Sad News

Unfortunately, Black Momma didn't do a very good job with her babies. 3 of her 6 didn't make it past the second day :( The 2 white and one of the mottled ones are no longer viable in the nesting box. We don't know if it's because this is her first litter, she didn't pull hair until too late and they got cold, she sat on them. We just don't know.

The remaining 3 are very fat and are starting to get their fuzzy. We're checking them daily now to make sure everyone is still doing ok.

Bunnies!! Updated..

The baby bunnies are about 5 1/2 weeks old now - in about 2 more weeks we'll start selling them. They've all grown exponentially! We've all chosen an favorite and decided to keep him.

Oddly, this little guy, Dopey, was the runt of the litter BY FAR and is now the biggest by several ounces. Not that we were all sneaking him extra food at all.. Nope. We've never done that. But this is also the only one of the bunch that has a *real* name and that the kids actually play with.   They pet the others to tame and pet friendly them, but they aren't attached to them. This was the plan - so it's good they got it. We let Dopey run around the house for short periods of time with the cats too - he's still a little small to be left alone with a clawed 13 pound cat so we keep the visits short.

These are the 3 white Demon Bunnies:

 Flop - the Demon Bunny with 1 flopped ear.

 Tubby - the Fattest of the 3 Demon Bunnies

 Tiny - the Smallest of the litter when we weighed them tonight. 

We only named these 3 because they ARE so identical so we named them by identifying features to make selling them easier when referring to them with the kids. (You know, so we aren't going "Can you grab that one bunny, you know the white one with red demon eyes?" and getting brought 3 bunnies by giggling children.) 

These are the 2 black bunnies: 

 Black Bunny # 1 

 Black Bunny #2

We named them SUPER creatively: 1 and 2. These two black bunnies aren't nearly as identical as the whites. 

And then the lone dark brown:

It IS named "You Know, The Dark Brown One". We're awesome, I know.

C is taking a BIG batch of roosters and drakes to bring home in dinner sized packages tomorrow. Well, 6 roosters and 3 drakes - so about 1/4 to 1/3 of our total flock. The drakes have been completely mauling the females and they are almost bald from it. They look so pathetic from it.

THIS:

Is Steve! There's a lot of random Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball jokes floating around continuously now. Not gonna lie, I start most of them. Steve came pre - shot, health tested,  friendly with other animals, neutered paid for, and litter box trained. He's fitting in pretty well. He's about 10ish weeks old maybe? The vet was pretty unsure exactly how old he is, but it's not like a week or 2 either way matters. He weighs 3.9 pounds today. 

Baby Update!

I took new pictures of the babies today at day 12! They are stinkin' adorable! Their eyes have just opened and they are slinking around the cage chasing their Momma around trying to get more food almost continuously.

The 3 white rabbits. 

The 2 brown bunnies.

The 2 black bunnies.

All 7 together in the same basket as the first pictures. The growth is just exponential! The little light brown guy is just the most adorable of them all. 

I also have 7 Orpington eggs in the incubator right now.  We're on day 19 so I've stopped turning them and I'm doing experiments on ways to get and keep the humidity higher. We've had several hatching probelms in the past because the humidity hasn't been high enough. *RIGHT NOW* (because I just checked it) it's sitting at 99.5 and 81% so perfect. Hopefully it'll stay good all night. I really want to figure out what our hatching issues were. We'll find out soon I guess.

Not So Patiently Waiting

This whole *farm* thing requires Patience. A lot of it. Waiting for this to grow, that to hatch, this to start laying.. It to get hotter, colder, drier, wetter. I am not a patient person. I want things to happen. Now.

White rabbit is DAYS away from having a litter. DAYS. She's a giant fat rabbit right now. HUGE. 3 chins, lays on her side and all possible times, growls if you go near her cage. White rabbit has always been our friendliest rabbit. Now she hisses and growls. She's due soon. She's been playing with building burrows and nests but has seemed dissatisfied with them all, so we put a big wooden (so she can chew it)nesting box in her cage for her to see if that makes her happy. She bit me twice getting it IN but she's been arranging IN it so I guess in bunny land that's a like? We're all so excited since this is our second attempt at baby bunnies. We've got a bet at how many she'll have - since it's her first litter. C has 6 or more - I took 5 or less. She's a flemish giant/lop so she *could* have 11 or more.

Soon the Netherland Dwarf babies will be ready to sell. We've decided to keep any that are female. Unless they're all female. We don't want that many. We'd breed that female back to Domino, the other Netherland Dwarf buck we've got. These bunnies are more costly to obtain because they are harder to breed so if we have a couple of sets of good breeders the bunnies may be able to at least pay for their own food. (White Rabbit and the other black doe, Jefferson, are for meat purposes or cheap pets primarily. We've found that it's actually very difficult to find Netherland Dwarfs. Aiming for a supply/demand thing.) But, the babies are too small still for me, at least, to tell gender. So I may have to see if I can hit up some of the rabbit people I've met and see if *they* can tell of if we just need to wait longer.  Won't that be an odd message "Hi, you don't know me. But can you tell me if this has a winky?" Yeah.

Then there's the chicken problem. The problem? The goat(s) have killed all the little fluffy ones from our hatches. Lambie stomped on the last remaining one last night..The ONLY good news is that it wasn't the puppies. They didn't even drag it around after the salsa lesson. Those fluffies were (particularly the orange flufflies), of course, the birds The Boy were attached to. So we're looking for a few Big birds that are orange and fluffy and full sized that would fit into the current flock we've got. I came across the buff orpington and so far that or the buff cochin seem like a good match. Right now is the *wrong* time of year to try to find laying aged birds. I have never seen either of these either. But, when has that stopped us? That's right. Never. We've been looking for a few weeks, but haven't struck the winning lotto on hens yet. I'm thinking there's some magic way to look for them and just don't know what it is.

But this all requires waiting. I hate waiting. I want it to be magical and POOF! Alas, it seems to not work that way. We have to wait for things to happen on their own.

BABY BUNNIES!!!

We are so excited, our first baby bunnies were born last night! The little grey Netherland Dwarf doe had 3 little babies that are all healthy and fairly big considering her size. We pulled them out of this giant nest she built the day before and looked at them and took pictures. They are healthy, fat, wiggly looking little fur-less blind babies. Not to mention we are all super excited because we doubted the level of success we would have. Not only had we heard and read that Netherland Dwarfs were the hardest to breed, but who doesn’t doubt their first attempt at anything?  These babies are to be sold as pet bunnies – they should be less than 2 pounds – the White Rabbit is our meat doe and we will probably breed her in the next month or so since she’s getting close to 7 pounds. Those babies will be raised to be fat and then for food (for people or snakes or whatever). 

Aren't they so cute, but grotesque at the same time??


We've also been getting visits from some deer who have taken an interest in the goat food. They've figured out how to work their tongues through the fence into the goat food buckets we've got hanging and just snack away! (Excuse the really, really bad pictures - it was the best I could do without spooking them.)

Look really close and you can see the glowing eyes. The deer had been snacking out of the goat food. It's hilarious. It drives the ducks and big house dogs insane. Absolutely, wildly insane.


And for the random joy of it:

 Just look at that giant Rupert!

The Zoo is Now a Farm!

The Family Zoo has now become a Farm! With our recent move to a place with land, we have acquired  some animals. Ok, several animals. The kids are LOVING it. We're just starting this little experiment at animal farming, but so far we've only had the loss of 1 chick. 

Our original small collection of random animals now has a defined purpose. The bunnies will be raised for pets and meat. The chickens for eggs and meat. The ducks for whatever purpose they dispose themselves for - if they are nice duckies then eggs, if they are mean duckies then meat. The goats are mostly pet animals but may branch out into milk.

Part of what I'm going to attempt to have the kids do before we have things ready to sell is sort the website out so it's organized better. Which, obviously, it's not.  Anyhow. There are pictures of all the new aquisitions because they're cute!


The Rabbits:

Thumper - A Netherland Dwarf buck - about a year old. Will be a breeder boy for the pet rabbits.

 Oreo - A Netherland Dwarf Buck - about a year old.Will be a breeder boy for the pet rabbits.

 Anne - A Netherland Dwarf Doe - about 8 weeks old. Will be the breeder female for the pet rabbits.

 Hazel - A Flemish Giant/Holland Lop mix. About 2 months old and already BIG. She will be the female for our meat rabbits.

I'm calling this one Sausage, the kids have him named something else - but I don't know what it is. He is a New Zealand/Lop mix and is about 2 months old. He will be the boy breeder for the meat rabbits. He's going to be a little smaller than Hazel (who he's going to be *umm* friends with, but we figured that the female being a smidge bigger can't all that bad).

The Goats:

 This is Lamby - She is almost 2 weeks old. She is bottle fed and freaking hilarious! She follows us around like a puppy and baaa's (which is how she got named Lamby - it sounds just like a lamb) when she's unhappy. 

This is Jack. He is about 3 months old and is quite a bit more shy than Lamby, but is warming up nicely. He's kind of into the quiet, stalker mode right now. He's definitely got his own personality. He and Lamby seem to be getting along pretty well though.  Hopefully, when they both get to a reasonable age we'll have some more baby goats because these 2 are fun. 

The Ducks:

 These are Goldie and Herbie. They are just starting to get good and feather-y. They are starting to get shy so they may turn into eating ducks or egg ducks depending on if they are male or female (don't let their names fool ya, we have no idea.) 

These 2 ducks are Wilbur and Blackfoot. I couldn't tell you which was which without looking at their chest and feet and well, I don't care that much. They fall into the same category as Goldie and Herbie. Eating or eggs if they don't straighten their act up. Heck, we don't even know what kind of duck these 2 even are. 

The Chickens Of Doom:

 Meet Doris of Doom. She is a hen of doomic epic amounts. She clucks and squacks and poops. She is a dark Cornish chicken and would be a tasty addition to someones Sunday Dinner. She will be one of the founding member of the meat breeders unless she keeps being evil, then she'll be dinner.

 This is Dark Meat. It's supposed to be a pullet - though we have no idea. We have a total of 5 Rhode Island Reds that are supposed to all be pullets - I'm guessing we probably have at least 1 that isn't but, ehh Dinner it will be. 

 These are our first 2 successful egg hatches!! They are Silkies. The kids like them because they're fluffy and fuzzy. I don't know why we have them other than that. Egg hatchers I guess if they are hens.

These are the 5 Rhode Island Reds. They are all feathering nicely and currently in the garage until the coop and fence get built. They don't really seem to mind their big dog crate so.. These 5 (assuming they are all hens) will be the founders of the egg layers group. Why this kind? Heck if I know. It's just what we ended up with I suppose. 

The Dogs:

 Rupert 5 months ago.

 Rupert Today. He is about 6 1/2 months old and over 80 pounds. He's such a good boy though! 

Here's Bear. I couldn't get him to look over at me, odd - I know - not being able to call the deaf dog to get his attention.. He's still right around 65 pounds and is probably full sized now that he's just over a year. 

The Cats:

 Fuzzy - the biggest and most congenial of them all. He lets the kids drag him ALL through the house. Literally. His real name is Jinx though.

 Squirtle - Named after a Pokemon character. One of my favorites after Merlin.

 Merlin - the grandpa of the group at 13. He is my all time favorite of all the cats ever.

 Toby. Garfield would have been a better name for him as we have him on a continuous diet.

 Vinny - the only girl of the cats. Yes, her name is Vinny. Wow, she's loud too.

Ulee - The most cat like of the group. 

Random Leftovers:

 The Hamster - I'm sure it has a name. I just can't remember it. 

 

 The fish tank. It DID have 19 frogs in it earlier today. The frogs are now helping the chickens grow stronger by being their dinner. So now there is 1 lone fish in the tank. 

The eggs in the incubator. I just candled them the other night and all but 2 (which I threw away because they looked nasty) are showing veining and positive growth signs this time! That's the highest count so far!! Hopefully we'll have a high hatch rate this time. The 2 little Silkies above are the first hatches and the kids were SOOOO excited, so if we can get a higher rate, that would be cool.

The Help:

 This little helper boy will be 7 in just 1 more month! He complains less about cleaning and helping with the animals than brushing his teeth. He likes the chickens and goats the most so far.

This little helper girl is almost 8 1/2 and loves the bunnies and goats. She is great and getting them all cleaned up and fed every morning! 

 

Pictures for Auntie Jen!

A few pictures for Auntie Jen of the menagerie!

 This is the new chick and duck set up! We've got chicken wire as a lid so the cats don't try to take any off as a snack. So far we've got 5 chicks and 2 duckies. We've got a new batch in the incubator that is much more promising than the first - that ended up with none hatching out. BUT, we did figure out why several didn't hatch (we accidentally cooked them) and why probably several others didn't (they appear to not have been fertile when we put them in) and then figured out that flipping them with dirty hands may have introduced bacteria into some of the others.. SO. While the first batch *failed* like any experiment - it was not a true failure.

 This is Oreo. Or Domino. Or Ol' Smitty. Or well. Whatever the kids happen to be calling him that day. He is the shy-er of the 2 boy bunnies we have. We are going to be adding to the herd whenever we can (as in we already know where we plan on getting it from, it just has to be old enough) to get a girl so we can start a small rabbit hatchery. (Yes, I know it's Rabbitry.. or something similar but spell check REALLY hates that word.)

 The boy really likes helping with the animals. They both do. If they didn't we would not have as many as we do.

 This is Black Foot. The Boy has claimed this one as his.

This is Goldie - the Ducky. The Girl has claimed it as hers.

 Both bunnies getting raisins. That's their favorite treat. 

This is Thumper. He's much more friendly and out going, but since we got the bunnies from didn't treat them well at all, they don't like to be snuggled. We are going to snuggly the new one so it will tolerate it better. 

This is the frog tank and frogs. Yes, there are frogs in this picture. I just poured a ton of fruit flies into the tank so there are a bunch of flies and frogs - can you find them?

 Black Foot and Goldie close up. 

Peek-A-Boo Ducky. 

Girl was being a super helper with all the cages.

A feisty boy!

Still to come are the Rupert (the Biggest Puppy Ever), Bear (Deaf dog), and Kitty Galore. Oh the Hamster! I always forget the hamster.