Wow, I seem to have a lot more to talk about this month!
First... Babies! Lots of babies! After such a long litter drought, they poured in all at once. I feared running out of nestboxes. All but 3 does delivered. I did foster one litter but mostly all the does have their own litters. Currently a head count of 29 kits including some older ones still at mom's side. Most of the boxes only have 2 kits. Most of them are 1st or 2nd timers and I want them to raise their litters. Except the last litter in was 6! Unfortunately not a lot of exciting colors. A few real nice brokens but not as many as I wanted. There's a lot of whitish kits I haven't ID'd for sure yet. Too many possibilities in those so I have to wait and see. I think there's a choc self, and some decent blacks.
Next... The weather. Oh yeah, it's so much better now! More normal 40s/50s. It was 50 this morning! Yesterday, I was able to water the animals from the hose for the first time in over 2 weeks. Got really tired of hauling water in gal jugs and pails and knocking ice out the dog/cat/bird dishes.
My current culling is going pretty well. Often I talk about something on a forum, or in my mind, and it helps make a decision about a particular rabbit. Am I using him? Do I have all I need from her? How many offspring have I kept? Is that color of any use to me now? All of these are factors in my culling.
To that end, I've decided to get out of shadeds. I've been frustrated by siamese sable for a long time. There's such a small window when they are in color condition to show. The smoke pearls and sable points are a bit easier in that respect, so I tried to keep them around. As I work the brokens more, chocolate keeps popping up and choc doesn't mix with shaded. I also get a lot of seals because almost everything in my barn is carrying shaded. So I'm weeding them all out. I hope the selfs will be more dominant as time goes on.
I still want dilutes, but for some reason, it's not hooking up in the litters. I am using an agouti buck heavily who doesn't carry dilute, but his offspring should. I brought in a couple blue bucks to help. So far I've got one self blue buck out of that. No broken blues.
Quite a few are carrying non-extension thanks to the sable pts, and I'll be glad to see more torts come from that.
So the current color plan will be agouti, self, and tort for the brokens. The BEWs will always be a sideline. I think of the himis as my bread & butter. They give back the most with the least effort. Color is easy and type is some of the best in the barn. They do the best on the table for me.
61 days until Spring!
tnt
