On the Road Again

Show season is starting again.  We have really missed seeing our friends.  The Duncan, Oklahoma show is on Friday night and Saturday this week.  It will be good to get the rabbits on the table again and see our friends.  We can't wait to see how some of our juniors will do.  We wish that we could bring Spunky and Disco.  But they are just 3 months old.  We don't want to risk a long trip on their first time out.  They will just have to wait for the next show.   Disco and Spunky are two of Sampson's babies.  Spunky, the broken tort, looks good.  But Disco, the solid tort, looks awesome.  They will just need to wait to till our show in Gardner on October 3rd.  September will be really long since we won't be attending any shows.  We hope to see you soon!

P.S.  Ash, our black silver marten doe, had babies yesterday evening. She gave birth to three - one peanut. We are really excited. Now we will wait and see what colors she and Sub-Zero made in this litter.

Nest Boxes, Babies and Colors

Gracie is our little opal doe.  We bred her with Nacho (one of our grand champion bucks) last month.  She had 3 babies yesterday.  They are doing well - no peanuts.  We are so excited to have babies again after a few misses earlier this month.  Ash has a nest box and is pulling fur today.  We have nest boxes in with Amber, Pearl, Sabi, Dixie, Expo and Daisy also.  Even though Daisy gave birth to 3 babies early last week she may still have more babies.  Better safe than sorry. :>  We usually don't breed this many does at a time.  But the weather was so cool at the end of July and first of August that we took advantage of the opportunity.  It continues to be unusually cool.  The highs were in the 70s yesterday and today.  Is the world coming to an end??  It is actually cool in August.

This round of breeding is exciting for us.  Expo is one of the first babies from our new lines.  This will be her first litter.  I hope she has live babies.  She is a sweetheart.  But she has been really agitated for the last few weeks.  Hopefully, she isn't going through this process for nothing.  We bred Expo to RJ (Nacho's son).  They should have beautiful babies.  They are both compact Hollands with beautiful bodies. 

Gracie, Ash, Sabi and Pearl are our colored does.  We are really missing the colors in our barn.  We have been focusing so much on type that we have lost most of the color in our barn.  When we started in Hollands we didn't know about color.  Some of our first Hollands just happened to be colored.  So we have been used to seeing color in the barn.  With the change in lines most of our barn has been transformed to tort.  We are so thankful for the improvements in type.  But we like the excitement that comes with color.  We know that typey colored Hollands are possible.  We had those in our old lines and gave them up when we changed lines.  So if we can  keep the consistency with using the colored Hollands, we will continue to work with them.  Otherwise, we will just love our tort Hollands.  The excitement of seeing excellent tort babies still outweighs the excitement of an average colored Holland. 

Molting & Herd Bucks

I feel like I am covered in fur every time I go to the barn right now.  The cages, ceiling and walls are covered in fur even after we clean them.  It will be so nice when the summer molts are over.  We desperately need to update our website.  We have several Hollands to add to the website. But we can't take pictures during their molts.  We are really excited about Lil' Bit Farms' Lane.  Melanie and LeAnne sold him to us this month.  He is our new herd buck.  Lane is awesome.  He has a wonderful body and head.  His personality is awesome - very friendly.  We are very fortunate to have such a great Holland in our barn.  We are still sad that we had to replace our other herd buck, Sampsom.  We lost Sampsom this summer.  That loss was devastating to our rabbitry.  We didn't expect to be able to replace Sampsom with a new herd buck so soon.  We were really excited when Lane came up for sale.  We never dreamed we would have a Holland of his quality this soon in our rabbitry's life.  We started showing a little over 3 years ago.  We expected it would be about 8 - 10 years before we would have great Hollands.  But thanks to our friends selling us Hollands and mentoring us that process accelerated quickly.  Philip has been very successful in Kansas and nationally.  Thanks to everyone who has contributed to that success. 

Poor Daisy :<

Daisy was due to have babies on Saturday this week.  We were supposed to put her nestbox in her cage tonight.  This morning I found 3 babies on the wire.  They were just too early.  This was her first litter.  It was also the first litter that RJ had sired.  Hopefully her next pregnancy is more successful. 

Another Beautiful Day

I can't believe we are experiencing such great weather in August.  Usually it is just hot in Kansas this time of the year.  But it is gorgeous right now.  It is supposed to heat up for a few days this week and then cool off again.  I just had to share some pictures from our yard this weekend.  We had several different butterflies in the yard yesterday.  But this is the only one I could capture with a camera.  Holland lops are my current obsession.  (I don't think that will change.)  Flower gardening was my previous obsession.  I spent years planting flowers that would attract butterflies.  It has paid off.  Every year we have numerous types of butterflies that visit our yard.  We really enjoy the visits.

Beautiful Day

Today was a gorgeous day! It felt more like the end of September. We spent almost the entire day outside. The bunny barn is clean now. We moved all of the babies from the basement to the barn. They are really growing. We are excited to see how they will do at the shows this fall.  We took some time to take a few pictures today.  Eden's babies are really cute.  Marissa is pictured on the top left.  Scooby (Philip's favorite) is pictured on the top right.  Nilla Wafer (my baby) is listed in the center below.  Zoe's baby, Sadie, is pictured on the bottom left.  She is the most promising doe in our litters.  Disco is pictured at the bottom right.  He looks awesome.  We are hoping that he will show at Convention this fall.  Cammie's babies are just too fast to get pictures of.  They are sweeties.  We hope that you are enjoying the mild August weather.

Selling.....

We sold three rabbits tonight - 1 buck and 2 does. They are all sweet Hollands. We will miss Ruffles the most. She was one of Cinnabun's babies. Cinnabun was our original brood doe. Ruffles is a siamese sable. The picture on the left is of Ruffles with her sister, Houdini, when they were babies. They were one of our first show quality litters. I remember that we were so excited about that litter. The quality of our Hollands has really improved in the last few years.

Selling is still a hard process. We love our rabbits. They are not only show rabbits but pets. One of our friends used to tell us that we had to choose between being a breeder or a pet owner. We have embraced both. But when it comes to selling we must put on our breeding hat. We know that we can't continue to breed unless we are willing to sell. So in order to enjoy the babies we must be willing to sell our other Hollands that we are already attached to. That is never an easy thing. But it is not as difficult as it used to be. There is a balance now. We are so excited to share our Hollands with other people who will love them as much as we do. But we will certainly miss them. It is just great to know that we are selling show quality Hollands to other families. We know that the quality of Hollands continues to improve in our region as we sell good Hollands to others. We are happy to do that. The sadness that comes with each sale is balanced with the joy we find in helping other Holland Lop lovers. We want to thank everyone who has purchased Hollands from us. We appreciate the love you give to your new Hollands.

Break in the Weather

The weathermen predicted 100 degree temperatures for every day this week. Thankfully, we have received a reprieve from the hot weather. It was only in the low 90s on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today it was rainy and only reached 84 degrees. That is so much easier for the rabbits. We did move Micah and Dosie inside on Tuesday night. They are due to have babies on Monday. We didn't want them to stress due to the forecasted heat. We have bred several more does in the last week or so. This summer has been so strange. We have never been able to breed throughout the summer before. It is normally too hot after mid-June to do any breeding. So we are thankful for the opportunity to breed more this summer. We hope your weather has been good this summer and your nestboxes are full. Take care.

Robin and Philip

Growing Babies

The babies grow so fast. Eden, Zoe, Cammie and Judy all have babies that are around 4 weeks old. They are so cute at this age. We love to let them run and play in the living room. Smash, the single broken tort above, is our favorite right now. He is one of Cammie's babies. His personality is adorable and he loves to run as fast as he can. Zoe's babies (in the basket) are our quietest litter. They don't explore much yet. Eden's babies are funny. Nilla Wafer, the cream, comes to the door as soon as we call his name. Scooby, the broken fawn, is pretty friendly, too. Mars and Max are still warming up to us. These adorable little bunnies are what keep us going during the discouraging times.