# Baby Animals of Fiber Arts



## MDKatie

Here's a thread for baby animals belonging to our fiber artists! There's nothing cuter than baby animals! 


Here are my lambs, triplets born 2/14. One is now a bottle lamb, since Momma didn't like that one was white when the other 2 were dark!

Oh, and a pic of one of our baby bunnies too!


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## lambs.are.cute

ahhhh sooo cute. you are making me jealous. I've been out in my barn as much as possible telling my ewes that they need to lamb NOW. just one please? for now?


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## Marchwind

MDKatie thank you for starting this thread . Your babies are precious! What kind of sheep to you have? Bottle babies are fun but a pain in the backside when they get older.

Is that a baby angora bunny?


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## Kasota

Oh, they are so precious!!!! I wish I could snuggle with them! You must be very proud! Ewe lambs or ram lambs? There's something so wonderful about a kid holding a bunny....


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## MDKatie

Marchwind said:


> MDKatie thank you for starting this thread . Your babies are precious! What kind of sheep to you have? Bottle babies are fun but a pain in the backside when they get older.
> 
> Is that a baby angora bunny?


I've got some purebred Southdown (the standard, not babydoll) sheep, and 2 crossbred Romney/Southdown ewes. This ewe is one of the crosses, so the little lambs are 3/4 Southdown, 1/4 Romney. I find it hilarious that 2 lambs came out black (natural colored) and 1 looks like a purebred Southdown! And these babies are all rams! I'm thinking this bottle lamb would be a great 4-H wether project for a kid!

The bunny is a New Zealand White...I wish it was an angora though! I bet baby angoras are adorable!

Maybe Kasota has some pics of baby angoras? :grin:


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## raccoon breath

These pics didn't organize right and are confusing. Let me try again..This is Penny..baby pic and now at 5 mths. Her back is normally thicker..recently molting.


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## raccoon breath

And this is a young pic of Sheldon and then another now, at 4 months


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## Kasota

Rats. I cannot see RB's images. Just boxes that say "Attached Image." I can see the other pictures - just not RB's.


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## raccoon breath

I couldn't see the ones in the second post earlier, but can see both posts pics now. I saw some error messages when trying to come to this website earlier. Maybe problems with it today or too many of us here overloading the site with our pics. lol


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## Miz Mary

BABY LAMBIES !!! They are SO cute !! Do they have names ?!







Some may have seen already , but this is my baby 9 week old Lionhead Bunny , Sophia !


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## MDKatie

The bunnies are so cute! 

The lambs don't have names...but I definitely need a name for my orphan boy. I was thinking Han Solo. :facepalm:


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## Kasota

I can see Miz Mary's new bunny picture! Oh, so cute!


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## raccoon breath

I tried to reload the pics and failed. Maybe my internet speed is too slow today. I give up.


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## hotzcatz

On March 20th, there should be some new baby bunnies around here, but until then, here's some previous baby pictures:









That's Hillside Sunshine the bunny and Katie the Pest when Sunny was a young bunny. He looks to be about five or six weeks old since he's fuzzy but not with very long fur yet.









This is Sunny and Twinkle when they are about eight to twelve weeks old, possibly a bit older. They still have the green ink in their ears from their tattoos. The darker bluish sort of colored one, Twinkle, is the sire of the upcoming litter but it was just started today so it will be a month before there are babies.









I'm not sure which one he is, but one of those in there is Twink, I think. They are about two or possibly three days old in this picture.


Here is a different litter that is just a few hours old, if even that:









Same litter about a week later:









One of the tortoiseshell ones (the pale tawny brown ones) is Hillside Jasmine and the white one (Ruby Eyed White aka "albino") is Hillside Iris, but in this picture they don't have names yet. Baby bunnies don't get names until they are about six to eight weeks old since it takes about that long to determine their gender. Plus, baby bunnies are so delicate, it's best not to get overly attached to them until they are a bit older.


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## Marchwind

MDKatie how about naming your orphan Oliver as in Oliver Twist.

Raccoon Breath I see nothing, not even boxes with x's in them. Check your privacy settings for your photos too.


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## raccoon breath

Its not important now. There's lots of baby bunny pics. Maybe whenever my angora goat has her babies, I can post those assuming Old Bessie (my computer) is willing and able. I'll have to talk sweet with her. lol


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## raccoon breath

Yahoo!! My angora goat was due on Sun. Tues night she had light contractions, then they stopped. I watched her have a few tonight, then they stopped. At 12:02 am (this morning), a big baby buck was born. :banana:


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## raccoon breath

Well, looks like only one baby was born. Who is the father though?? It's either the black one with blue eyes or the brown on the left in the pic with a brown and a black. Who knows


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## Taylor R.

Your big boys are just a precious as your baby, raccoon breath! Some day, when we're able to have goats, I wonder if I could talk my husband into Angoras. For some odd reason, the man who attended college on a meats judging scholarship is totally freaked out by the idea of eating meat goats, so I've been looking for another direction


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## MDKatie

Cute little angora kid! And those bucks are too funny! 



I lost my little bottle lamb this morning, the white one.  Poor little guy, I think he had a bacterial stomach thing going on and I just couldn't help him.


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## MamaRed

Love the baby pics!


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## raccoon breath

MDKatie - As much as I tell myself that these things happen and it's natures way, its one of the hardest parts about raising animals you care about. If that little white lamb was mine, it would have been my favorite. :grouphug:

Those bucks have been silly goof balls since the day I got them. lol


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## Miz Mary

MDKatie, SO sorry to you , thats hard ...... Makes me wonder if the mama knew something .... Hens know if eggs are not fertile and kick them out of the nest ..... 
((( HUGS ))) Losing an animal is the worstest ...


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## Kasota

((((MD Katie))))) I am so, so sorry! It's always hard to lose one. 

RB, the pictures are priceless. Does he have a name?


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## Marchwind

Rest in peace little lamby . It is hard especially when you have so much emotionally invested.


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## raccoon breath

Kasota - A friend wants him to be named Curly, which is perfect because he's a joker. My husband wants him to be named Khan, after The Wrath Of Khan. He was watching that just before the bundle of joy arrived. Since the little guy is such a spaz, insomniac, hyperactive, goofball, I'm thinking Flash. I'll show you here in a couple pics where he wont sit still! lol He's 1 1/2 days old in these pics. 

First 3 pics - See what I mean? He's always moving. LOL Just crack me up because all of the other goat babies born here (and there's been quite a few but not a ton) sleep most of the time the first week to 2 weeks. Not him. Continuing on..

The next three will show little man from the side where you can see (maybe) that his nose is brown-ish. I believe Homer, the tan buck, is his father. The goof ball gene was passed on. ha ha Second is him taking a break to check out the stump. He was chasing (yes, running this early and not clumsy about it) the dog up and down the alley between animal pens. Last one, you'll see Randy, my 4 year Navajo angora buck in the background and Nadine, also a Navajo angora. Yes, here coat looks a little shabby. She gets very nervous when she's pregnant so I use scissors taking a little off here and there just to get buy until her fright passes after the baby is born. We'll even her out soon. Dash's father is a colored angora and Dash has his coat (tighter curls with yoke). Navajo angoras look like wavy haired beauties when born. 

The top one will be a video of my spazzy guy. Sorry for the mess. Just ignore that. He's following us as we are cleaning up and feeding everyone.


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## hotzcatz

Ooooh! Shiny fiber! On the hoof! What a lovely collection of fiber critters! How often do fiber goats get sheared? Do they produce much fiber each year? Too bad we've moved into town, I doubt my DH (or the neighbors) would be all that pleased with a little goatie running around in the back yard. Do they make much noise? Maybe they'd never know.


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## raccoon breath

This breed is quiet and laid back. You could totally hide it from your neighbors. ha ha I shear twice a year. They are about 6" long then. Skirted, does fleece weight yearly is over 8 lbs and bucks are over 10.


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## Kasota

RB, he is waaaay tooo cute!!!! Thank you for posting the pictures! He certainly seems like he's full of jazz!


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## Miz Mary

What a cutie !!!! He will be a joy to watch grow up !


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## raccoon breath

Yes, he'll be a lot of fun and that mohair. (I'm squealing with joy!) The days of purchasing "high quality mohair" that ends up being filled with nits are over for me (those fleeces you get really excited about when you purchase them online, then are totally let down). I can keep the animals healthy and grow it my way


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## Kasota

And will you be marketing some of those sparkling locks? Or will you be hoarding them all for yourself? 

LOL! (I can guess the answer...)


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## raccoon breath

I'll be hoarding  The first clip kid fleeces are the best! Lets talk more in 5 or 6 months and if you trade me something, I'll send you some. I love cookies! (HINT)


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## Kasota

Hmmmmm... oh this could be fun. 

What kind of cookies? I'm a pretty good cookie baker. Always use parchment paper to get that golden crisp bottom without the oil... 

Have you ever noticed how delightful thread drift can be?


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## raccoon breath

That would be awesome Kasota! Oatmeal and chocolate chip are favorites but really anything is good. There's always a little extra and this is a good trade.

Yes, pleasantly drifting briefly, but it did sidetrack me so I didn't post pics of my silkworm babies


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## hotzcatz

Silkworm babies? Aren't they really tiny?

Hmm, silk and mohair! Sounds like an excellent scarf or shawl, don'tcha think?

Did the little mohair guy get a name yet? 

Thread drift is a lot easier than snow drifts, don'tcha think?


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## raccoon breath

I can't post the tiny ones. I guess I could if I pulled out my microscope. It takes pictures  I have better pics of the worm just prior to spinning the cocoon and a couple that already spun cocoons. There's a couple REALLY BIG ones and I'll let those go ahead and come out of the cocoon naturally to lay eggs. The rest will go painlessly before they make a hole in the silk. Then it's not a giant continuous piece anymore. 

Silk and mohair is amazing!!  When I've experimented with blends, I found that 50 to 60% angora, 10 to 20% silk then add either kid mohair, alpaca, or fine wool and you have something lovely. 

I've been calling little man Flash. He's a runner. lol Its the oddest thing to me seeing a kid so young being so energetic this young. I'm going to have to repeat this breeding in the future if the fiber all turns out nice in a few months. 

During our heavy snows, its the snow drifts that are a huge amount of work. You shovel your path and plow the roads only to find that a big gust of wind filled the road and your paths in. Some winters, it's like paddling uphill. Its frustrating and exhausting.


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## Kasota

WOW!!!! 

Oh, this is going to be fascinating! I hope you will keep posting more pictures of silkworms. You could write a story. The Silkworm Saga. Instead of "Shear to Shawl" you would have "Egg to Extraordinaire!" "Worms to Wearables."


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## raccoon breath

Worms To Wearables! I love that. ha ha I think I'll do it. My microscope takes really cool pics of fecal eggs (livestock worm control) so why not silkworm eggs and the babies? I have some lower lenses that might do the job.


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## Marchwind

Several years back we had a member who raised silk worms and posted extensively about it. There is also the website http://www.wormspit.com. The guy who runs it is also on Ravelry.


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## Kasota

RB? I have one more question......


What are their names? 


:rotfl:


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## MDKatie

And how do you tell them apart?  How cool are silk worm babies?!


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## Marchwind

The eggs are beautiful


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## lambs.are.cute

Here's my first babies of the year. Romney/east Fresian quad boys.


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## lambs.are.cute

And my bathroom 24 hrs later with a shipment of chicks that needed some tlc and one of the quads (in the blue towel) warming up from hypothermia. Needless to say yesterday was long and busy.


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## Taylor R.

Those babies are all so precious, and momma is the most dreamy chocolate color!


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## Miz Mary

AWWWW !! I LOVE your bathroom ....it has BABIES in it !!! Chicks are so fun , and lambs are nothing but adorable !!!


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## DragonFlyFarm

Here is Lil and her mom Dot. Lil arrived Sunday, and is quite brave for her tiny size


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## Taylor R.

Squeal!!!!


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## Miz Mary

EEEE !!! Dragonfly , what breed are thoes ?!?!? Absolutely gorgeous !!!!


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## Kasota

I am loving this thread more and more! Thanks for taking the time to post pictures!!! 

Love the colors! 

And every bathroom should have babies in it. Too cute! How is the little lamb doing?


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## lambs.are.cute

Sadly he didn't make it. He just gave up and there wasn't anything I could do. Not really a great way to start my lambing season. (-23 chicks, and -1 lamb). So 1 lambed, 7 to go including my purebred Romneys. 

The rest of my family was not impressed with the bathroom take over. They claim it still smells like sheep and chicken but I can't smell it  

The ewe is black black black underneath and about half way out she starts fading to that brownish color. It doesn't seem to effect the strength or softness of the fiber and it makes really cool yarn. I don't card her wool and spin from the tip of the locks always so it is consistent along the yarn and it ends up heathered.


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## Marchwind

Love all the babies . Sorry for your losses LAC

Dragonfly that momma and baby are so adorable. What breed are they?


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## MDKatie

Aw, sorry about your quad baby, L.A.C. 

And cute baby, Dragonfly! Are those Jacobs?


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## DragonFlyFarm

Ms. Mary and Marchwind, MDKate is correct - Dot and Lil are Jacobs. Dot is supposed to have horns....Last years ewe out of Dot has the breed required horns, I think Lil is going to take after her mamma. I'm still waiting for Mary to lamb, she is HUGE. Keep your fingers crossed for twins. Loving the pics of every ones babies. LAC I'm so sorry you lost your little ones. I hope the rest of yoru season goes well. BTW a bathroom could smell WAY worse than sheep and chickens


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## Marchwind

I've never seen a polled Jacob. I love the black and white Jacobs. Let us know when Mary has a little lamb


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## Kasota

LAC, I'm so sorry for your loss. (((((hugs))))


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## lambs.are.cute

Thanks. 12 years of lambing and I still haven't gotten over the excitement of new babies or the sadness of losing one. I'm still waiting on the rest of the ewes......... how long do you think elise will last? 



I let the babies out today and took my camera so here they are. 

the little 6 lb boy right after birth 

coming out of the barn

The TROUBLE maker

and the one who won't stay still to take a photo of


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## Kasota

Oh, my heavens!!! They are soooo cute!!! I want to snuggle them.


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## Kasota

Your "troublemaker" reminds me of two lambs that I had. I named them Lewis and Clark because they were always off exploring. It would drive their mama nuts. One day they discovered a tiny lamb-sized gap in a fence and figured out that if they could squeeze through they would find themselves in my stallion's pasture. He was a drop-dead gorgeous Orphan Drift line buckskin Quarter Horse. And he just flat loved those lambs. 

They would sneak out and go visiting. Sometimes they would get tired and lay down and take a nap and he would literally stand over top of them and guard them. I had a lot of coyotes in the area and he was not going to let one get his lambs. Sometimes he would get tired of standing in one spot and he would nudge them with his nose until they got up. Sometimes they would bounce around under him and he looked sooo hilarious trying to walk and not step on lambs....he would lift his back leg waaay up and crane his neck around to make sure when he put his foot down there was no lamb underneath.


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## Miz Mary

So sorry for your loss LAC ..... The other babies are flat adorable !! 

DFF, I haven't seen Jacobs without horns.... Way cool !!! I bet that's beautiful fleece to spin up !!!!!!


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## Marchwind

Look at those sturdy little legs  oh I just want to hug them and bury my face in their fur. 

I'd say your big old girl is going to pop today if she didn't pop last night.


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## DragonFlyFarm

LAC Your babies are adorable! That poor mama of yours is HUGE....and looking like she's about ready for those babies to be out......Like my Mary I'm sure she's just waddling around waiting for "the day"


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## MDKatie

Two new lambs were born this morning. An 11 lb boy and a 12 lb girl!


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## Kasota

MDKatie - congratulations!! They are cute as bugs!


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## Miz Mary

MDKAtie, they are SOOOOOOOO squooshy looking !! What breed ?!


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## MDKatie

Miz Mary said:


> MDKAtie, they are SOOOOOOOO squooshy looking !! What breed ?!


They are Southdowns! Not the babydoll kind, but the American (big) kind. :happy2:


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## lambs.are.cute

sooo cute mdkate. 

that ewe is still hanging on. She can't really get a good night's sleep since she can't really lay down well so she's been catching naps. Needless to say she in a terrible mood and NOBODY is messing with her, NOBODY. They just move out of her way fast. Poor girls. What scares me is she's bigger than the one that just had quads. And she's my milk sheep........... so anything more than twins and I get nothing again...... :sob:no fresh made sheep's milk cheese.


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## MDKatie

I'm overdue in updating this thread! I've had 3 more lambs born, and last night 2 goat kids arrived!


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## Miz Mary

Katie, Congrats !!! Thay are so adorable, and Im sure you have been busy with all of your babies !!!


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## raccoon breath

Baby bunnies (satin angora) have arrived. WEEEEE!!!! Pics are from a week ago. It's amazing how much their coloring changes and brightens. Their eyes are opening and ears are standing up. Soooo darn cute!


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## MDKatie

raccoon breath said:


> Baby bunnies (satin angora) have arrived. WEEEEE!!!! Pics are from a week ago. It's amazing how much their coloring changes and brightens. Their eyes are opening and ears are standing up. Soooo darn cute!


So cute! They look velvety soft!


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## raccoon breath

They are velvety soft. 

I WANT LAMBS!! I think I have too much on my plate but I can want.


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## Marchwind

I miss the baby bunnies. I was always fun to look at them on day one and try to guess the colors.

Congratulations on the new babies MDKatie.

It always surprises me. Everyone I know in Minnesota who had sheep always sheared them before the lambs were due. But it seems here in Michigan and other places they shear after lambing.


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## raccoon breath

Without knowing anything about these kits and just looking at them, I would have never guessed I had coppers, chestnuts and a chocolate. Not in a million years. Here's a pic of the kits on day 1.


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## SvenskaFlicka

First Icelandic lamb of the year! My mom posted these photos to. Facebook, so I am shamelessly reposting them here. 

He's a little silver-moorit lamb.


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## SvenskaFlicka

He's got a mischievous look to him!


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## Kasota

Oh, they are all so precious! I just want to snuggle them. 

I used to love looking across a pasture when the lambs got the bouncies. They would bounce and bounce and leap and cavort all over the field. One would start...and before I knew it they were all on invisible pogo sticks. LOL!!! 

Svenska - will your little one keep that color as he grows or does it change?


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## MDKatie

Marchwind said:


> It always surprises me. Everyone I know in Minnesota who had sheep always sheared them before the lambs were due. But it seems here in Michigan and other places they shear after lambing.


In cold temps like that it's good to shear before lambing so the ewes are more likely to lamb inside a barn or under some sort of shelter. Here it gets cold, but not (usually) so freezing. I do make sure to crutch the ewes and shear bellies, so it's easier for the lambs to find the teats!


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## MDKatie

SvenskaFlicka said:


> He's got a mischievous look to him!


He's cute!


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## SvenskaFlicka

Kasota said:


> Svenska - will your little one keep that color as he grows or does it change?


He's a little silver moorit. He's got sugar lips and little bits of silver around his ears, so as he grows, his undercoat will grow out silver. Eventually, he'll be about the same color as his momma. (And, yes, fleeces like that really are lovely to spin up! Simply drool worthy! 

We usually shear after lambing for a couple reasons. One is that we like to give them their annual Bo-Se shot while they are caught, and you have to give them that shot after lambing. Icelandic sheep need a LOT more selenium than other sheep breeds, so they get a Vitamin B and Selenium complex every year. Keeps them happy and healthy! 

Then of course, with Icey's you also have the fall shearing. That's where the good fiber is!


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## hotzcatz

Such cute lambs, kids and kits! We were supposed to have two English angora does give birth last week. One was due on Wednesday, one on Sunday but no babies. Sigh! 

Then, today, while I was out feeding the bunnies, one of the does was in the corner where she had a pile of wool although it was out on the wire with a breeze drifting through it. And then there was a tiny little squeaking noise! She was a day late, but there are babies! Of course she doesn't put them in the nest box but along side. Oh wellos.










This is Toffee and her nest along the side of the nest box instead of inside.










These babies are less than five minutes old. One still has the placenta next to it, although Toffee came through and cleaned that up in another minute.

This is the same litter an hour or two later:









The picture is a little fuzzy, but I think there's ten of them in there.










There's several agouti (dark with light colored ears), at least one black (all dark including the ears), a couple of lilac torts maybe? (the light colored ones which get pinker out towards the ends), an opal? Maybe a copper in there? Hard for say. The mom is an agouti and the sire was a lilac tort so they could be almost any color. I'm really hoping that one that seems a little bit red comes out with red, I've not got any red in the herd at the moment.

They aren't at the cute stage yet. That won't happen for a couple of weeks. 

This is Toffee as well as Twinkle's first litter. I don't know if she will be able to take care of ten of them and I don't have any other nursing does to help feed them. I'll have to feed the doe as well as possible and hope for the best, I guess.

Although this is only day one and there's ten of them. I will be amazed if there is still ten of them by this time next week. Baby bunnies are so delicate and if there's any problems at all, then there's usually less baby bunnies. The mom bunny having too many to feed can be a problem. I'll give her some oat groats, rolled oats, lots of her usual pellets and some powdered milk chunks. That should help a bit.


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## raccoon breath

SvenskaFlicka - I am so for shameless re-posting! I do it all the time! He's adorable and does look mischievous in the one pic. lol I have a baby goat buck that's been getting that expression a lot. Naughty little guy is learning what NO is this week as I try to teach him not to dart out every gate that opens.


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## Marchwind

I was always taught to look at their bellies as well and the ears to figure color. That is a huge litter. Hopefully she can feed them all. Can you get hold of Calfmana? We always supplemented our pregnant and nursing does as well as the babies as they grew with a table spoon or two. It is really high in protein and rich in neutriants. It was intended for calfs but is great for the Angoras.


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## Kasota

Oh, those baby bunnies are so TINY! Egads! What a batch of them she has! I hope they do well! It will be fun to see more pictures as they grow!


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## MDKatie

Cute little new bunnies!


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## hercsmama

Loving all the baby pics!!
but I'm dying to know what happened with LAC's "big Bertha" momma? I think her name was Elsie?

Good lord if she has held out until now she must have morphed into an elephant!


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## raccoon breath

I was reading about how breeders handle these big litters to increase survival rates. One marked half the litter in the ear with a black pen, separated the nest box w/ kits from mom and for feedings taking the box to mom or mom to the next box with half the litter removed each time alternating those with ear marks and those without. Have to have to time to do this and the milk production for it to work.


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## Marchwind

For a first time mom that might be a bit risky. I would be very concerned that it would make her nervous and she might reject them or worse


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## raccoon breath

I'd wanna save them all 

I think I'll stick with goats. They aren't as fragile.


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## hotzcatz

So far they are ALL still there! Toffee is being an excellent mama! 










She was voracious this morning and chowed right into the rolled oats in her dish. She now has two bigger cage cups filled with 18% protein bunny pellets. She has a cup of rolled oats. Today at the feed store, I picked up oat groats and calf manna so she has bunny pellets, rolled oats, oat groats, calf manna and unlimited water. Tomorrow I may see if she want some chunks of dried milk. Sometimes the does like that.










There's still ten of them there! Amazing. Well, it's still only day one. I'll not get too happy about the idea of ten bunnies for at least another two weeks. A first time mom with a huge litter, if they all survive, I'll be amazed, but I'm hopeful.

As for colors, it looks like four Opals, one Blue, one Black, two Agouti, a chocolate and a chocolate agouti. One or two of those Opal may be Lynx, not sure yet. Hard to tell Lilac from Blue at this age. No Ruby Eyed White which is really surprising. Both bunnies are supposed to have white (albino) dams which would mean they absolutely must have a recessive for white. Wouldn't that be a 25% chance for albino? Each one would have had a 25% chance to be Ruby Eyed White, seems odd that there isn't one. The doe was one I traded for, so if she doesn't have a REW in the next litter, I may have to hold her pedigree in question. But, that's tomorrow's problems. Today, it's feed the hungry doe.


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## lambs.are.cute

Update:

The monster ewe lasted 9 days after that photo. They were the longest none days ever and one of my other ewes was limping for days after getting in Elise's way. Then she had triplets. Black triplets...... She's pure white so it supprised me. 
Here she is with her babies ( the black ones)


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## lambs.are.cute

Sorry it has taken me so long to post this. This year has gone horribly wrong for lambing and I just haven't had the spirit to post anything about them.


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## MDKatie

lambs.are.cute said:


> Sorry it has taken me so long to post this. This year has gone horribly wrong for lambing and I just haven't had the spirit to post anything about them.


 That stinks. I had a horrible year last year, but luckily this year was better.


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## SvenskaFlicka

I hope your year starts going better, LAC.

I was talking to my mom today, and our ewe Fury had a lamb! A little white girl! 

Fury was named such because she is an incredibly protective mother, and last year when mom was handling her lambs Fury BIT her! (Or did she bite my brother? I forget.) She also huffs and stomps and carries on when you are near her babies. She must be mellowing out. Today she only butted my mom. :teehee: 

She is a really wonderful mother, though. Just... protective.


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## hotzcatz

Day Two and still TEN babies. Toffee is being an EXCELLENT mom bunny! 










Although the little black one seems like he may have missed a feeding. Everyone else seems more round than he is. If he's still small and skinny looking tomorrow, I'll try feeding him from mom, although that doesn't always seem to work well.


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## hercsmama

LAC, I'm so sorry you are having a rough start to the year. Hopefully things will settle down and get better.
HC, that's awesome about the bunnies, not to be nasty, but they kind of remind me of baby rats..we had pet rats for years. How long until they get their fur and all the uber cutness?


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## Marchwind

That one little black on is looking a bit weak. If you can get him onto mom that would be great. I remember one year I had a big litter send the little runt would latch into mom and not let how. He was a fighter . I would find him often outside of the nest box, thankfully it was sumner and very warm out. I'll say a little bunny prayer for him.

LAC I'm sorry you are having around year. I hope things work out better for you and the sheep soon.

SvenskaFlicka that is funny about Fury. She must have some very strong instincts, good got her. If she were out in the wild she and her lambs would be sure to survive.


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## lambs.are.cute

The farm that I helped out at to learn sheep management/lambing had one called African violet. we just called her violent or later on killer. Something snapped in her brain for about 3 weeks after she had lambs and she scary. I was walking by her pen with a load of hay for the other ewes when she went through the fence and came after me. never knew I could jump a 4 foot fence. That fence she had gone through was a brand new 2x6 wooden fencing just for her and her lambs (who were also killers). She split all 4 2x6s in half and tore out of there like the barn was on fire, right after me. She was known to kill anything that would come into her pen - mostly roosters after her grain- and play with the dead thing for hours. I'm sure I heard the evil cackling and boy any nightmares about sheep feature her. 

After the 3 weeks she was the sweetest ewe and the biggest pushover but to survive those weeks you sure had to run fast and walk quiet. She wasn't a particularly good mother either but she sure was the shepherd's favorite ewe. She lasted 5 years until she turned on the lambs...........

BTW this was a 300 lbs Suffolk ewe.........:run:


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## Miz Mary

HUGS for LAC ..... hope the years ahead will be better for you ...the black babies are cute !!!

Thoes chocolate buns are gorgeous Hotcatz !!


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## SvenskaFlicka

My goodness, LAC! Your story makes me glad Fury is only a 100-and-so pound Icelandic!


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## hotzcatz

Wow, LAC, a 300# killer sheep? Ack! If we had a killer bunny, it'd only be 5# or so. I'd hate to have anything larger go berserk. Still, if any of the bunnies ever went to the dark side, they'd never get a date again. Temperament is something that is taken into consideration when breeding. Dozer, our first chocolate buck, is one of the friendliest bucks so when there's a choice between bunnies to breed, if one of them is his offspring, that's the one chosen.










The little black one is still there. Actually, they are ALL still there. Kinda amazing, IMHO, it's rare for a new doe to take such good care of her litter. Well, it's only day 3, we will see how things go. At the moment we are giving Toffee all the support we can. She is almost at the free feeding stage with the calf manna. Usually nursing moms just get a tablespoon full but she's getting a half cup each day. As well as her usual bunny pellets, oat groats and rolled oats. Maybe I'll make some oatmeal for her tomorrow morning. 

Yeah, they do look like tail-less rats, don't they, HercsMama? They are only three days old and they've improved a lot since they were born but they still have a long way to go to get to cute. Usually at about ten days to two weeks they look more like rabbits. They will have short hair and have their eyes open by then. Give them another two weeks and they will be cuter, but they don't get to the uber-cute stage until they are almost two months old.


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## hercsmama

Two months? I had no idea they grew that slowly.
It looks like Mom is doing an amazing job of it though, and even without the fur they are adorable. I used to love it when our rats had babies, something about them is just sweet to me.
I know, I know, I'm weird, but seriously, rats really are a very awesome pet, I had even crocheted leashes and harnesses for our two males, and they would both walk outside on them like little dogs. Gentle Ben used to sit up under our DD's hair all the time, and sleep.
Kinda miss 'em....:bored:


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## MDKatie

hercsmama said:


> I know, I know, I'm weird, but seriously, rats really are a very awesome pet, I had even crocheted leashes and harnesses for our two males, and they would both walk outside on them like little dogs. Gentle Ben used to sit up under our DD's hair all the time, and sleep.
> Kinda miss 'em....:bored:


I couldn't agree more! I used to breed rats. I had some minis, and some of the dumbo eared ones too. I loved them. I sometimes miss them too, but I don't want to clean any cages, so I'm ok with not having them anymore. :grin:


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## Taylor R.

Oooh Katie, I feel you on the cage cleaning. I am having to clean the brooder out 3 times a day (sometimes more!), plus the rabbit cage once a day (then the full emptying of bedding once a week). I thought water fowl were the only ones that were supposed to get everything all wet! My chicks keep throwing the paper towel that I use over the newspaper in their water dish, where water seeps down it and all over the cage. Every time they do it, I have to clean their cage.


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## Marchwind

Taylor try putting pine shavings down instead of newspaper/paper towel or put it over the top of news paper. It may help a bit.

I'm happy mom is doing such a great job.

Always loved our rats <3


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## hercsmama

We just had Hooded ones, but they were great!
Gentle Ben and his son Fred, used to always want oatmeal cookies for breakfast, of course they got them. Now the mama rats were a bit of another story, not nearly as sweet as the two males.


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## DragonFlyFarm

Those bunnies are darn cute now, can't wait to see them at two months! That's gonna be a whole lot of fuzzy jumpers! Love all these baby pics!


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## Kasota

My son used to have a pet rat named Pinkerton. Best pet ever. I love rats for pets. He was all black except for white feet. He used ride around on my shoulder and hide under my hair. Haven't thought of him in a good long while. Good ol' Pinkerton.


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## MullersLaneFarm

Angora Rabbits ....

ACHOO!!

I so wish I wasn't so darn allergic to Angora!!! I had a breeding pair myself for a while. They would sit quietly in my lap and let me spin from them ...

until ...

I would break out in hives and start wheezing.

And it wasn't all rabbits ... we raised meat rabbits for years and I tended to them with no problems. We still have some of their pelts and I have no reaction to them.

I gave away the angora rabbits (German ... champagne agouti), but had collected a lot of their fiber. I couldn't even spin that without my throat closing up!

Dambit! And I so love spinning a wool/angora combo...

sitting on the sidelines frumping


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## hotzcatz

One of my neices has pet rats that she is very fond of. They do seem to be engaging little critters. The domestic variety seem much friendlier than the wild ones.

Here's some bunnies you won't be allergic to, Cyndi, *pictures* of bunnies.











One week old English Angora babies from AJM's Toffee, an agouti doe & Hillside Twinkle, a lilac buck.

We are now down to eight, which was more or less what had been expected. The little black one continued to "not thrive". Even given extra feedings, he just didn't rally. Perhaps he had some sort of internal difficulties that weren't apparent. 

That was yesterday's loss. Today, one of the opals somehow wiggled through the wire into the space next door and managed to get too chilled. There is now a solid panel there so they can't wiggle through. So, now there are eight. They all seem fat and well fed, now, though.

Baby bunnies are so delicate. I keep thinking it would be better to make a more natural nest, some sort of dropped area with a rounded bottom sort of like what a dug out hole would be shaped like. That would keep the babies in a nice pile where they could stay warm. They'd also have to wiggle up hill to get out to where they'd get into trouble. If the mom bunny would have them in the nest box, that would save this sort of thing from happening, but not all mom bunnies like nest boxes.

They are one week old today. They are bigger, but still don't have their eyes open. They now can sort of sit up instead of laying every which way. Their colors are darker and they have a covering of fur instead of just skin and fuzz, but the fur is still very short and they still aren't cute yet.










Not sure what to name them all, either. Last year it was different types of light. The year before that it was flowers.


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## Marchwind

I'm sorry you lost the few bunnies . Don't you use oat straw in your nest boxes? My boxes had an edge to them probably2 1/2" to 3" high and a partial top. I filled them with soft oat straw and the nest was always so warm and inviting. The doe would blend her wool with the straw and make the beautiful cocoon for her and her babies. The babies count get out of the box unless the hopped and by then it didn't matter if they were out of not. The sheen on those bunnies is beautiful. It see one chestnut in there . My favorite!


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## Kasota

I'm sorry about the loss of the two bunnies.  I know it's not unexpected, but still... 

They sure look cute to me!


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## hercsmama

I agree, they are just darling!
So sorry about the two that passed.

Lambs.are.cute, how are you doing? Are things getting a bit better?


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## MDKatie

I'm loving seeing these baby bunny pics. It's so neat to see them grow, and I can't wait to see pics once their eyes open and they're more alert. :happy2:


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## lambs.are.cute

Yes things are getting better. No more lambs (yet?) and other than a lost ear tag no problems . I still have two ewes who haven't lambed but I'm thinking they aren't bred....... 

I'm getting geared up for shearing! All that lovely fluffy wool and being completely covered in lanolin.


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## Miz Mary

Thoes bunnies are so sweet !! Here is a place that carries nifty nesting boxes that go UNDER the cage .... think you'd have to cut a hole in the cage for it ?? Scroll down a bit to see them .... place has great prices on everything ! 

http://www.bassequipment.com/Cage+Accessories/Rabbit+Nesting+Equipment/default.aspx


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## hotzcatz

Well, now I kinda feel bad for posting pictures of baby bunnies. I knew they all aren't going to make it, especially when there is a huge litter with a new mom who didn't even put them in the nest box. There's so many things going against this litter that it's amazing there's any left alive at all. So, thank you for being concerned about the two (now three) lost ones, but don't take it to heart, it was almost inevitable. The chances of the whole litter being lost were really high when the doe didn't have them in the nest in the first place. The chances of a first time doe losing half or more if not all of her litter are really high. Baby bunnies are incredibly delicate and tiny as well as tasty so there's loads of things that want to eat them. So don't get attached to the cute little baby bunnies until they are at least three or four weeks old. Better to wait until they are several months old, actually. 

So far, believe it or not, the doe is doing pretty well with her litter. Especially since she's the only one with babies at the moment. If another doe would have had a litter they do better, not quite sure why. I've had two does share litters before. I'd split a big cage in two and put a doe in each side, but one got under a corner of the wire and wanted the same nest box to have her litter as the first doe. They seemed happy together so I removed the cage separator and they raised their babies together. I'd marked the babies ears from the first litter with a Sharpie marker so I could tell who's was who's.

Well, here's the Surviving Seven, we will see what tomorrow brings.










They are now nine days old so they still don't have their eyes open. That should happen within the next week. Two or three weeks from now we shouldn't have to worry about losing any more, but don't get attached to them yet.

Maybe for the next litter, I'll try one of those dropped nest boxes. That should keep babies from crawling out of the nest and the doe shouldn't be able to have them next to the nest box if the nest box is a hole. Although, I'm sure the doe will figure out some way to cause trouble, they always do.


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## Marchwind

Don't feel bad about posting, it's life's journey and it happens. For a first time mom that was a huge litter and as you said she has done incredibly well with them all. A does only has so many teats. 

MizMary I always thought those below lever nest boxes were good. But like HotzCatz I had my bunnies out in the open, not in a barn or other building so they just made them easier prey for anything that wanted them plus they would be more exposed on all sides to the elements. At least for the all wire below level nests, those are nice though.


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## bergere

Baby bunnies are soooo adorable!


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## MDKatie

Hotzcatz, please don't feel bad. We all know and understand the realities. She's done very well so far for a first timer with such a huge litter! I'd still like to ooh and aah over them, though.


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## Taylor R.

hotzcatz, there is SO much color in that litter! I hope momma keeps up the good work for you.


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## Miz Mary

Its so neat to watch the process of baby animals ...... I cant have sheep here, so I get to see all that here .... and if I could, I'd have baby bunnies every day !!! But then I couldnt keep them all ...... so I enjoy all of these posts , Thank y'all so much, I can get my "fix" !!


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## hotzcatz

Well, hopefully we've fixed the bunnies, too. Toffee got a box fix. She had been wetting on the carpet so her nest in the corner which was also on the carpet was becoming less than optimal because it was soaking wet with damp babies in it. I may move the nest box out of the corner, too, since sometimes bunnies pick a spot to go and that's where they are gonna go pretty much no matter what although she had been going on the carpet in front of the nest not quite realizing that it would spread through the carpet, I guess. We will see if she wets in the box or not, but I'm hoping outside the box. 

I got a box at the grocery store and put the baby bunnies in there so now they are in a nest box, even if it's not an official one. I figured a box that had once had carrots in it should smell pretty good to a bunny. 










Toffee had to check out the new box to see if it was something she'd approve of. Although she may have just been looking for carrots, too. I mean, that's what it says on the box, right?










The Surviving seven seem happy with their new box and now they will be dry and not damp around the edges anymore. 










Toffee did a quick box hop to see if it fit, I guess. Dunno if she will officially like the box or not. If she feeds them while they are in the box, then it will be a good thing.










Laying down and being bored is a good bunny response. I'll check on them later to make sure they are nice and plump and being fed. If so, this box should keep them dry and contained so there won't be any more losses. I also got a flat box from the grocery, so if she doesn't like this one, there is another one to try out. Her soaked carpet just wasn't working anymore and babies on the wire don't work well, either.


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## MDKatie

How appropriate it says Bunny Luv on it too!! I hope she likes it. My does re-arrange their cage if I don't put something in the right spot. :teehee:


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## raccoon breath

Uh oh! One of the baby rabbits escaped and is loose in the house. I've named them after Star Trek characters..Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura. Uhura, the naughty bunny, is the one on the loose.


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## raccoon breath

Mom lounging with the kids. They are 3 weeks, 2 days old and growing really fast now


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## hotzcatz

Cute bunnies RaccoonBreath! How old are they? They almost look shiny enough to be Satins? Will Uhuru be okay wandering around on her own? Good thing she's not an ensign, it's not good to be an ensign on an away team in Star Trek.


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## Kasota

I love seeing and reading about the whole saga as it plays out - even the sad bits. It's all part of raising critters. 

They are all adorable!!


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## raccoon breath

Kasota - a few of mine died too. I was warned ahead of time that even with normal sized litters, don't get attached for a few weeks because it happens. It still bugged me when I saw one of my biggest bite the dust.

Hotzcatz - LOLLLL. Yes, satin angoras. I have to really watch it with the flash with their shine or my pics don't turn out. I have to take a bunch to get a couple good pics. 3 weeks, 2 days. She'll be okay. She'll come running when her momma stomps the dinner bell here in a bit.


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## hotzcatz

So did Uhuru come back for dinner, Raccoon Breath? Satins are so pretty!

We're down to six, but I think we might be down to the last of the losses. They are now in a box, a box that is warm enough! They are being fed while they are in the box. It's been a couple of days since we've lost one, so maybe - not certain, but just maybe, we are at the point of not losing any more.










I'm getting hopeful that the remaining ones will survive. They are almost at the opening their eyes stage. They can kind of almost walk.










They are much bigger and stronger than they were twelve days ago when they were born.










They can jump with surprising vigor, although they aren't controlled about it yet. They sort of point and lurch, or just "sproing" in any old direction. I suppose if they had their eyeballs open, that would increase their navigational skills rather a lot.

I'm thinking maybe of names soon. Since mom is "Toffee", maybe candy names? Butterscotch, Snickers, Taffy, Caramel, Necco, Twix, Rolo, Wonka, Nestle, etc., etc?

The reason there's so many colors in this litter, Taylor, is because the sire is a lilac tortoiseshell. That color is created by all recessives except for one dominant on the "C" gene. If that "C" gene was two recessives "cc", then they'd be albino. So, whatever recessives the doe has gets doubled up and there are a lot of colors in the litter.

There seems to be two "agouti" (wild rabbit color, also called "castor" in other rabbit breeds), one "Opal" which is a dilute version of agouti, One "Cinnamon" which is a chocolate version of agouti, One Chocolate and one "Blue" which is a dilute version of Black.


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## Taylor R.

I had a blue Mini-Rex buck in my breeding stock when I was a kid (creatively named Blue, of course), and he was my favorite bunny of all time (don't tell Perry). The color genetics are very interesting..I knew they could get complicated, but never really learned much about them.


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## raccoon breath

Oh wow! So darn cute. So yours are 12 days and mine are now 26 days. Uhura showed up when mom stomped that foot. lol Its neat how the mommas communicate with little stomps. I saw their mom lick her paws then wipe her babies face today. So sweet. The babies are all really energetic now and escaping like mad when in the house. They can climb! One is a little monkey and will climb out then find my husband. His recliner has become a jungle gym for that little bunny. He'll climb my husband, hide under his beard and just play. We put a baseball hat on him and he peeks out the hole at the back of the hat, then does a 180 and starts pushing the hat across the table. lol They're big, really cute and have captured my heart!


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## Kasota

RB, those bunnies sure are shiney!!!


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## raccoon breath

Sure are. They are really shiny in the sun. When I spin satin angora from my copper colored rabbit, where the color is the brightest often looks almost metallic and makes shiny yarn. Too bad the color is bright through all of the fleece to make a copper yarn but it's a neat thing you see while spinning so kinda fun.  Its very pretty.


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## Bettacreek

Little REW English doe. I bought a trio, this little girl, a black buck and a lilac tort doe. I don't have anything for spinning, so I've just been hand spinning some fiber from the black. Very pretty string, lol. I've gone kind of butt-backwards... I buy the animals, then I try "spinning", and I still have no idea how to actually make anything from yarn.


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## Marchwind

Welcome to The Fold Bettacreek! Your baby is very cute . I think you are in good company as far as doing things butt-backward


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## Bettacreek

I figure this will be my motivation to learn, right? I've been interested for years, just never tried!


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## MDKatie

Baby bunny cuteness overload!! :happy2:


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## Miz Mary

WELCOME Bettacreek ! That bun is pure sweetness !!


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## raccoon breath

Bettacreek - Precious! I was backward too. I saw 2 baby angora goats in a Craigslist ad and that's when it all started for me. I brought them home and it was another year I think before I learned to spin. I didn't even know how to handle shearing or the skin parasites a fiber animal gets, but I know how to read and ask questions so I learned. At least there wont be a lot of fiber stacking up while you learn to spin like me. ha ha


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## Kasota

Welcome aboard, Bettacreek! Don't worry about not knowing everything yet. This place is chock full of enablers who will happily lead people down the garden path. Ask me how I know...


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## hotzcatz

More Bunnies! Yay, BettaCreek! Such a cutie, too! Everyone else's bunnies are cuter than mine. Oh well, I'll not show the pictures to the bunnies and then they will never know.

What color are the parents of your bunnies, RB? A chocolate and a tort? 










Fifteen day old bunnies. Now they can sit mostly right side up so it's a fuzzy pile with little ears instead of baby bunnies every which way.










The littlest one is the blue one and he (or she, I still dunno genders) is still the sproingy-est one.


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## MDKatie

Bettacreek, congrats on your cute new additions! I think there's no better way to learn than to just jump right in!

Hotz, those buns are getting cuter and cuter! I love the little blue one! And "sproingy" is such an appropriate word!


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## raccoon breath

Hotzcatz - You're bunnies are very cute. Everyone's are and I love them all. This whole thread has been a lot of fun and a learning experience for me. How the bunnies huddle like that in your pic is so sweet. I have 3 that are 2 years old and when they come out to play, they still have a little pow wow like that just like when they were babies. They are littermates.

The parents for mine are a copper doe and a wideband chocolate agouti. All of the ones besides the chocolate are getting a little confusing color. There's 3 colors in there now and I think it's copper, chestnut and whatever the one is that's becoming more black. I'll post more pics soon when the change is clearer to see. I had the Facebook satin angora gurus tell me colors early on, but things are a-changin'. The seller/breeder of my doe told me it would get a little confusing as her rabbits get kinda crazy wideband coloring happening as the coats develop. I think that's what I"m seeing and I'm going to need help figuring out what all of these little guys are. lol


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## raccoon breath

Almost forgot the pic of my 6 week angora goat baby. His mom is white Navajo angora (loose locks) and his dad is brown/tan with tight curls. Flash was born with tan on the ends of his ears and tight curls. The curls don't look so tight now in the pic, but Navajo babies are more wavy than curly so he has mohair like his pop.


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## Marchwind

I swear that is the sweetest face ever RB


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## bergere

So many adorable baby animals!! ( I do not need more animals.. I do not need more..... LOL)


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## hotzcatz

Shiny Bunnies! Shiny Goatie! Ooooh! Love shiny! Maybe I should get some Satins at some point.

I think you may have a black tort, a couple of chocolate torts and maybe a lilac tort? Although, that would be all solids. isn't Copper an agouti color? And bred to a chocolate agouti? Wouldn't most of the litter be agouti based with both parents being agouti? Solid takes a pair of recessives and the chocolate should be solid, so statistically speaking, the rest of them should be agouti based?

Yeah, I can't figure out some of the colors, too. I thought this little guy (girl? still dunno) was just a normal chocolate. 










Is this chocolate? Seems awfully gray underneath to be a true chocolate. Is it agouti based, do you think? Does your chocolate show gray underneath?

But they are all doing well, no matter what color they are. Starting to show eyeballs but they still pop around and bump into each other.


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## Kasota

RB, Flash is just too cute for words. He looks like something that walked out of a fairy tale! 

Hotzcatz, the bitty buns are so precious!


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## SvenskaFlicka

My brother-in-law once informed me that when he gets his own place, he is going to have Angora rabbits, and sell the fiber to me to pay for their upkeep, and have a special room in his house where he can let them loose so he can play with them.

I think I'll need to get some of my own before that. They're soooo cute!!!


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## ajaxlucy

I'm just going to pop in to say that I love these pictures!!


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## raccoon breath

Thanks you guys! Flash is a naughy, naughty boy. He's been separated from his mom a little during the day to give her a break. Even though he gets the same amount of milk, the change, not getting what he wants when he wants, has resulted in a baby goat crisis. The sky is falling in his world. lol 

Hotzcats- I'm not good enough with colors to provide you any sort of intelligent feedback on this other than what I see and pics. I looked at the chocolate and she doesn't have that much gray, but she's not chocolate to skin. I see some banding forming and an orange spot is developing on her face. Its really windy today. When we have a good weather day, I'll take pics of them outside in better light. I'm wanting to post it on the Ravelry group that's so good with colors and see what they think now and maybe the FB satin angora group again. Last time it turned into a debate :huh: on FB so maybe just Ravelry. lol Most concluded at 2 weeks that there was chestnut, copper, and one chocolate. Now?? We'll see. This is so fun! :happy2:


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## hotzcatz

Here's today's baby bunny pictures. I think the big agout *might* be female and the little blue one *might* be male, but couldn't tell on the rest of them. Their little bits are so tiny that it's hard to even see them let alone determine gender.










That's the big agouti awake and looking at the camera. Everyone else is sleeping.










So, of course the big agouti just walks all over everyone else and for some odd reason they really don't seem to mind, even when *she* steps on their head.










Everyone finally settled in for napping, although the little blue is still pushing in to the middle. He gets left out on the edges a lot.

Two of them have been reserved already, one will be named "Roger". I'm thinking of keeping the cinnamon, the big agouti and the opal, but we will see. It's really easy to get way too many bunnies.


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## MullersLaneFarm

Someone explain 'agouti' to me! I had a breeding trio of 3 German Angora champagne agouti. They were a beautiful yellowish tips with white underneath. But I thought someone (HotzCatz?) saying something about being able to tell agouti by their faces??

It was with my 3 angoras that I found out I was allergic to angora ... the NZ & CA meat rabbits never gave me a problem, but even though my trio allowed me to spin off their backs, my eyes would puff up, I'd get hives on my hands clear up to my mid-arm. It was when I started wheezing and it was difficult to breathe that I decided that I just couldn't do angoras anymore. Shame, I sure do love the halo that angora gives to ordinary wool when spinning.


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## Marchwind

If you hold a hair up from an agouti. It had stripes. The wild bunny is your typical agouti, tabby cats. They individual hairs are not one solid color and tend to graduate down to the body which seems yo have a base color. Here is a picture of the cat sleeping on my lap. If you gentle blow on the fur you can see the colors. Here's this too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agouti_gene


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## hotzcatz

Yup, agouti is the wild rabbit color. They have white around their eyes, inside their ears, under their tails and the whole undercarriage is white. Agouti is also characterized by each individual hair being banded in different colors. So, when you blow into the fur, you see rings of colors. Agouti isn't so much a color, it's a color pattern. It's also dominant over solid colors, if you're keeping track of color genetics.



Here's today's bunny picture - they are nineteen days old now:








Cinnamon (the chocolate agouti, although that name may change) just woke up and is yawning.

The ones with the white inside their ears are the ones which are agouti colors. In the picture there, starting from the upper end, is a regular "chestnut" agouti. That's the standard "wild" rabbit color and the most dominant color and color pattern. The color genes are: A_B_C_D_E_

Then we have Cinnamon, the yawning bunny, who is the same color except she has a pair of recessives on her "b" color genes which make her a brown (chocolate) agouti instead of a standard black (chestnut) agouti. So, she's a chocolate agouti. Her color genes are A_bb C_D_E_.

Cinnamon is sitting on the Opal, so all you see is his hind end. He is also an agouti, although in his case he got a double recessive on the "d" genes which means his color is diluted. His color genes are: A_ B_ C_ dd E_.

The next one is a Chocolate and is a solid pattern since he doesn't have the white eye circles or inside the ears. To get the solid (non-agouti) color, he has a double recessive on the "a" gene. His color genes are: aa bb C_ D_ E_ .

The next one is either a blue (diluted black) or a lilac (diluted chocolate). I'm beginning to think he's a lilac. If he's a blue, his color genes are: aa B_ C_ dd E_. If he is a lilac (which is a more uncommon color) then his color code is: aa bb C_ dd E_ .

And the last one is just the same as the first one, a Chestnut Agouti.

Since the sire of the litter is a lilac tortoiseshell with a white mom, his color genes are: aa bb Cc dd ee. So we can fill in all the blanks on the babies charts with a recessive letter except for the "C"s since it's possible Twinkle could have given a dominant C. Otherwise, all he has to give is recessives so we get lots of colors in the litter.


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## raccoon breath

I have pics for 2 of the rabbits. I'll start with the chocolate. That orange spot I thought I saw? Not there today. Weird light or the shine tricking me again. She does not have white around her eyes, in her ears, under her tail or on her belly. I'm not even sure if I'm seeing banding now. Maybe it's the shine tricking my eyes in the crimp.


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## raccoon breath

I wish those pics were better of the chocolate. Here's the lightest colored one of the group. She has no white around her eyes, a little white fuzz in her ears, white belly and white under her tail. 

I'll get pics of the other 3 tomorrow.


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## Miz Mary

Hotcatz, I would have SO much trouble not keeping them all !! I dont know how you do it !!! 

I fell in love with your Chocolate and the Lilac, SO beautiful !!!!!


----------



## raccoon breath

Miz Mary - Are you planning a trip to Hawaii to pick up your bunnies from Hotzcatz?


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## Marchwind

MizMary that's how I wound up with 30 angoras. My friends and I would breed and swap, there was no market for them back in the mid-90's at least not in Northern Minnesota. Yup, and they breed just like rabbits.


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## hotzcatz

At least we are now down to about thirty. There were fifty five of them out there for awhile. Usually I keep a few from each litter and move a few of the older ones out. I've only been using Twinkle to breed with so if folks want an "unrelated pair" then they have to take an older one so it won't be related to the young one. Kinda keeps the herd at a slow churn. Folks always say they want an unrelated pair even though they "aren't going to breed them". I haven't a clue why they'd not want to? Like I'm concerned about more angora fiber on the planet, especially on the planet in my near vicinity? My devious plan is to get more of these bunnies around the island were the folks will harvest the fiber and sell it back to me. So far there's a few doing that, but not very many at all considering how many baby bunnies have left here. 

Great shine and crimp on your bunnies, RB! I wish mine were shiny. There are some Satins on the island and the fellow may sell me one if I ask nicely, but then the bunnies would be mixed instead of pure English so I've been a bit hesitant to go that direction. Plus shiny is another set of double recessives to have it appear so it wouldn't be in a first generation cross.










Today's bunny picture. The biggest agouti is the first one out of the nest box and he's out having a snack of fresh grass with his mama. He didn't seem to want milk at all, but was going for the greenery. I think he's been out for awhile and getting extra, he's now appreciably bigger than the others. He's now twenty days old, one day under three weeks, I think. Kinda early to be out and about but he's the biggest one. If this one is a female, I'll probably keep her.

So far, out of this litter, the possible keepers are Cinnamon, the biggest agouti and maybe the chocolate (depends on if the deep red tone stays) and maybe the Opal.










The other agouti looks like he's been getting less, but once they start eating solid foods, the little ones will catch up to the rest.


----------



## MDKatie

Here's an example of agouti coloring. I clipped my "black" dog, Buford, and was surprised to see the underlying coloring. I knew his fur had the agouti gene, but I was surprised to see it was so light!


----------



## Miz Mary

raccoon breath said:


> Miz Mary - Are you planning a trip to Hawaii to pick up your bunnies from Hotzcatz?


HA ! Wouldnt that be fun !!!! Hawaii AND bunnies .....HEAVEN !


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## Kasota

Buford looks like a character. I'll bet you have stories you could tell! What kind of dog is he? And what is the other dog's name?


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## MDKatie

Kasota said:


> Buford looks like a character. I'll bet you have stories you could tell! What kind of dog is he? And what is the other dog's name?


Yes he is...he's Mr. Personality. I'm really not sure what he is. I got him from a rescue in Connecticut (drove from MD to get him), and he originally came from South Carolina. We're thinking terrier/hound or something like that. He is 3, and is finally settling into a really good dog. His puppyhood was very challenging...so glad that's over!

Our other boy is Elmer. He's the sweetest dog...a very gentle soul. He is a 66 lb lap dog...sleeps on my DH every night on the couch. Really a great dog!


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## hotzcatz

The bunnies are all excited now, Miz Mary, they like visitors!

Did you spin Buford's fiber, MD Katie?











More escapees from the nest box.










Now the nest box is on it's side so they can all go in and out easily. They have grass to nibble on as well as pellets. They are starting to eat solid food in another week, I'll have to add some more feeders since they will start eating pellets like crazy as well as the forage.


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## hercsmama

That pic of the bunny yawning about killed me, omgoodness, massive cuteness overload!:happy2:


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## hotzcatz

They're kinda starting to get cute. In a couple more weeks they aught to be about at the cute stage.










Baby Opal is out having a snack with mom, everyone else is still sleeping in the nest. Well, except for Chocolate, he's eating in bed.


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## Taylor R.

They are totally to the cute phase, even if it isn't the 'gettin' fluffy' cute stage.


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## hercsmama

That does it, I must get Bunnies!!!!:banana:
How have I lived so long without them! Dh is in sooo much trouble.

Need to go look up plans for bunny houses.....can they be allowed out on pasture, in some sort of tractor set up?
How about really cold weather. How do they do?
Ack!!!! Another project!!:smack


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## InHisName

Here is Katrina- a steel grey WensleydalexCotswold, her triplets are all ewe lambs! They will not stay black, will turn grey as well. The sire of the triplets was a Gotland ram (81%) She is a great mom!


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## Miz Mary

YAY Katrina !!! Your babies are beautiful !!!!! 

Debi, if you let them out on a pasture , their fur may get all matted and full of debris .... if its a fiber bunny ... My buns stay outside all year and when it gets down into the teens I put hay in their cage to snuggle in and cover them from the wind and cold on 3 sides ...they do fine !! 

Makes me want to have bunnies all over the place !!


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## hercsmama

Hmmm. imagining little bunny coats to keep them clean.....kind of like sheep coats.......I make chicken saddles how hard can a bunny coat be?

A little Chihuahua to act as their LGD, Mags and Murph are obviously a bit to large to bond properly with them.......yes, little Chihuahua's in little cowboy hats, riding squirrels. A whole fiber bunny ranch!!!


I need to step away from the screen, I think I've lost it.


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## raccoon breath

InHisName - Beautiful lambs! Congrats!

Hercsmama - What rode in the chicken saddles? :hysterical:


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## hercsmama

The roosters!!!

They were to keep the roo's from tearing up the hens backs, if you know what I mean...:hysterical:


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## InHisName

here is a question for those of you with rabbits- do you sell your bunnies? 
I have 2 angora's, m and f, but afraid to have bunnies and maybe get stuck with a whole litter to shear! 
the bunnies are adorable...


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## Kasota

Oh, those lambs are precious!!!! 

Debi, you crack me up!!! :hysterical:

Hotzcatz - caption on that last photo. "Mom loves me most." heheheheh


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## Marchwind

Hercsmama I had my bunnies out in the elements in northern MN. They had shelter from wind and a roof over their heads but other than that they were in the elements. I never had any health issues with my buns. One of my friends who also had bunnies kept hers in a dark barn with minimal air circulation, not heated but no real fresh air. She was constantly battling issues with her rabbits, including breeding problems and mites. As for past urging them. Well, being rabbits they like to dig. But mostly the thing is with Angoras is you want all their food nutrients, especially really high quality protein (not corn) to go toward their wool production not meat production. I used to have a special diet I had made up for my bunnies and all my friends used it too. They need lots of alfalfa, roasted soybeans, cotton seeds, and other good sources protein. You would also need to be careful that they don't get loose stools.

Congratulations on the triplets IHN!


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## MullersLaneFarm

Granddaughter, Punky, can't wait for new pictures of the baby bunnies. 

They are adorable!

IHN, 3 ewes!! Score!!


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## hotzcatz

They'll get cuter, Taylor. Right about the time we sell them is peak cuteness which makes it easier to find folks to buy them but harder to let them go.

Bunnies in a pasture sound like fun, Debi! Herds of fluffy bunnies drifting across the green grasses. It would be good until it came time to spin the fiber full of everything possible left loose in a pasture. We take the grasses to the bunnies, it's easier than picking burrs and things out of bunny wool.

What cute lambs, IHN! Are you going to name them after hurricanes, too? Yup, we sell bunnies but sometimes we end up with too many. There's twenty nine now, including the new babies. One more doe is bred, and then we will sell them until we are down to about twenty. That's a good number for getting enough fiber to be worthwhile as well as being easy enough to keep up on. We do need more fiber, though, I'm always running out.

"Mom loves me the most" ROTFLMAO!! :hysterical: Okay, Kasota! We will have to think up captions on the photos now! 

Good tips on bunny keeping, Marchwind! There are loads of different ways to keep bunnies but if you have them and they are healthy, then that's a good way to do it in my book. Some folks say you should only feed pellets, other folks say etc., etc. but they never all seem to say the same thing. But, the bunnies usually manage. Northern Minnesota, though! Good thing they are fuzzy bunnies!! Did you notice a thicker coat during winters?

Okay, Cyndi, here's some pictures for Punky.










Chocolate, Lilac, Opal and Agouti. I think Chocolate is a boy, but I'm not sure yet. I think Blue is actually a lilac, still not quite sure of the gender, but I've been calling that one "Blue". Opal, I'm pretty sure is a girl, although sometimes bunnies are sneaky and change. Big Agouti is a boy, I think, but it's Little Agouti in the picture and I've not checked him/her for gender yet.










Cinnamon, who I think may be a girl, thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the pile.










A friend brought over some lime tree clippings so we gave him a couple buckets of bunny berries to fertilize the lime trees. Works pretty good, leaves for bunny berries which in turn makes more leaves.










The grasses were wet and Cinnamon has messy eating habits. Maybe they need napkins. And after all that eating, it's nap time. :zzz:


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## Taylor R.

Little Cinnamon obviously has personality.


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## MullersLaneFarm

Punky says, "CUTIES!!"


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## hotzcatz

Opal is praying to be old enough to help the Easter Bunny on Sunday. She'd better do a lot of growing quick, she's not much bigger than an egg right now herself. You'd think bunnies would sort of dislike Easter, I mean, what's with all the colored eggs? Isn't that a lot of work for a poor bunny to do?










There's oatmeal in the food dish and everyone races for oatmeal. Much tastier than boring ol' bunny pellets.










Chocolate gets the Big Pig award for sitting on the most food.










After lunch discussion group. I think they are planning on how to get the eggs from the hen house.


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## Kasota

I have been following this thread too closely. Maybe I should not let it be the last thing I look at before I got to sleep. 

I dreamed I had baby bunnies. Hoppable size. MANY baby bunnies and they were all in my car and they started hiding between the seats and then they started escaping from the car and I was trying to catch them all up. While looking for more baby bunnies in the car I found a miniature cow. Really miniature...as in the size of Hotzcatz's mama bunny...and she had a litter of tiny Hereford calves that were about the size of two week old bunnies and their eyes were closed and they were sleeping all together in a nest like bunnies. There were about 20 of these baby minnie minnie Herefords. 

Dreams are very strange.


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## SvenskaFlicka

Yes, dreams are strange. I had a dream about rabbits at Shepherd's Harvest, and there was a Doctor Who treasure hunt at Shepherd's Harvest and the prize was an angora bunny! 

And there was lots of chocolate. And I forgot most of my inventory at home.


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## raccoon breath

Happy Easter Everyone. 9 kits, 1 day old.


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## Marchwind

Looks like a colorful litter, congratulations!


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## raccoon breath

Thanks. What colors do you see? 

Keep in mind I'm learning, but I think I see solid black, solid brown, white, a couple that look like my copper and chestnut agoutis from the last litter, and then that pinkish/tanish one at the bottom left..red? Im not real hopeful that everything will be as successful with this litter. Mom is having a rough time. They are getting some milk from another rabbit plus bottle feeding. A couple are very weak and I'm so relieved every time I check the nest and one of the tiny ones hasn't expired. So, we'll see what happens.


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## Kasota

RB, that really is a colorful litter! Hope everything goes well!


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## Marchwind

Definitely a white and maybe a blue or a lilac furthest to the lower left. Have you ever had a, I think they are called Martingale? Black with brown rimmed ears, and eyebrows, kind of the markings of a Doberman. One of two blacks not sure about those others. It's just fun guessing. They look nice and healthy.


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## raccoon breath

Marchwind - Yes, very fun guessing and I can learn the different possibilities from a big sampling of colors. I've never had a Martingale. I'll have to ask the breeder I got my breeding stock from. I saw a rabbit described like that online. I'll have to look it back up and see.

Kasota - Me too. There's one that's taking a lot of work to keep going. It falls asleep trying to eat and has a weak suck. I give him a shot with my other doe and get as much in him as I can until he poops out. He doesn't even have a tummy bulge when done. I let him rest, then get him to take some KMR (milk replacer) a tiny drip at a time waking him up often and hoping he's swallowing. It's like feeding a tiny animal drips of food throughout the day when they aren't strong enough to eat. I had the time this weekend and wanting to give him a chance to get strong but I think he'll kick the bucket by this evening. He's not getting strong. Nature is talking to me, but I'm challenging it. I know I wont win, but I'll try. I'm not fooling myself about his survival. This is how I learn just how much I can do to improve things with any animal. Got him through 2 1/2 days.  

I have a 2 year old German Shepherd named Moosey. When we get another dog, we'll name it Squirrel..Moose and Squirrel. LOL Anyway, he's combination of Marmaduke and Einstein. I was sitting here typing this and kind of in deep thought and I hear POP. It's the bedroom door. It sticks. It's the coolest room in the house and he sleeps there during the day. The door was closed and he opened it so he could go lay down. This is not the first time he's done this, but the stick startled me and reminds me how smart he is for such a goofy dog. lol


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## Kasota

RB, I have been there done that with many newborns even when I didn't think they were going to make it. I used to do wildlife rehab and also used to take in orphan kittens for a rescue group. Every now and then one would surprise me and make it when I didn't think they would, but mostly my heart new ahead of time. 

I once raised a flying squirrel that a man who removes trees brought into my pet shop. Big ol' burly man still wearing his hard hat, tears in his eyes and a baby squirrel that was probably only a day old or at the most two. "Can you save him?" I didn't think he would make it, but by gosh and by golly he did. It was hilarious because as he grew I wanted to make sure that he knew how to forage for food. He had an enormous cage (floor to ceiling) and I decked it out like a little corner of the forest and I would hide his food so he had to learn to look for it. Eventually he got enough of the hang of it that I felt comfortable handing him over to another rescue worker who had "transitional housing" at her place where he could move from inside to outside and learn to be a proper squirrel. 

My son was around 7 or 8 at the time and that squirrel used to ride around on top of his head.


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## raccoon breath

LOL!! I'm glad the flying squirrel made it. That job must have been so much fun.


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## Kasota

RB, it really was fun. I cried buckets when I turned him over to someone else. 

I could write a book about the strange critters I have fostered and rescued. I've worked with wildlife rehabs and raptor rehab and a whole lot of private organzations. Somehow herever I have lived orphans and critters in need of rescue seem to find me. 

I once had someone knock on my door and tell me they found a duck on the frozen lake with a broken wing. Yes, they had it in a box in their car. With that broken wing it couldn't fly south. "Can you help? Someone said you knew something about all this stuff." That chapter in the book could be called "There's a duck in my bathtub." The Mallard Drake lived in my bathroom while the wing healed and I swear he stole my bathwater on a regular basis. He couldn't fly - but he could hop up in that tub. He loved to swim around and snap at the bubbles in my bubble bath. 

I once rescued two Sulcata Tortoises who had been kept in small quarters and underfed. These are the third largest tortoises in the world and these were big but so underweight they were easy to pick up.  I ended up turning a bedroom into a tortoise habitat until they were healthy again. It took a good year and then they were placed with a very well-vetted person who does education with rescued critters.


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## raccoon breath

Its strange but animals have a way of finding animal people that will help them, with or without help from humans. People might say in your case that people around there know you know a lot about broken animals so they take them to you, but there's more to it. I've lived rurally since I was married 20 years ago. Since then, for some strange reason, dogs, cats and other domesticated animals in trouble have found their way to our home. Its almost as if they can sense it or maybe for a dog in trouble, they smell other dogs around here. Maybe they smell happy dog smells like hormones or pheromones work? I don't know, but animals find their way to where they need to be frequently or at least that's how my life has been. There are some horribly cruel people in this world. It just blows my mind. During this last recession, people were dumping their household pets in the forest around here. I'm sure they pacified themselves with the idea that their unwanted dogs and cats could live on bunnies and mice to stay alive, that the instincts of their wild ancestors would kick in and keep them alive. We are in the coolest part of Arizona, but still Arizona and that means drought. No water to drink. The saying, "Put a horse out to pasture"? People started dumping their horses and donkeys out here. One morning, this old, old horse was waiting at my gate...just waiting. I went out, and he gave me this huffy horse look obviously mad at his human. He had been dumped by a dry stock tank up the road. A donkey also made it here. If there's no water in the stock tank, there's no grass growing because there's no rain so no food, but someone thought their animals would maybe gently pass while enjoying lush grass?? Again, Arizona. Write your book and I'll happily pay for a copy and enjoy reading it. I remembered you telling me about the raptor rehab but you did so much more and that would make a great book. I'm glad the tortoises, the duck and the flying squirrel found their way to you.

So that mallard drake, did he jump into your bubble bath while you were still in it? Did you have a bubble bath with a wild duck?


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## Kasota

RB, that just breaks my heart that people would dump horses like that. UGH!! 

Yeah, I had a more than one bubble bath with a wild duck. LOL!


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## raccoon breath

I'm sorry. We all know these things happen but would have been nice to not think about it on a holiday. On an up note, the weak bunny ate much more than normal! Yay! Come on little bunny!

About that duck..did he refrain from pooping in the water? lol When I've raised ducks, I set up pools for them and someone always did it in the water. It's just bird feed I guess and no where near as smelly as turkey poo. I'm sure you didn't smell after you swim with the duck. lol I think chicken poo was being used for facials a few years back even. Was your skin extra soft??


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## hotzcatz

Ooooh! I want some of your minnie minnie Herefords, Kasota! How nifty that would be to have a whole herd in the back yard. We really need cows to come in goat sizes, then we'd be able to keep them to mow the lawn. I guess those are called, "sheep", though, huh? What colors were all these mini-critters?

Nice litter, RB! Blacks, chocolate, is that pink one a white or a tort? A tort down in the corner, there. I don't think angoras are supposed to come in Martin color, Marchwind, although that little one does look like he could be martin. At least, the English angora aren't supposed to be martin colored, maybe it's different for the Satin angoras.

The baby bunnies just made one month old today. Yay!










They aren't real enthused when the food dish is just bunny pellets. They'd much prefer oatmeal or grasses. I'll give them some ti leaves tomorrow, bunnies love ti leaves.

I'll get some better pictures tomorrow, the bunnies didn't get fed until just after dark. A neighbor was over and we got to knitting. She is just learning so she likes to knit with help available.


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## Marchwind

Hotzcatz idk if they are supposed to come in those colors or not. I just know that every once in awhile my friends rabbits would throw a few. They were beautiful. I also like the Chinchilla colors but those are really had to come by too.

I used to get phone calls from neighbors and friends who would find animals. I'd also get the ones people dumped or the ones that wondered in. Where I lived was a resort town and people would rent a cabin for the summer get a cat or dog and then dump it at the end of the summer . My friend who got me into rescue lives in Nebraska and does wildlife rehab. Mostly for carnivores, but she also does bat rescue. Those little stinkers are so cute.


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## raccoon breath

I have some giant angoras that are chinchilla, but just shades of gray. I was talking with a breeder I'm going to be trading with soon and she had a chestnut chinchilla born in her last litter. She had no idea what color it was until she took it to a show and asked around. Then, I saw on the Bumble Acres website a pic of a chocolate chinchilla..super pretty. She was wanting to trade that little chinchilla for one of my chocolates, but I said no. Maybe I should see if she's still willing to part with it. 

Bunnies look much different today! The weak little one is still kicking. Mom's milk really busted loose today and all bellies except the weakling are full. I leave mom with the weak one for a while before feeding the others and it eats until pooped. She's been a really good momma for a first timer. She's been tolerant of me intervening, touching her babies, and rotating them to make sure all are fed. Today she was very affectionate after her babies were all fed. She snuggled in my neck. 

My bunnies will eat anything. They are little piggies. Maybe that's why they are so big. They are using old canned soda boxes as tunnels just fitting inside and racing about. lol


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## hercsmama

I HAVE A BABY TO REPORT!!!!
So excited!!
the people we are getting the Barbados frm, stopped by just a bit ago. They said one of the ewes had triplets, and rejected a little girl. So she is here!!
My very first little sheepie baby!
She is currently in the livingroom, in a large cat carrier, napping. Maggie and Murphy are surrounding her, my male Peke is also, and he actually snapped at one of my cats when it got too close.
He always was a good mother to any babies in the house.

I'm trying to get the pics to go from my phone to the computer, so stay tuned!!!
Also, cross your fingers I don't kill her, I've never bottle raised a lamb, and understand they can be a bit delicate the first week or so....


----------



## raccoon breath

Pics of the 6 week old bunnies in their party pen. They love those soda boxes. lol Bunnies - Instant mood elevator.

Can't wait to see the lamb Hercsmama!


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## Kasota

RB, I love the party pen! 

Debi, that is just AWESOME about your first sheepie!! Can't wait for the pictures to post!!


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## hercsmama

Here she is!!!!
Little Miss Ezmeralda, she's only about 1 1/2 pounds, so I figure she needs a serious big name!
Although, the way she waggles her tail to potty, and the dogs follow her to clean up, I may change her name to Pez.......:shocked:


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## Kasota

Rats! I can't see the picture!


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## Kasota

Weird! I can see all the pictures except for the new sheepie on firefox but if I load up the page on IE I can see it! 

She sure is a cutie!!! Whoooo hoooooo!!!!


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## raccoon breath

Hercsmama - LOL..Pez..a ha ha! That is a beautiful little lamb! What luck! I would be pee my pants excited if I got my mitts on that little beauty.

I collect oil lamps. Love them.


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## Kasota

I rebooted and now I can see the sheepie on firefox!  

I love the name Pez! 

Just send those sheep berries my way. I could use them on my garden.


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## hercsmama

She is just a doll. Dh made the comment that she walks like a little girl wearing stiletto heels, lol.:grin:
She is already totally attached to Maggie and Murphy, they are her people.
I had them all out back, and Murph saw a bird and started barking like mad, he's a Pyr, it happens, well, little miss thing went running all willy nilly, right up under him!
She stayed under his belly until he stopped barking, and then she peeked out and Maggie and her touched noses. I guess that was the all clear, because she then came bouncing out from under Murph, acting like nothing was wrong.
Sooo cute!


----------



## raccoon breath

I read that baby goats and sheep are attracted to the darkness under their mothers. Under there is food and safety. Maybe the darkness under your dog attracted her. Let's hope she doesn't look for his udder. My baby goats do that with my shepherd. He's not as tall as your Pyr so they do it on their knees or kinda hunkered. He adores them but gets indignant when they poke around too much. lol


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## hercsmama

LOL!!
Yep, she pokes about under there as well, on both Mags and Murph! LOL!
They are awesome though, they just walk away. She certainly is very clean though, they take turns bathing her face, and behind. At least I think they are just cleaning, hopefully it's not taste testing, lol!
It is so obvious they missed their goats though. They took her in right off a soon as they saw her.


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## raccoon breath

My Moosey adores goats and sheep. Babies are his favorite. He excessively cleans every inch of them too. Last year, my twin angora girls were born. Their mother trusted Moosey and she allowed him in her pen while he had her babies. He layed down, watched them be born, then after momma was done cleaning them, he cleaned them. When they were old enough, they spent the day in a play area away from the mom. They'd be with their mom at night starting at feeding time until the morning meal was eaten, then they were in that play pen with Moosey. He played with them, cleaned them and slept with them. If he heard them cry, he'd come running. If Moosey was in the house and heard the kids cry, he'd go running so I just started leaving the front door open so he could go check on them. So, he loves them. A rancher runs his sheep through here in the Summer and they have awesome Pyrs. Those Pyrs got really upset with my alpacas (new smell) and surrounded the animal pens and property line fencing with 2 or 3 very aggressively barking but a total of 5 dogs. They were doing their job protecting their sheep. Moosey took off after them and they ran until each Pyr joined up with the next along the fence line and eventually they went off to find their sheep when their shepherd arrived. About a week later, we weren't home and the sheep were run through here again with the dogs. I knew from the looks on the shepherds faces that things got wild around here. We got to the house and I went right to the pens. Moosey went through 2 chain link fences to get to his little doelings. Dogs are amazing!! <3

First 2 have angora goat doe kids in the box sleeping and third is when the kids were a little older.


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## hotzcatz

Sheepies are sooo cute! I'll have to talk my friends into sheepies since there's no room for them here.










Today's bunny picture. They're twenty nine days old now, at least, I think that's how old they are, I'd have to check the calendar to be sure.

Big agouti in the front, then Opal, then Blue (even though he may be Lilac), then Cinnamon, Chocolate and then Little Agouti. They will probably get official names later, but that's just to tell them apart.


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## Marchwind

The baby pictures are killing me, so adorable!


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## Kasota

Long ago I used to have a rabbit that was a house pet. He was litter box trained so after work he could be out and about. Had to keep him in his pen during the day or who knows what he would have chewed up...but after work he had free run of my then rather small apartment. I also had a dog there and it was the strangest thing...the dog and the bunny were the same coloration! The bunny and the dog loved each other and they would snuggle up on the couch and take a nap. You couldn't tell where dog ended and rabbit began. The dog was around 80 or 90 pounds and people would come over and if the rabbit got startled and hopped away it looked like a piece of the dog detached itself and ran away. 

The looks on people's faces was hysterical. Then they would figure out it was a rabbit. "I just saw a rabbit streak by! Did you know you have a rabbit in your house??" "Really? WHERE? A RABBIT??" hehehehehehe


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## hercsmama

I think she is feeling comfortable, what do you guys think?
Although, poor Murphy was feeling the need for some caffeine this morning. That whole staying up all night keeping an eye on her!ound:


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## hercsmama

Ok, why are my pics sideways all of a sudden?


----------



## Kasota

Debi, those two are seriously precious...even if they are sideways!


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## Taylor R.

My kids are big Murphy fans. They think it's cool that he goes after coffee just like our dog.


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## MDKatie

Aww, great pics!! I looooooove Murphy! *I* need to snuggle with him!! What a sweet boy.


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## raccoon breath

Murphy is an awesome dog. I know some dogs are more nurturing toward baby animals. Makes total sense to me with Pyrs, shepherds, and dogs that work with animals. Many really love and care about the animals they protect or herd. What surprises me is that the more nurturing ones I would have expected would be the females but it never has been for me. Always the boys.  I'll never forget a G. shepherd I had years ago that would let a litter of miniature dachshunds snuggle with him and climb all over him. He loved them and as they grew, they'd look up at that big dog like he was the best thing since Swiss cheese.


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## Kasota

Murphy should have his own thread.


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## Otter

I have kittens again - thought I had all the kitties spayed, but no.
You can follow them here, as they grow up. I just got a new cord for my camera so I'll be updating with lots more pics, here, there and everywhere!

http://catsofarrowsflight.blogspot.com/


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## hercsmama

Oh my word! Look at that little white one!!
I so wish I was closer, I'd take her off your hands in a heartbeat, when she's done with Momma of course.:teehee:


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## raccoon breath

Kasota - I would love to have a potty trained house bunny running around!

Ohhh gosh! Look at those tiny little baby kitten ears!! :kiss:


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## Kasota

RB, bunnies litter box train themselves if you set 'em up right. It's pretty cool. They will still chew on things with utter abandon - so it's not like they can be free all the time, but it's a nice for them to have some real running space. Every now and then my house bunny would start race-tracking around the apartment and leaping off of things. It was pretty hilarious. His name was Buster. I wish I had a picture of him...

Otter - I LOVE those kittens! They are simply adorable!


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## hotzcatz

So cute the kittens! We need a kitten, but DH would have a cow (no, not really; I wish!) but no, DH wouldn't approve of another cat in the house. He says one is enough. Hmpf! (At least he doesn't say that about rabbits or spinning wheels)

So, we should send you some more rabbits, Kasota? I dunno if an angora would be a good house rabbit or not, though. I suppose you could spray them with End Dust and let them run around. Kinda like an automatic Swiffer. Hmm, aughta name one of these fuzzy things "Swiffer".

So I thought I'd be cute and put all the baby bunnies in a basket. Note to self: get a bigger basket.










Some of them were not interested in baskets but just wanted to munch on the basket padding.










So, instead of baskets, it's baby bunnies munching on grasses. They are much easier to keep organized if there is tasty food in front of them.










Opal and Cinnamon are girls, I'm pretty sure they will be staying here. Big Agouti and Chocolate are boys, so they will be going off to a new home and probably taking one of the older does here with them. That leaves Blue and I dunno if that one is male or female. If it's female, then she will stay here. If it's a boy, well, he will probably go somewhere else, although he might stay for a bit. There is amazingly soft fiber on that bunny.


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## Marchwind

Awww, kittens 

I used to have a house bunny. The males make better house bunnies since females are so territorial. The females will attack with abandon. My sister had a house bunny when she first hot married, she liked mine so much. They got a female and she was an attack rabbit. You would leave with bloody ankles. So if you want a house bunny I suggest you get a male. That is only my honest opinion and others may very


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## MDKatie

Those kitties and bunnies are so cute!

Here are some updated pics of my not-so-little babies. Everyone is growing so fast!


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## SvenskaFlicka

My brother and his wife have a house bunny. Her name is Lily. She must be pretty laid back for a female bunny, because she is best friends with their house cat, The Great Catsby. 

I suppose it varies.


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## Bettacreek

Hotz, I'm glad to see that you give your babies greens. I have always fed greens, but everybody swears you're trying to kill them. I wonder if they believe that domestics mutated in some weird way from the wilds, or what they believe wild buns eat! I've never, ever had an issue with feeding grasses.


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## lexierowsell

Not fiber rabbits, but I raise rabbits in a rolling 8x6 cage on pasture. From 4 weeks on they eat nothing but organic pasture grass and sprouted organic whole grains. We were told it couldn't be done, rabbits wouldn't eat bent over grass. And that there was no way to do grass-fed rabbit for high end restaurants...

View attachment 27915
View attachment 27916


They are an important part of our "whole farm". They groom and fertilize the pastures, immediate return on input.


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## Otter

BettaCreek, it's because to most folks "greens" is lettuce, especially iceburg lettuce. Or worse, cabbage. Iceburg gives diarrhea and cabbage severe and painful gas, bad enough that they'll colic like a horse. And there are plenty of folks who don't know the difference between good weeds and toxic weeds. You get enough folks killing bunnies with lettuce and milkweed and people start thinking all "greens" are bad.

Those are some seriously cute rabbits!! We have a house bunny. She's an older gal, a mini-lop about 3-4 years old, we call her Bunny FooFoo. She's not friendly, but not mean either. She is happy to just run around and mostly be left alone, except for whiskers at your ankle if she thinks you're holding something yummy.

LOL, those kittens are getting cuter by the day, but will anyone want one in 7 weeks when they are old enough for homes? The white one has turned blue and I just got a new cord for the camera, so expect photobombing


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## MDKatie

Love your set up, Lexie! Very nice. I'll have to post pics of my 2 little NZ babies. 

I feed greens too, definitely. Mostly it's orchardgrass, dandelions, violets, plantain, mulberry, and clover. 

I did feed cabbage before I realized it was bad. Only one doe felt sick, and luckily after 1 day she was fine. Now if I feed it at all, it's tiny amounts. Usually the cabbage goes to the goats.


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## Taylor R.

My house bunny is 10 this year . I can't believe how quickly time has gone by. He was our first pet. I didn't realize bunnies could last that long as we always had a rotating stock when I was a kid. Then I read that house rabbits can live as long as cats.


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## raccoon breath

I love that rabbit cage out in the pasture. And all of the animals are wonderful!! Hotcatz - if I was in Hawaii, OMG!! I'd be begging you for a couple of those bunnies. I was watching Dog The Bounty Hunter last night and thought of you. LOL I wondered if Dog had one of your bunnies he raises in secret. lol

My female rabbits are all territorial, some worse than others. Identifying this behavior isn't always easy with such a cute animal unless they leave you bleeding. There's this little karate chop movement they do with their front paws. It's precious. It reminds me of Henrietta *****cat, the Mr. Rogers puppet that lives in the clock. Remember the way it's little hands would move? My female rabbits do that and it's precious but is not a good thing. I didn't realize what it meant until I watched a momma rabbit wean her babies. It means no, stop, get away. How many people would fall in love watching a rabbit look like Henrietta *****cat? A whole lot I expect and those same people have no idea what territorial behavior is in their home unless they are bleeding. Communication between human and rabbit isn't easy for the rabbit. Poor thing is too darn cute to be taken seriously when it's miffed! LOL


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## Kasota

Hotzcatz, I would so love to have a house bunny again. Maybe some day I will when I am not working anymore. Right now it would just get terrorized by my Wirehaired Fox Terrier. She goes all spastic when she sees a bunny in the yard! I love the pics of the bunns...it's been so much fun to watch them grow! 

MDKatie - look how they've grown! Wow!  

Lexie, what a neat idea for raising meat rabbits!  

RB, you crack me up! I had forgotten about Mr. Roger's!


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## Bettacreek

I'm not so sure that's what they mean. Storey's book even mentions that he won't give the mommas treats for fear of the babies getting a bite. Numerous people have told me that I shouldn't feed grasses because it'll kill them (tell my buns that, they love their fresh grasses). Yep, the obvious has to be taken into consideration... No poisonous stuff, untreated stuff, not by the road, etc, but to blanket all grasses/greens as deadly is just silly.
I'm hoping to add an angora litter to the pics. breeder bred her approximately a week before selling her, so I've just been watching and waiting.


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## raccoon breath

I started my first tray of fodder for the rabbits today. I'm starting one tray a day for the next 7 days and will see how it goes. It wont be their primary diet...just a small addition introduced slowly and to see how they do.


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## lexierowsell

raccoon breath said:


> I started my first tray of fodder for the rabbits today. I'm starting one tray a day for the next 7 days and will see how it goes. It wont be their primary diet...just a small addition introduced slowly and to see how they do.



I did fodder as a complete diet for 3 months. They did well. Not as well as they are on sprouted grain, but they love both. I switched to sprout for scale-ability, and quality control. None of my ruminants (or the horses) would eat fodder. 

Good luck, lmk if you have questions, I researched nearly obsessively.


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## MullersLaneFarm

hotzcatz said:


> You'd think bunnies would sort of dislike Easter, I mean, what's with all the colored eggs? Isn't that a lot of work for a poor bunny to do?


Nah ... the Easter bunny lets the Easter 'possum color the eggs


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## hotzcatz

Great goatie pictures, MDKatie. The grasshopper view of the goatie face is a hoot. Kinda surreal looking, too. Couldn't you just imagine it as one of those door sized pictures? Are those the same sheepies which were newborns not that many pictures ago?

The babies get greens, Bettacreek, partly because a bale of hay is over thirty dollars. A 50# bag of bunny feed is over $20. I can't afford _not_ feed them greens and forage. They seem to thrive on it, though, so it's all good. A lot of the third world rabbit raising ventures are all forage fed, so if it works for Africa, it should aught to work for Hawaii, don't you think? Still, if you read three different books on raising rabbits, you'll get three different methods. The folks who wrote the "Rabbit Production" book also did one on forage feeding bunnies, so I'll go with their books. They say up to 40% of a bunnys' diet can be in mulberry leaves with no change in litter size or weight gain from pellet fed bunnies. I don't know if that is advocating feed mulberry leaves or a warning about how poor they do on pellets?

Can you handle your new angora? If she's good about being handled, it might be good to handle the babies as soon as they're born, too. The buns here get picked up moments after they are born and they are really used to humans so they don't stress out with people around. 

Nice setup, LexieRowsell! Do you ever have trouble with predators trying to get into your bunny tractor? Or do the bunnies ever dig out? They sure do a nice job of pasture grooming. 










(It's dark, it's raining, but the camera has a flash which is why the plants look so shiny.) This is a controversial bunny forage. Some folks say you can't feed ti leaves to bunnies, other folks say it's okay. The buns here love ti and get lots of it. I suspect folks are confusing ti (cordyline terminalis) with tea (camellia sinensus). But we have a lot of the ti planted around, it grows easy, is easy to harvest, the buns love it and it's affordable. Plus, we could always make it into hula skirts or wrap laulau with it if the buns decided they didn't want to eat it anymore.

Yup, you're right, Otter. A lot of folks can't tell one green from another. Before the buns get it, I've looked up the specific green to see if it is "bunny safe". There are also a lot of things planted in the yard especially for bunny forage, such as the ti, kale and mulberry. If we were closer, I'd swap you a bunny for a kitten, but airfare on the swap would be a touch expensive.

Ten years is a how many in bunny years, Taylor? Is he a geriatric bunny yet? I think our oldest bun is five, but we've only been into buns for five years, so that might be why.

I've not met Dog the Bounty Hunter, RB, and I'm not sure I'd want to. He's on Oahu anyway, that's a different island and is all full and urbanized and crazy. The Roseanne TV person did buy a macadamia nut orchard near here awhile back, but I've not met her, either. Although I'd probably not recognize either of them if I did see them. They seem rather loud sorts of folks on TV, but maybe that's just on TV. I think I'd rather meet Mr. Rogers although he's not around anymore. Maybe he will reincarnate as an angora bunny, do you think?

Is that barley you're sprouting, RB? If it doesn't work for the critters to eat, you can always roast it dark and malt it to make beer.

Ah, well, since we have no 'possoms in Hawaii, Cyndi, the buns have to do all the work! No wonder the buns get grumpy about Easter. They're Buddhist anyway, they'd rather obon dance than color eggs.

Baby bunnies and their first look at ti leaves:










You figure the food is bigger than they are, I'm not sure how I'd react to something like that. They seem to go to the smallest end first and nibble a bit, but that's the toughest part.










Mamma bunny, Toffee, hops over to show them the proper way to subdue a ti leaf. Toffs loves ti leaves.










Baby bunnies figuring it out. Maybe since these little buns get a lot of forage they really like the stuff. I've never had trouble with buns getting sick eating forage or getting the runs or anything. They don't get much lettuce, though, probably because we'd rather eat that ourselves. They do get a lot of high fiber sorts of stuff like grass and leaves instead of the high energy stuff like grains.


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## raccoon breath

Hotzcatz - Duane and the macadamia "nut" are not my kind of people. I do love macadamia nuts in a wonderful white brownie recipe I found online. YUMMY! Reincarnated as a rabbit, I wouldn't mind meeting Mr. Rogers. As himself? Probably not. I'm a loyal fan of Captain Kangaroo! lol Yes, barley and I didn't even think of beer!! Now you have me thinking (naughty influence). I've made lots of homemade wine and have all the stuff to make beer too. I'm not much of a drinker but I love making a good wine that's a pretty color so it looks nice in a bottle. Then, I love making a nice label. I made 9 different flavors a few years back, bottled and labeled them, and I lined them up for pics. I think I took about 100 pics trying to get the perfect pic of how beautiful all of those bottles looked  I have plenty of bottles for beer since I've also been bottling soda pop. There is nothing green growing on the ground here so the rabbits are on the feed store diet. We had a very dry winter and that's why I'm trying fodder. News says we'll be getting 3" to 7" of snow today. It's raining right now. The ground needs it or our wildfire season is going to be bad. Fire restrictions are already in place. Unless we get a whole lot of moisture besides this little storm, the forest will be closed down soon to help prevent human caused fires. 

Thank you lexierowsell. Hopefully, my first attempt at growing barley goes well. We'll know in a few days...unless I buckle under to the suggestion of making beer instead. lol


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## lexierowsell

hotzcatz said:


> Nice setup, LexieRowsell! Do you ever have trouble with predators trying to get into your bunny tractor? Or do the bunnies ever dig out? They sure do a nice job of pasture grooming.


Hotz- 

Our tractor is actually completely enclosed and very, very stout.

View attachment 27939


It's built of 3/4" steel conduit, with 1" x 2" welded wire on top and sides. The bottom is 2" x 4" welded wire. Everything is cross braced with metal brackets, and all the wire is wrapped around the conduit frame. We built it to withstand any predators without opposable thumbs. 

View attachment 27941


There have never been signs of anything trying to get in, and the buns have never told me about a scary night when I do chores in the morning. We did have issues with some of the itty bitty just weaned bunnies slipping out through the bottom, so they went into a "nursery pen" a while-- 1" x 2" wire all the way around. We used them as "edgers" in our 120 bush blackberry patch.

View attachment 27940

(Admittedly, this photo had some mechanical mowing help, but only because we try not to run the buns on the same spot twice in a year)

I have a TON of baby animals, but only a few are fiber animals so I haven't been sharing. I run a (raw, organic- not certified) dairy, we have an organic farm and we're producing chemical, hormone and medication free pasture raised, grass fed meat and eggs (birds eat sprouts too!) so many adorable babies living the very best lives I can give them.


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## Kasota

Oh, please do share the non-fiber critter pictures, too!!!! Your place is simply beautiful and I really admire all that you are doing! Your house looks so intriguing!


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## Marchwind

When I was starting in my angoras I was told when you breed them to always put the female into the males cage and not the other ways around or she could kill him. I've seen rabbits fight, it makes a dog fight look mild in comparison. And of course there are always exceptions to the rule.

I always fed my rabbit greens and veggies. Perhaps they are concerned about the possibility of grass having fertilizers on it. I don't think your usual front lawn grass is the same as pasture grasses. One is full of good nutrients the other not so much.


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## Taylor R.

hotzcatz, Perry is pretty old in bunny years. His condition has just started showing his age in the last couple months (though his spring shed-out is making it look much worse than it is, I think). I've heard of house bunnies living up to 15 years, and since Perry has never ever had a health issue at all..well...a girl can dream.


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## MDKatie

hotzcatz said:


> Great goatie pictures, MDKatie. The grasshopper view of the goatie face is a hoot. Kinda surreal looking, too. Couldn't you just imagine it as one of those door sized pictures? Are those the same sheepies which were newborns not that many pictures ago?


Yes, those are the same lambs! They grow incredibly fast.


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## hotzcatz

The bunnies are finally beginning to get to the cute stage. A friend came by to visit today and her most common comment was "Squeeee!". I'm not exactly sure what that translates to, but the rest of it was pretty much along the same lines.










This is Opal. She's a girl bunny and she will probably stay here. Nice conformation under that cute face. Good wool density, nice texture. I think Blue will stay here, too. The others will go to new homes, most likely.










Of course, Cinnamon is a pretty cute bunny, too! She has a sweet face but not good enough conformation to be a keeper, most likely.










Here's the lineup: Cinnamon (female), Opal (female), Agouti (male), Blue (female) and Chocolate (male).


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## Kasota

Oh, they are for sure in the cute stage!!!! It's been so much fun to watch them grow. Amazing how fast it happens!


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## lexierowsell

I finally have a baby fiber animal! 

Meet Thomas Jefferson (Tommy), my new EF x BFL ram lamb (and DH, he's quite taken with this lovely young creature!)

View attachment 28121


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## Taylor R.

lexie, he's precious! I can't wait until we get a non-canine animal my husband clicks with. He helps with the chickens, he'll water the rabbit if I ask, but he doesn't fall for them like the rest of us. I have this feeling he'll be much easier to convince that my furry and feathered friends are a great idea if he finds one he loves.

hotzcatz, I have no idea how you ever send any of them to new homes. They are just do darn cute!! Selective breeding is a great idea, but I have a feeling that we'll just have a few breeders and a billion in the fiber stable when we get angoras :happy2:


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## lexierowsell

Taylor- Steve was not completely sold on this zoo, er, farming thing. And then I got a dairy cow. Lol. She's got the eyes...

But he REALLY got on board when I brought home an orphan kid, and he saw how dog like and sweet they can be. 

View attachment 28122


(I came in from milking the day after I brought the little guy home, and this was what I found...)


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## Bettacreek

The lilac tort doe finally had her litter today. 8 kits. No pictures yet, but soon I'll be plastering baby angora pics everywhere.


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## Kasota

Congratulations, Bettacreek! Looking forward to those photos!


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## SvenskaFlicka

Hotzcatz, those are just the cutest little bunnies I have ever seen. I want to come to your place and just look at the live bunnies all day! And pet them, and hold them, and love them... they will all be super tame when I am done with them!


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## hotzcatz

They do grow fast, Kasota. However, in the bunny world, it could be possible that the mum bunny could be having another litter by now so the current babies would have been replaced with new ones. They have to grow up fast. A doe can be rebred a day or two after giving birth and then have another litter in another thirty days. The bunnies here definitely aren't on that sort of schedule, there'd be way too many bunnies if that was the way things were done. Plus it's rather hard on the mom bunny. For fiber bunnies and pet bunnies they have far fewer litters. But, bunnies are fast, they can breed like, well; like rabbits.

I'm not sure who's cuter in the pictures, LexieRowsell, the little sheepie, the little goatie or your DH. Might be a tie between the little goatie and your DH. Nubians are such great milk goats, too! (that is a Nubian, isn't it?) Do you think you could get your DH to do seminars for other DHs so they could learn fiber critter appreciation? Mine will feed the bunnies if necessary, but he's just not into them.

It's easy to get too many bunnies, Taylor R., there were fifty five at one point and that was hard to keep up on. One can only get the fiber off the bunny so fast. I usually use little embroidery scissors, but there's a pair of horse clippers with a very fine blade which speeds things up, too. When it is time to keep track of your angora herd, there is a computer program called "Kintraks" which is really useful. I have all the bunny data in there to keep track of things. Pedigrees, color genetics, any medications, litters, level of inbreeding, number of offspring, etc. etc. It's not very expensive, either.

Yay! More baby bunnies, BettaCreek! Pictures? Is this her first litter? Eight is a lot. Which type of angora is she? What color is the sire?

Drop on by, SvenskaFlicka, the bunnies enjoy people, especially people who feed them. They have quite the fan club and sometimes it seems more folks are over to visit the bunnies than to visit me. But that's okay, there's a lot more of them. So far City Slicker seems to be one of the favorite bunnies, but I think the new Blue or Opal may take over Slick's favored spot. Dozer is a sweetie, too, but he's a bit more reserved with strangers. Dozer and City Slicker are some of the foundation bunnies so almost all the English angora bunnies are descended from them. 

It was raining yet again today, so no bunny pictures. I was thinking maybe of putting together a timeline of day by day for the first month pictures of baby angora bunnies, but this thread already sort of has that.


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## Bettacreek

She's English. I believe this is her third litter, but the previous breeder didn't send an info sheet on her. The buck is the one I bought, a nice black boy. His sire was blue and a grandsire was chocolate. She threw two blacks, a chocolate and I think two blues and three lilacs. We did a functional breeding on a friend's angora to my lionhead buck. We had no other angoras and she was almost a year old and a virgin doe. She had six for her first litter, so I wasn't super shocked at 8 for this girl.


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## hotzcatz

And the saga continues with a new chapter. This newest litter is Hillside Chipsy bred to Hillside Twinkle, who was the sire of the other litter that has been pictured here. Chipsy is chocolate and Twinkle is lilac tort so all the babies are "solid" colors with no agouti colors.

She had one baby out on the wire yesterday morning, I didn't find it until it had chilled to death and I thought that was all there was gonna be. However, much later in the day, she had eight more although two of them weren't functional and one of them was what I think is called a "peanut". It was a fully formed embryo but it was very miniscule. So out of nine, four of them were non-functional from the very beginning. One due to conditions, not sure why the other two full sized ones succumbed although I suspect it was conditions and not genetics. Chipsy hadn't seemed to have cleaned them off, though, perhaps she didn't get the birth sac off of them fast enough. This is her first litter, so there's a learning curve with new moms. Today two more were chilled and dead, although she'd built a good nest. I suspect they weren't cleaned off enough and were damp so they chilled. Out of nine, there's three left. Not such good odds! No wonder bunnies have such large litters. The three remaining ones seem dry and fed, though, so hopefully she will keep them.










It looks like a Ruby Eyed White (which means Chipsy as well as Twink have a recessive "c" in their color gene chart), a lilac and a tort of some sort. Which means Chipsy has a recessive for dilute "d" as well as a recessive for tortoiseshells or the non-extension gene of "e". This fills in almost all of their gene charts now so we will be able to predict colors of their future litters better.

Toffee's babies are almost ready to move to a bigger space and they are still in the cute stage:










Cinnamon is significantly smaller than the rest and she's got some issues with her front feet so she will be a "special needs" bunny. But, these little furballs get pampered and don't have to scamper for their food so she will do fine. I'll probably keep her here with her sisters.

This one is now "Hillside Roger" and he will be flying off to Maui at the end of the month:


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## raccoon breath

Great pics Hotzcatz. Keeping it simple for beginners, could you (or anyone) explain why breeding a chocolate to a lilac tort makes solids? If I bred a chocolate to a black tort or chocolate tort, would that result in solids too? 

This is a pic of one of the buns from the first litter. This bunny's coat is 2". I can't wait so have lots of this to spin! I only have one rabbit this color right now and it's not enough when it's your favorite color.


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## raccoon breath

Crazy pics with the satins. All that luster tricks the camera. I took a bunch of pics and these are the clearest. All the others blurred.


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## lexierowsell

So, this video has my babies in it, but it's mostly my little orphan Jimmy playing with me. He's such a love. He's 6 weeks old now. 

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10152479329286995&id=515846994


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## raccoon breath

Lexieroswell - Jimmy is adorable. LOLLL! I LOVE baby goats, especially the ones that are all personality like that. lol


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## hotzcatz

Dratz! I just had the whole thing written out and then hit the wrong button and lost it. Argh!

Short and sweet:

Five color genes for bunnies, *ABCD & E*. To write it out, each bunny gets one gene from each parent, so it will be *AABBCCDDEE* for the full "chart". Dominate genes are written as upper case, recessive genes are shown in lower case, if not sure, the put an underline in the spot. 

If one dominant gene is present, then the bunny will show that color or characteristic. It takes a double recessive (which would be a recessive gene from each parent) before you'll see the color/ characteristic represented by the recessive gene.

"*A*" gene - dominant "*A*" is "*A*gouti" and recessive "a" is for solids. Agouti is a color _pattern_. It means there will be white circles around the eyes, white inside the ears & under the tail and white undercarriage. Solid doesn't have the white areas.

"*B*" gene - dominate "*B*" is *B*lack and recessive "b" is brown. Takes a double recessive for chocolates and lilacs. (Lilac is a dilute chocolate)

"*C*" gene = _COMPLICATED_. *C*, *C*hd, *C*hl, *C*h and c. We will ignore the *C*hd (dark chinchilla), the *C*hl (light chinchilla) *C*h (Himilayan or "Siamese") and just look at the "*C*" and "c". 

"*C*" gene - dominate "*C*" is *C*olor and recessive "c" is no color or "albino". Double recessive "cc" is albino which is also known as Ruby Eyed White or REW. Albino is _not a color, it is white bunny paint_. Your bunny is still genetically whatever color the other genes call for, but all you can see is the albino white bunny paint.

"*D*" gene - dominant "*D*" is *D*ense color and recessive "d" is dilute color. Black becomes blue, chocolate becomes lilac.

"*E*" gene - dominant "*E*" is *E*xtension of color on the hair shaft. The color goes all the way to the end. Recessive "e" means the dark colors stop and just leave the yellows to extend to the end of each hair shaft which is how we get tortoiseshells (solid colors with "ee") and fawns/creams (agouti color pattern with "ee"). 

There are some other modifiers on the E gene such as "rufus" for the reds, "steel" for color tipping on the ends of the hairs and "En" for the broken pattern, although that's not an approved angora color. There is also a Vienna gene for the blue eyed whites, which is an approved color, but to get there you end up with a bunch of non-showable colors so I just stay away from that one. Plus angoras are about fiber, who cares what color their eyes are?

Well, anyway, those are the basic five bunny color genes. Now, for your specific bunny genes. Do you know the colors of the parents of your bunnies? There are still a lot of blank spots we might be able to fill in if any of the parents were chocolate, white, blue or tort.

aa bb *C*_ *D*_ *E*_ = chocolate

aa *B*_ *C*_ *D*_ ee = black tort 
aa bb *C*_ *D*_ ee = chocolate tort 

So, with these color charts, if you breed any two of them together, you'll get all solids since there isn't any dominant "*A*" for *A*gouti in there anywhere. 

If the chocolate is bred to the chocolate, you'll get all chocolates but unless you can fill in some of the unknowns on the color chart that's all you'll be able to guess at. If your chocolate doesn't have a recessive for tortoiseshell then they will all be chocolate. However, all the babies will have a recessive for tort so you could breed them to a tort or tort carrier later to get more torts.

Breeding the chocolate to the black tort, well, about all you know for sure, is that at least half of them should be some sort of black. Until you can fill in more of the blanks, you can'tknow if they will be other than the dominant black color.

The last two litters here were an agouti doe bred to a lilac tort buck and a chocolate doe bred to the same lilac tort buck. The resulting babies are: agouti, chocolate agouti, chocolate, blue and opal. (Opal is a dilute agouti) The chocolate bunny has one chocolate, one REW and one tort. 

So, I now know the agouti doe has a recessive "b" for chocolate, a recessive "d" for the blue and opal and most likely does not have the recessive "e" for tort, the jury is still out on if she has a recessive "c" for REW.

The chocolate doe has a recessive "c" for REW as well as a "d" for dilute (the lilac) and a recessive "e" for torts. Since she had the REW, that means the buck also must carry the recessive "c", so I can fill that in on his chart. The lilac buck's chart is: aa bb *C*c dd ee. Pretty easy to look for recessives with a chart like that. 



raccoon breath said:


> Great pics Hotzcatz. Keeping it simple for beginners, could you (or anyone) explain why breeding a chocolate to a lilac tort makes solids? If I bred a chocolate to a black tort or chocolate tort, would that result in solids too?
> 
> This is a pic of one of the buns from the first litter. This bunny's coat is 2". I can't wait so have lots of this to spin! I only have one rabbit this color right now and it's not enough when it's your favorite color.


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## hercsmama

:huh:
HC, Easy for you to say! LOL!!


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## raccoon breath

Hercsmama - Right there with ya! ha ha Raising the bunnies now and applying it to that, I'm learning some of it. I've read the A-E a million times, watched videos, read the rules surround this applying to colors I'm working with..this color plus this color equals this and then don't breed that together. Applying parts to my own rabbits is how I'm piecing it together, the little bits that I am. Not easy and I feel like a total dumb grits. lol The breeder I purchased my satin angoras from is a teacher and taught her kids this. I should go sit in her grade school class. 

Thank you Hotzcats for typing that twice. I appreciate it. Below the A - E stuff, I get what you're saying mostly. I'll have to read it a few more times over the next couple days. lol Thank you very much.


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## Kasota

Hotzcatz, I'm so sorry that you lost so many buns out of this batch. Hopefully the three will do ok! 

RB, what a beautiful color!


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## hotzcatz

If you want to get complicated, RB, then we could try to figure out the probability of the different possible colors. Not that the rabbits read such things, they just do what they're gonna do. For what it's worth, I've had litters that were all male or all female. Litters that should have had 50% of one color or another that had none of it. These are just probabilities, not guarantees.

However, with your rabbits, you are guaranteed all solids since there's no agouti genes at all. Chocolate to chocolate is another guarantee for all chocolate based colors. (Which would also include lilac & chocolate tort but those colors would require more genes than just the basic chocolate ones). 

Basically, if you breed a recessive (which would be solids, chocolates, lilacs, Ruby Eyed Whites, blues or any torts) to a bunny that is the matching recessive, then you'll get those recessives - or those recessives with further modifications. If you don't match up the same recessives, then they aren't guaranteed. A blue to a chocolate might make all blacks.

A black bunny can hide all sorts of recessives so breeding black to black can result in almost anything. Ruby Eyed White to REW results in 100% REW. Tort to tort = 100% torts. Chocolate to chocolate will result in either all chocolates or modified chocolates. Blue to blue is either all blues or modified blues of some sort.

Don't worry about getting it all at once, rabbit color genetics is something I've spent hours on over the years. I've tried to distill it down here for you, but it still takes awhile to absorb.

Yeah, these two litters have had high losses, Kasota. Mostly since they were both new moms. Once a bunny has had a litter before, they know what to do and the losses are a lot less. But baby bunnies are incredibly delicate and I don't even consider them to be "there", really, until they are about five weeks old. At that age, it's much less likely to lose them so that's when I think about naming them.

Guess I should go see if they are still there, I've not looked yet this morning.


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## Taylor R.

hotzcatz, my oldest daughter is of a mind that a trip to Hawaii where we bring back adorable bunnies is the most brilliant idea ever. Though I tend to agree with her, that's not quite feasible.


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## hotzcatz

Why not? I'll provide the bunnies! 

I am kinda thinking of setting up some "craft tours" where folks could come over for a knitting tour or a spinning tour or a "learn how to take care of angora bunnies" tour. I figure sometime when it's miserable on the mainland folks would love to take a craft tour.


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## raccoon breath

Taylor - I hope you don't mind but I've been planning your trip to Hawaii! :gaptooth: Unfortunately, airfare will be $957 per person round trip from Topeka. I checked airfare from Phx, Az and it's $500 per person, non stop, 7 hour flight, round trip.


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## hotzcatz

It's actually about a five and a half hour flight, if you go by air time. You change time zones so the time gets wonko when you go by start and stop times.

A friend at quilting group is looking at her house trying to figure out how to fit folks into it. I've not seen her house, but she's up on five acres above town with some sheeps and a huge ocean view. She says she can fit twelve people in all in their own separate beds. I'm not sure if that's everyone in their own room, or not. I don't want to plan too far until I've seen her house and it's gonna take awhile to get it organized. Although there are B & Bs around, too, but those would raise the craft tour price.

Twelve folks will also fit on one of the 15 passenger vans, so we'd not need to rent a full sized bus. 

If her house doesn't work out there is a spectacular ocean side B & B just outside of Hilo. However, it's about $2K per night to rent the whole place. That's $166 per person per night, so even though it would be perfect, I don't think our crafters would want to swing for it. Haven't a clue what our quilting friend would charge for the use of her house, but a lot less than that! Most of these craft tours have a famous craftsperson as part of the whole thing, I don't have any famous knitters on hand, but I could possibly dig up a famous how to care for angoras person. Not that I've asked her yet, but maybe.

So, have everyone fly in on one plane. Gather them up in the van and have an additional van following behind with the luggage. Get to the retreat, distribute folks into rooms and let them freshen up and settle in. Have a dinner and a knit-in & chat that evening to let everyone get to know each other unofficially. Wouldn't a retreat last about a week? Would ten days be better?

Get up the next morning, breakfast. A short lesson with the famous knitter. Then pile into the bus and see a waterfall on the way to the yarn store. Lunch in town somewhere. See some other scenic spot after lunch. Maybe knit in public somewhere scenic. Then back to the ranch and dinner and a short famous knitter lesson or another knit along. I'm not sure yet how the week/ten days would go.

Hmm, day 1 "the gathering"

day 2 - breakfast, meet the famous knitter (officially) with short overview of the week's project for the knitters, out for scenery & yarn store, lunch, more scenery, dinner & knitting

day 3 - breakfast, short knit lesson, somewhere scenic on the way to lunch, maybe take in a farmer's market or some other interesting venue , maybe a botanical garden, maybe dinner out somewhere, then back to the ranch.

day 4 - breakfast, short knit lesson, maybe off to the volcano, lunch at the volcano, more volcano, dinner in Hilo, back to the ranch.

day 5 - breakfast, short knit lesson, knit at the beach and have a picnic lunch at the beach. Another yarn store, back to the ranch for dinner, after dinner knit.

day 6 - breakfast, short knit lesson, more scenery? Do you think everyone would be tired and want a day in?

Well, it's still early yet, I'm still trying to rough in the how the whole thing should look. What would knitters want to do? Other than knit, of course. How much knitting do they want?

Should every knitter on the craft tour take home baby bunnies?

The three new ones are plump and doing well:










They've already had their first visitors and started being socialized, but I didn't get pictures of their friends visiting them.


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## Geoprincess55

Hotzcatz - I really want a bunny or two or six! Thanks for the genetics lesson on color too - very well explained. Your retreat tour sounds amazing! Maybe you could include an optional spinners workshop on spinning angora for those of us who are fairly new spinners. I am so going to start saving my money...


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## hotzcatz

How to raise and spin angora bunnies would be an easier tour for me to put together since there's the bunnies already here. Dunno as if it would be as much interest in it, though, but maybe. Wouldn't I need a spinning wheel for everyone, though? I suppose we could all learn on drop spindles, but spinning wheels are ever so much faster. Each person would need more one-on-one instruction, too, I'd think so a smaller group would be better. Maybe eight and get two or three spinning wheels.

A bunny or two or six is easy enough if you start out with two that are of different genders. If you're not careful, you could end up with sixty! 

I haven't checked the baby bunnies yet, so pictures will be later today.


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## Bettacreek

Black tort baby, taken a bit ago.
View attachment 29056


Same black tort baby, taken a few days ago.
View attachment 29057


Probably the same darned bunny, lol. This is the most relaxed and lovey of the litter, hence the five thousand pics of it.
View attachment 29058


This is the entire litter here, a few days old.
View attachment 29059


Little Gwendolyn
View attachment 29060


Black buck, part way through grooming after an entire winter of no grooming at the breeder's!
View attachment 29061


This is the fiber I had to remove from the lilac tort doe... This is JUST from the back feet. NOT her legs, just her feet. She had been shaved, but the foot fiber was left unshorn and unplucked. 
View attachment 29062


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## SvenskaFlicka

Little Gwendolyn is SOOOO CUTE!!! I want her!


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## hotzcatz

Gwennie's a cute, but the little black tort that lays upside down is a sweetie. It's amazing how different individual bunny's temperaments can be.

Rainy, rainy day here. Well, for half of it, anyway. The morning was lovely, then it started raining and has been very persistent about it. I had planned on going to the feed store and getting more bunny feed after knitting group today. Usually, I go with a friend to knitting in her car since it gets crazy good gas mileage. However, she didn't go today, so I didn't get to knitting and no bunny feed after knitting. So, the next plan was to go get feed at the other feed store which is closer although in the other direction. However, how to get there was a bit of a problem. One of the cars did evil things to it's fuel pump and we are waiting for parts. The other one needs a new battery put in it to start it, but it's still got the trailer attached and I didn't wanna detach it or drive it with the trailer. DH took the van that I usually drive off to work, the other car cluttering up the driveway is a project and that pretty much only leaves the parade car as the last one running to go get feed at the feed store. It's not very good in the rain, though:



















Those are the bunnies in last year's "Western Week" parade. I didn't have any little cowboy hats for them to wear, though.

So, what with the rain and lack of dry transportation the bunnies are having to eat oatmeal tonight. Which isn't a problem, they love oatmeal. Hopefully the sun will be out tomorrow so I can get to quilting group as well as to the feed store for more bunny food.










Here's today's baby bunny picture. Chipsy's babies are fat and happy. They look shiny here, but that won't last.


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## Bettacreek

Gwen is a sweetie too, lol. I'm hoping that with four of us constantly molesting baby bunnies, the litters will all be super calm and used to handling for their new owners. I'll get them all used to the blower and grooming by then as well. There is a show coming up in June that I'm hoping to show Gwen in. It's a shame that the other two were shaved down. The buck doesn't have much showing in his pedigree. I'd have loved to get him in.


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## Kasota

Hotzcatz, I have so enjoyed your photos!  The car is priceless. Do the buns like being in a parade? 

The bunnies laying on their back crack me up. When I had my pet store and sold pet buns people would be so amazed that you can put a bunny into a trance by slowly stroking their forehead...ever so slow and gentle...and they would go into a trance on their back and go limp. It was weird but funny.


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## hotzcatz

Yup, Bettacreek, "reach out and touch some bunny" as Betty Chu has been known to say (it's on her website, too). Baby buns get messed with a lot around here and their parents were the same. We have a really friendly bunch of bunnies although I think part of that is genetic as well as conditioning. 

If the other two bunnies were just shaved down, then they probably won't be show ready by June. It takes the bunnies here about four months to go from shaved to long enough for their next haircut which would also be long enough for show. At least, long enough to get into the show, depending on how the judges judged, the bunny may or may not get points. Isn't it supposed to be after so many inches, then they don't get any more points for coat length?

I dunno if the buns like parades or not. They do get a lot of ti leaves and other tasty treats at the parade so I'd think that's what they'd be more interested in. They didn't seem to not like the parade, but it's hard to tell under all that hair. I'd say, though, if they were given a choice to stay home and eat oatmeal or go to a parade, they'd choose the oatmeal.

I'll try trancing out the bunnies, I generally just roll them over to clip the hair off their tummies and they just kinda let me. They'd probably pfrefer to be tranced out, although they don't usually grumble much.

Here's today's bunny picture:










It almost seems like there's a white blaze on the tort bunny's head. How odd. I don't know if that is just a temporary thing or not.


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## Bettacreek

I lost one of the REW babies yesterday. Momma accidentally stomped it. The worst part was, with them having been nibbling on grass, I was terrified of bloat, so I did a necropsy on the poor thing. Yep, let that goofy "greens will KIIILLLLL all of your bunnies" crap get to my head. :/ I was so worried about losing the entire litter. I do know that I will continue shelf raising my babies. The heck with keeping them with mommas. She didn't seem super thrilled to have the mass of babies in her cage, though squishing the one was entirely my fault. She was just super excited for her calf manna and sunflower seeds. 

Being my first litter of buns though, it's quite shocking how quickly they grow! I used to breed rats and hamsters, but they don't have anything on the fat rabbit growth spurt!


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## hercsmama

Bettacreek, so sorry for the loss.

I guess these could go either here, or in the Springtime Projects thread, as this has been what I've been working on all Spring, lol.
Here are the new Sheep we picked up on Mother's day.
Now mind you, thses are Barbados, Hair Sheep. Although, I'm seriously considering playing with what fiber they have, to see how it felts....


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## MDKatie

Woo hoo, pretty sheep Hercs!!!


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## Marchwind

Great job, thanks for the pictures! They are awfully cute. Let us know how the felting works out. Would you wet felt or needle felt?

If you lay that round bale on its side rather than on its end it will last a lot longer and the center won't rot out from rain.


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## hercsmama

I'm going to try wet felting first. They are pretty greasy actually, so we'll see what happens...
As to the bale, we sat it that way so we could peel layers off to feed them. But stupid me didn't even think about them helping themselves,( I was on cold meds at the time!)
So now it is what it is, the next one will be put out of their reach, greedy hay wasters, lol.:hrm:


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## Kasota

Bettacreek - I'm so sorry for the loss! Rats! Raising critters is sometimes just hard. 

Love your sheep, Debi! The little one peeking out from behind the bale is so darling! 

I was driving to work today and I thought...you know...they have outside cats and "house cats." There are outside dogs and "house dogs." Then my wonky brain started thinking about a children's book about a lamb who decides to be a "house sheep" to keep her wool perfectly clean for spinning. 

I know. I know. Sleep deprivation does strange things to a person...


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## SvenskaFlicka

Kasota, I think you should write it! It would be a perfect children's book!


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## hercsmama

I agree!
And you could name the lamb Miss EmmyLou, and she could be a real pain in the backside to the poor human who has to bottle feed her whiney butt!


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## Bettacreek

Yes! I buy all of the goofy barn and farm books for the boys, lol.


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## Kasota

Oh, Emmy Lou would be perfect!! LOL! 

I actually have started on a children's book called "Ula's Fleece." A while back I bought a fleece from a nun living in a convent on an island off the state of Washington's coast. The ewe's name is Ula and it really is a flat gorgeous fleece. Ula was a national champion in her younger days. The story is about Ula and her life all the places her fleece has traveled to over the years and what people did with it. There will be pieces and parts about Ula's life now living on this farm where the nuns raise heritage breed animals and conversations the animals have throughout the day. 

I can envision some really nice artwork. It would be fun to sell it with a bit of yarn and some needles or a crochet hook so that children could be taught.


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## raccoon breath

BLACK TORT!!!! I SAW A BLACK TORT UP THERE IN THE PICS!! 
Betta Creek - I love black torts and just learned how they look the last few months. AMAZINGLY pretty to spin  Mine is fawny/red right down the back and so, so pretty.

Hotzcatz - The stripe stays wide all the way up, but the little devil played in water and has the brown covering it a little in a comb over. Her name is Stripe


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## raccoon breath

Her little paws are still wet in the pic. lol Her eyes are kinda blue/gray


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## Bettacreek

I'm hoping that the black tort is a girl. My friend/breeding partner will be taking it if it's a girl. The fiber is already noticeably longer than the rest of the litter, so hopefully we can keep that in our little breeding pool.


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## raccoon breath

Bettacreek - that's very interesting how some have faster growing hair and the little differences you see along the way. I've had a really great time with my rabbits. More survive when the next box was given to the mom at feeding time and then taken away. I wanted to let the mommas keep their nest in with them but it resulted in many deaths that could be avoided. Also, I can look over the bunnies each day and make sure everyone is eating and everyone is warm and actually in the nest area, not crawling away to a dark, cold corner of the box. I also check to make sure no one is knotted in angora (even though it's cut small but it does clump together from peeing I think) and I clean up if mom has done her business in there. With one of my first time moms that had 9, 8 survived by doing this. By not doing this, half survived with an experienced mom.


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## hotzcatz

That's a cute little sheep, Debi! Is that the one named "Miss Emmylou" that Kasota is going to write the book about? Should have zillions of really cute pictures! Will there be bunnies in your book, too, Kasota? Although it's really hard to draw fuzzy critters.

It might be easier to put a tarp or a few sheets of metal roofing or something over your hale bale instead of trying to push it upright. I dunno how expensive hay is there, but little square bales around here are about $36 each. Something to do with shipping, they tell me. I never can afford to feed the bunnies hay so they have to make do with fresh forage. 

Who says fresh greens are bad for bunnies? Are they insane, or what? What do wild rabbits eat? Purina bunny chow? Oh well, maybe they can afford processed foods for their bunnies. It's just too expensive here. The buns get fed what a lot of folks would probably think is an atrocious diet, I guess. Fresh grasses while they are still drinking mama's milk, leaves, fruits (who would have thought bunnies like grapefruit?), etc. Ti leaves, mulberry leaves, dandelions, kale, celery tops, carrot tops (they prefer the tops to the carrot roots), banana leaves as well as the bananas, pineapples, papayas, all sorts of stuff from around the yard. Mostly grasses and leaves, though. Along with 18% bunny pellets as well, but the grasses and leaves stretch out the pellets so we don't have to buy as much. They get alfalfa horse cubes, too. Kinda like bunny chew toys. Oh, and fruit tree sticks and branches to chew on. The love to chew on citrus branches. They also like rolled oats, but they don't get a lot of those since I think it's too rich for them as a steady diet. Not to mention the cost!

It's always important to save the best for yourself, Bettacreek! I forgot to do that for the first few litters around here. There's always a slow churn of bunnies as some find new homes and some stay. Some will go immediately to new homes, some will stay around for a longer evaluation time, others never leave. Taking notes is always good, too. After awhile you forget which bunny had what or did what.

That's a cute bunny, RB. Is it a baby angora? Interesting color, too. Sort of a brown? Chocolate chinchilla?

I'm not sure how a bunny here would have a white stripe. As far as I know, those are caused by the Vienna gene which we shouldn't have any of that in the entire herd. Twinkle's father and Chipsy's grandfather are the same chocolate buck, Grinlow's Dozer. One of his grandparents was a broken chocolate. Which could be where that stripe showed up from, but that would mean Dozer carries the gene. Arrgh! A lot of the herd is bred from him since he has a lovely temperament. Hmm, doubling up on Dozer genes is probably what allowed that stripe to show up.

Well, here's the little tort with the stripe on it's head:










It looks like it will be either a lilac tortoiseshell or a chocolate tortoiseshell. Looking more lilac than chocolate, so other than that white stripe, it would be a great color. Might call it "skunk" if that stripe stays. Angoras with white stripes are not showable. Nor angoras with white dots or any other sort of "broken" markings.

And here's the other litter. They've moved into a bigger space now so they have room to move around:










Agouti is over on the other half of the cage behind the wooden nest box. Cinnamon is still very miniature but she's getting around okay. Opal is a lovely bun as well as Blue. Cinnamon, Opal and Blue may all stay here. The chocolate, Roger, will go to Maui.

As for the rest of the herd, they are getting haircuts. Hillside Cheri got her haircut today.



















I haven't weighed her fiber or spun it up yet and she still needs her undercarriage trimmed but it was getting dark. Tomorrow I hope to trim Lotus, who is another black doe. I'm looking forward to evaluating her and her wool, she has a lovely silky feel to her wool and she may be bred when I get back from vacation. Possibly to City Slicker. Whichever buck has the silkiest wool will be the sire. Now that the herd has the colors I want, I'm working on wool texture. I was going to breed Lotus last year after vacation, but she was in terrible condition. She's a shy bunny and she'd been in a multiple bun space so the other buns were not letting her eat much. The house sitters didn't pick the bunnies up and check them, mostly just fed them so they didn't know that Lotus was skin and bones under all that wool. She's in much better condition now, but I don't want her to have her babies without me here to check on them.


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## Taylor R.

They always look so surprised when they get a hair cut. I LOVE it!!


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## Kasota

She looks so cute all shaved up. Look at all the spots that show!

Caption: I think I feel a breeze....


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## hotzcatz

The spots are uneven hair growth. The dark spots are where her next layer of wool has started growing in so it's still dark colored. As the hair gets longer, the color fades. So, dark spots are okay since they are temporary hair growth sort of things. White patches of hair aren't acceptable by show standards. 

I think Skunk is gonna keep his stripe. It's beginning to look like a permanent sort of thing.










Maybe I should name him "Magpie" instead of "Skunk"? Just to be more polite? Or it could be an incomplete "Dutch" marking? Maybe he should be named "Hanz" or "Gretchen" or something? Dratted little bunny, now I'm gonna have to check the pedigrees of all the bunnies and not breed back to Dozer. Which is a pity since he's got the best temperament. The Vienna gene sucks! I'm pretty sure it's a Vienna gene, too, but I'll have to go search around and see.


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## Kasota

Call him Domino!


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## Taylor R.

I finally remembered to take pictures! My chickies aren't babies anymore, but our girls will always be our babies (the roos on the other hand....).

From left to right, just a whole bunch of them, Buff in the next photo is Henrietta, pretty little RIR in the next is Charlotte, then my new rustic nest box project (built with all recycled materials).


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