that's the result of a day of them being up. They seem to be fairly effective, though not 100%. We also got Neem Oil to try to act as a bit of pest control. It interferes with bugs ability to feed thus killing them off and protecting your plants. It hasn't yet stopped them from mating as you can see Left in the lovely squash flower. We're still doing regular checks and bug killing rampages. I seem to mostly specialize in killing mating pairs. What that actually means is, I'm bad at sneaking up on them and catching them on their own the way the Lady of the House is.



I also found a bug that looked a lot like a Japanese Beetle  but with vastly different markings than a Japanese Beetles. I had intended to take photos of it and then kill it on principle, but it flew off as I was snapping the last photo. Anyone know what this is? I haven't had time to look it up yet due to work + life. I still am fairly happy with having gotten the photos because it's kind of cool looking.

Last, but most certainly not least, especially not in their dinosaurian minds, chickens. It's hard to really get a sense of scale from the photos, but they've grown a lot since we got them. We did in fact identify the method they were using to get out, and so they're in when we want them to be in, and are only out when we're around to observe and protect them. The social structure is interesting to observe as the head bird I've been calling Haystack Below Left stays head bird, and the challengers rotate. There is a whole lot to say about the chickens, but for now I'm going to leave it at, they eat lots, they poop lots, and they make a lot of noise. The Lady of the House is really enjoying having them for their chickenness alone as well as collecting their feathers for art and craft purposes.

I hope everyone is doing well in this mid summer, and as a friend says, "Stay out of the hot sun."

Chickens and Kits!

As you may have guessed from the photo, the chickens are finally here!

They're still chicks, but not quite babies anymore as you can see from their size compared to my hand and the cat carrier. Right is how we brought them home from Michelle Chandler's house where she'd been generously keeping them with her chicks while we scrambled around trying to get everything set up for them. We put all 6 of them in the cat carrier, and got them home as quickly as possible. Learning experience, make sure there's something on the floor of the carrier or they'll slide around on the plastic at every single turn. That sliding stresses them out, and trying to cram something in under them after the fact is a bit of a challenge, and stresses them out even more. But even with all of that, we all got home safe and sound.

We picked up the chicks Saturday, and they stayed  in their coop on Sunday. But yesterday evening, we tried introducing them to the run. In the coop they're a bit standoffish, but happy to come over for food. In the run on the other hand we're actually a source of normal for them so while they were getting used to the run they spent most of their time clustered around the Lady of the House or I as we sat in there with them. Once they got more used to us they moved off and explored the area a bit. They all have very different personalities that we'll be talking about more as we follow the growing chickens. It looks like we ended up with 4 Americauanas, 1 Welsummer, and 1 we're not quite sure yet.

We definitely have one dominant bird, the very light colored one that stands out from the rest, she's a bit larger and a lot more determined to get what she wants than the others, and the others aren't inclined to disagree. The Welsummer which is Top Left staring at the lens of the camera is the most adventurous, but least focused on spending time around the other chickens. She investigates everything, and every time we put a treat like worms or bugs in she's the one that gets them. The others are too busy staring at them or trying to figure it out, she figures it out with her mouth.
One of our big concerns with the chickens was making sure Rico wasn't a problem, so we went to trying to get him used to the chickens right away. There are two basic ways that people tend to make sure dogs don't kill chickens. After the dog kills one, strap the chicken carcass to their neck for a week and let it rot while keeping them tied outside, and the other is what we're doing which is called desensitization training which is a positive mostly method. We tend to try to shy away from aversive training methods like tying a dead chicken to the dog. For desensitization training you bring the dog towards the exciting thing (Chickens), and find where the dog can still pay attention to you. You do obedience training and reward the dog for ignoring the chickens. You do this getting closer and closer until the dog can be right next to the chickens. We're only on day 1 of it, but so far it seems to be doing well. We are still doing this on leash, but we hope to have it so he can be off leash while we do chicken chores without being a problem, though he'll never be unsupervised around chickens.

Chickens aren't the only thing going on around here of course, as the rabbits continue to grow. We're preparing for the next breeding cycle to start. On Thursday we're going to be doing the first breedings with Twilight bred to Umbra, and Dawn bred to Dorado. Friday we'll do Halley and Comet. Hopefully this time both will have live litters so we can see how they do with two litters in the hutch. We actually expect it to work out fairly well given how they've reacted this time to sharing space while there's a litter on the ground. Both girls have been very protective of the babies, and while I haven't been able to confirm both of them feeding the babies, I know that Halley at least goes in and checks on the babies as much as their mother Comet.

This round we have one rabbit already showing Dorado's paternal influence in the set of its ears. Below Left the left of the three babies has Dorado's ears. For comparison Bottom Left is Dorado in all of his studly glory. Overall though we're happy with how the sisters litter is doing, and while the two of them don't have the best temperament, I think that it is nice to have the two of them together to keep each other company. If we can't get both breeding at the same time it won't be as good obviously because we'd be feeding twice the mother maintenance amount per litter, but it may well be worth it for happiness's sake anyhow. That's something we'll be watching and evaluating over time.

Speaking of happiness, and we don't have  a photo of them today, but Twilight's older litter is very happy, and we'll be sorry to see them go which will be happening soon. It's a shame that both of the blue kits are male because we don't need males, but they are both GREAT examples of American Blue. If they were female we'd be keeping them hands down. But, the genetic lottery wasn't that kind.

Twilight's current babies are also doing very well. As with her last litter, they're bigger than usual, and noticeably bigger than Dawn's and Comet's litter. We swear the blues grow faster, but it could just be coincidence. Getting good photos of them continues to be a challenge, even more so right now because we've done some re arranging of the hutches.

Bottom you can see the new arrangement of where Twilight and Umbra's hutches are. To try to avoid the problems we had last summer with heat, specifically with Umbra's heat sterility we've moved them into the woods. I'm considering moving the other hutches off into the woods as well. The micro climate is much cooler, they're in shade all day but still can see the sun, and are still close by. So far they seem to be happy with it, but the pictures from those hutches definitely come out a bit dark! Signing off for now, but on Thursday hopefully we'll have more chicken news for you.

So many kits on the ground, but not as many as we'd like.

As seems to be the refrain at the moment, a lot is going on right now. Less than last week due to the downpour over the weekend that kept me from working on the multiple outdoor projects.

Mid way through a busy week with lots of good things happening!

Our ever curious older litter greets the day, and the white baby has an eye to adventure it seems. That one always has been the most curious and most out going. But, they're no where near the only young rabbits to talk about and show you today!

Constructing the new hutch.

Among all of the other things going on, every time I have a spare hour when it's not raining, I work on the new hutch. By other things going on I mean 4 does who will be giving birth in the next week or so, plants growing, preparing for the Hilltown Seed Saving Network seedling swap on Saturday, and failing to dig enough new beds fast enough. But, the new hutch is important and progress is being made, and for once we're getting progress photos!

Step one for building any hutch is the base, and that's the frame holding the wire. To minimize how much disgusting build up we end up with we attach the wire to the bottom of the floor rectangle. The first hutches we did this using staples, and for about 3 months this was fine. Since then we've moved on to small blocks of 2x4 waste nailed regularly around the bottom of the frame to hold the wire on. It works well, and while there is some give it isn't so much as to be a problem, and the wire doesn't pop off. Something I've learned from experience is don't drive any of the nails on the blocks holding the wire in fully until you have the whole bottom stretched and properly in place. Trying to pull things apart is more of a pain in the ass than it is to go around securing the screen.

Unfortunately what we didn't get photos of is the attaching the various cross supports step of the process, which is a gigantic pain in the ass, and a big object lesson in measure twice, cut once. I remembered to do that for all of the more complex angled cuts for the verticals, but the photo Left shows where I didn't. You'll note the somewhat scattered layout of the pallet bits that are making up the second level. That is because I completely botched measuring the length the wood blocking off the nesting area needed to be, by exactly the width of the support structure. Fortunately I was able to find a place to put those errant bits of wood, but it definitely made me feel like a bit of an idiot. Sometimes the right thing to do is put down your tools, and walk away because you're just not paying enough attention. That's what I did with covering that shelf.
Speaking of the second level that's another set of photos that didn't come out. Unfortunately I was the one taking those instead of the Lady of the House and they were too dark to salvage for the blog. We will get more photos of that at another point, but the concept is a second level over the planned nesting area.  You can get a good look at the inside of the nesting area Right. It is a narrow tunnel running the depth of the hutch with a narrow entrance up at the front. One of the things we've learned is that the private areas actually have a bit more space than the rabbits really want most of the time, so this is smaller, and is in concept designed to simulate a breeding tunnel. The design complication with that is, it's now too small for us to reasonably get in to check on the kits, especially without putting our faces right at "please chomp on my face" level for Twilight who this larger hutch is intended for. To compensate for that, I'm going to be putting a lift door to get into the nesting area on the facing side in the photo Right. Convenience is really important for us to keep in mind at all times when designing a hutch because we do have to make sure cleaning isn't so onerous that we don't have time to do it.
Left is a photo demonstrating why you should make damn sure you're not getting hideously warped lumber for your projects. Notice that the top of the back is nice and flush with the edge of the top 2x4, and notice how the bottom has a bit of pallet flush with the edge of the 2x4 so I could secure the board in place. I grabbed wood quickly at the lumber yard, and ended up with one good board and one bad. The good one is ending up being used for the door that people will be seeing, and the bad one is going on the back. It'll do fine, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and it definitely bugged me as I was putting it on.

 Speaking of the door, Right is a good progress photo of it. There will be one more 1x12 fitted into the door, and the rest of it will be wire so we can see in. One of the big things I've been learning is lightening doors is really important BUT (big but) the weight to strength ratio has to be good enough they don't play the games one of the doors on the growing out hutch does where you have to use a lot of force to open or close it. I'm figuring using real angle bracing on the inside, and heavy hinges on a light weight frame should help. We'll see where that actually goes with this hutch. Another major difference with this hutch and the doors is the central structural support. It'll make moving around inside the hutch a little more of a pain for humans, but I think it'll make the doors less likely to stick, jam, and warp. All a learning experience. As you can see it isn't done yet, but I'm making good progress day by day.

This new hutch isn't being built near any of the older hutches, and is actually in the edge of the woods line. It's there for a specific reason. Last summer Umbra got heat sterility. Initially we'd thought the house would provide good enough sun shelter, and that turned out to just be flat out incorrect. So this year we're moving the hutches into the edge of the woods where they get good shade, and a cooler micro climate since they're right by moving water. I don't have specific temperature measurements but it is noticeably cooler. The biggest challenge with this is getting the hutches positioned so they are stable on the rough ground which will mostly consist of me kicking and hammering areas flat. The second is carrying the hutches. The Lady of the House isn't strong enough to get a fully built hutch far. To deal with this, I'm asking friends who are up semi regularly to help move the hutches. Hopefully we'll be able to get photos of the operation. So for today, enjoy our woodland morning, and Tuesday we will check back in on the bunnies and the aftermath of the seedling swap.