Expo & Pearl

Expo had 3 babies on Sunday.  We will lose two of them because they are peanuts.  But one is a healthy broken tort.  Philip is excited because this is RJ's first live baby.  If RJ produces like his father (Nacho), this baby should be nice. 

Pearl had one huge baby.  I felt so bad for her.  But at least her labor is over.  So we will try again in a week or so. 

In two weeks it is time to start breeding for Holland Lop Nationals.   They are being hosted by the Hollands & Friends club in Loveland, Colorado.  April seems like a long time away right now.  But it will be here before we know it.  We will definitely breed Dosie and Pearl to have juniors for Nationals.  But we need to decide who else to breed on 9/21.  We would really like to breed Zoe and Cammie.  But we are planning to take them to San Diego in November.  So their breedings will need to wait until the end of October.  Sometimes this rabbit business is more complicated than we expected. 

Duncan Show

Philip and I went to the triple show in Duncan, Oklahoma this weekend.  It was a 5 hour trip one way for us.  That is the longest we have traveled for a rabbit show.  It was great to see our friends again.  As usual our friends were gracious and very helpful.  They helped us evaluate our rabbits and answered questions about new situations we have encountered with our rabbits. We came home with a few new does.  Thanks JoAnn and Melanie!

The shows were successful. Philip's rabbits earned 8 legs this weekend.  He was able to grand Frazier, his little blue tort buck.  That was great.  Khufu, our broken tort junior, took Best of Breed in the second show.  He is pictured here.  Yoshi, one of Sampson's daughters, took BOS in the third show.  Overall, it was a very good show. 

Dixie

Dixie had her litter today.  Her poor belly was stretched as far as possible the last several days.  I was afraid she was carrying one large baby.  In the past she has only had one or two babies per litter.  She had 6 babies today!  One is a peanut.  But the rest are normal size babies.  No wonder she was so big.  Lane is the sire.  He was also the sire of Sabi's babies.  Normally, she only has two babies also.  She had 5 this time.  So I guess Lane is very good at his fathering duties.  Now we hope that those little babies look like Lane.  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, we are very grateful to Melanie and LeAnne for our new herd buck.

Sabi

Sabi had 5 babies today.  One is a peanut.  But we only expected her to give birth to 2.  The best part is that Lane is the father.  So we have our first babies from Lane.  We are really excited!!!

ARBA Convention

Has anyone seen the Convention show catalog?  All I can say is WOW!  It is terrific.  Even my non-rabbit friends are impressed.  The catalog has helped educate them about the great variety of breeds and how big our hobby really is. Thanks to all of the California breeders for your hard work!  We appreciate your efforts. 

I can't believe that Convention is only two months away and that I am actually going.  This should be an incredible experience.  It will be my first ARBA Convention.  I hope to bring my laptop so that I can update my blog daily.  Then I can stay in touch with my rabbit friends that aren't able to attend.  Philip is not happy that he has to stay home and attend school.  But I will feel better that I am there to take care of our Hollands.  Now we just need to start choosing which Hollands will be going to San Diego. 

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.