Manna Pro

Manna Pro recently gave its Facebook fans a $3 coupon.  I've been using these coupons for over a year.  Not that one, but different ones they put up as old ones expired.  The others were for $2.  Last December through January, I paid a little over $10 (after $2 coupon) per 50lb bag while TSC ran a 6 week long price reduction.  Heck of a deal.  The usual sticker price at my TSC is around $14, and has been for quite a while.  It fluctuated a little higher a few times but that was in response to the hay and grain market at the time.  Drought or other weather disaster caused price hikes in feeds.  When the farms recovered, the price went back down to normal.  Sometimes the price fluctuated a bit lower.

Recently there was some sort of glitch in the supply chain and MP was nowhere to be found in many areas. What little there was in feed stores was way too old.  Breeders were not happy, and I don't blame them.  I guess I was the lucky one, it didn't happen to me.  It helps that I have fewer rabbits now and I'm not going through as much feed, but when I went to my TSC, it was stocked and it was fairly fresh (about a month old).  If the glitch affected my store, I didn't see it.  I didn't need feed until the glitch was fixed.

I wondered why the latest coupon was so generous,  MP had never given a $3 coupon before.  I thought it was to placate the ones who suffered during the glitch and thought that was very nice of them.  Then I went and got feed this week.  The price had jumped exactly $3!  I had never paid that much before.  I don't know why the price hike.  Maybe it was trickle down from the glitch, maybe there was something in the hay/grain market I wasn't aware of.  Maybe both.  I don't know.

During the glitch, many breeders made a fast switch to a different brand.  What are you gonna do, the buns gotta eat.  Some are doing so even though it's available again in protest of the price hike.  Unfortunately, here in TN, the options for quality rabbit feed are limited.  There's Purina (NOT!) and off-brands, that's about it.  If you want something else, you have to drive a LOT farther for it, or rely on someone to help you get it.  I'm not inclined to do either so I'm glad MP is here for me.  The price isn't killing me, and it will probably go back down again.  If not, well, I'm still not switching.

Some breeders began to seek another feed before the glitch because they felt MP wasn't doing it for their herd.  They complained of poor condition, lack of litters, poor milk production, and the general condition of the feed itself.  That's why I switched from Purina to MP so many years ago.  I'll buy TSC's off-brand before I'll go back to Purina!

I don't have any complaints about MP, other than the recent price hike.  I get plenty of live litters and always have on MP.  I've never seen a case where a doe didn't have enough milk for her litter.  Condition of the buns comes and goes but it always does.  As long as they are eating well, it's good.  It's when they don't eat you know there's a problem.  I don't even have to supplement with hay.  That's another topic, but I rarely give the buns hay anymore.  The rabbits' digestive systems are working just fine without it.  Even weanlings do well.  MP is apparently providing all the fiber they need.

Complaints about the condition of MP were about fines and corn.  Fines are caused by over-handling.  Every time the feed is moved, it grinds some pellets into dust.  Feed that is warehoused before going to the retail store is handled several times from mill to store.  I actually over-handle it as well.  It goes from the car to the wagon, unloaded into the barn, and then into the storage bin.  It might get moved around some more before it goes into the bin.  I'm not that strong so I'm not handling the bags gently.  From the bin, I scoop it into a pail, and then it's scooped more as I feed each bun.  That's a lot of rough handling.  I don't gripe about fines because I'm causing at least half of them.  I consider the amount of fines I see to be normal.

The occasional corn kernels in MP are from the cleaning process at the mill.  They use the hard kernels as a food-safe scrubber in the equipment.  Sometimes it ends up in the bags.  No biggy unless there is way too much.  I know someone that happened to, but it was an isolated event, and their feed dealer made it right.  I've only ever seen a few in any bag.  MP does not include corn in the feed itself, although small pieces of cracked corn might end up in a pellet.  If I see yellow, I just pick it out and toss it in the chicken feed.

There's something important I learned not too long ago about condition.  It's about genetics as well as feed.  They have it or they don't.  A certain buck improved the hindquarters on my current young does which was something I was sorely lacking.  Before him, my buns often had thin flesh condition in that area (as well as less than great structure) even though they ate and drank very well.  Judges feel the rump first and if that turns them off, the rest of the animal has no chance.  All the feed or conditioners can't fix that.  But breeders immediately blame the feed when they think their buns are out of condition.  They never consider it could be their breeding stock.  They might be tricked into thinking the bunny suddenly went out of condition, but maybe it was the transition from childhood to adulthood.  That happens, you know.  Some bunnies are just better jrs than srs.  If they go to pot after maturity, that's when you cull them.  You want stock that gets better as they mature, not worse.

Another thing many breeders (especially newish ones) blame feed about is fur condition.  This too is a genetic thing.  Some go through the molt very quickly and are almost always ready for show season.  Others are in some stage of the molt for a good part of the year.  I gave up Siamese Sables many years ago because they were so frustrating in that respect.  There was a very small window when they were in show condition and color, and most never regained their glory after the first adult molt.  I noticed other shaded lines in the region were better off this way.  It wasn't the feed or the climate.  It was the genetics.  I didn't have it.

I'm not saying a feed can't affect the overall condition of a herd, or their ability to reproduce, it certainly can.  However, if many breeders feel the feed works well, maybe it's not the feed.  Maybe it's your stock or some other condition in your barn.

I have litters.  Considering it's fall going into winter, and that I hadn't bred any does since June, I'd say that's really good.  Most of these does are first-timers.  Baroquen's litter of 4 are FAT babies.  They were getting more milk than they needed even though I only allowed them to nurse once a day for 2 weeks.  I was bringing the nestbox into the house at night as I usually do to protect a valuable litter.  I have no complaints about Manna Pro.  Just like gas prices and pretty much everything else, I'll live with price hikes.

I also have no complaints about my local TSC.  They're outstanding, and the fact that the feed is not too old is the result of their intelligent management.  I know not everyone can say that about their local store, but I'm so glad that I can.

Happy Thanksgiving

What's in a name?

As anyone who has researched rabbit colors knows, different breeds have different names for the same color.  No one is sure why this breed is called that, and that one calls it this.  I think it has to do with the mindset of the founding breeders and some of those go back to the country of origin.  It might have been how the color was described in that country and then how it was translated to English.  Or my theory...Americans will always create new words and they just ignored the original translations.

If you look at ARBA's Standard of Perfection (SOP), you can get pretty confused.  Take Flemish Giants, a very old breed.  What most breeds call Chinchilla is called Light Gray in Flemish.  Sandy and Fawn, I'm still not sure just what these are genetically in Flemish.  I assume they're agouti, but not sure how it translates in other breeds.  It gets really confusing when someone doesn't specify the breed they are talking about.  Fawn in Lops (and Flemish) doesn't seem to be the same genetics as Fawn in Netherland Dwarfs.  Maybe it is, but Creme in Lops seems to be the closest to Fawn in dwarfs.

And that's what it comes down to...what the color is genetically.  How sweet it would be if ARBA standardized the color names across the board based on genetics.  There is a finite number of genetic combinations for color so it could certainly be done, but that's probably never going to happen.  Among different breeds, well, it's like trying to communicate with different languages.

I've only raised Netherland Dwarfs so that's the language I speak.  The reason I felt like writing this was a recent discussion about an unrecognised color on a dwarf.  They were trying to decide what to call it.  The owner of the odd color was flaunting her genetic knowledge and making it more complicated than it needed to be, and I don't think she was entirely accurate in her reasoning.  I'm all for keeping it simpler so everyone can understand.

So what was the color?  It was a Sable Point with tan pattern trimmings.  White markings on the nostrils, ears, tail, and belly.  Some people might call it "martenized".  Genetically, this would be a non-extension Sable Marten, but she started the discussion by calling it non-extension Silver Marten.  Big difference there!  Let's pick those colors apart.

It was a Sable Point, no doubt about that.  Sable Pt is non-extension Siamese Sable...shaded.  Sable Marten is tan pattern Siamese Sable...again, shaded.  Silver Marten is not shaded.  It's Otter minus Otter's gold trimmings.  In other words, the gold has been replaced by silver (white).  Referring to this as Silver Marten was completely incorrect.

So what do you call it?  Easy.  Sable Point Marten.  Most everyone can grasp that concept.  This person even suggested a color in Europe which didn't translate to anything an American breeder can relate to.  I forget but it was something gray.  Really?  Maybe if you're colorblind, you'd see gray, but this bunny was brown!  Non-extension Sable Marten might be the correct term but who wants to write/say all that every time.  It's why other non-extension colors like Tort and Orange have nice short names.  Sable Pt Marten...short and easy to understand.

I'm old school, and while I have adapted my thinking to allow for new (to me) genetic knowledge, I still think of many things the way I learned them.  One thing that was hard to grasp was Tort Otter vs. Tort Marten.  I learned from the old time breeders of the time (Glenna Huffman for one, who published several genetics books, and who I knew personally) and a non-extension tan pattern was referred to as Tort Marten.  A Tort with white tan pattern trim.  Several years ago I was corrected that this is actually Tort Otter because of its genetics.  Ok, I've accepted that, and since everyone calls it that, I do too.

I tried to accept that the concept of Tort Marten doesn't exist.  But wait...it does.  A friend showed me a non-extension Silver Marten.  It's not yellow so I guess technically it's not a Tort, but since "torted" is often used to describe a non-extension color, it can be used on this.  What did this Tort Marten look like more than anything else?  Ermine!

Ermine is another term I learned early on.  It's showable as Frosty in some breeds, but it's not recognised in dwarfs.  Ermine is non-extension Chinchilla.  A new term a lot of people seem to like (I guess for how exotic it sounds) is "Ghost Chin".  This is one the British came up with, but I prefer the old American term.  We are in America after all, and if we had stuck to the European color names, everything would be completely different!  And there's the general theme of naming dwarf colors for the animals they most closely resemble.  Otter, marten, chinchilla, sable, lynx, etc.  Sable Point looks like and is the name of a variety of Siamese cat.  Ermine isn't really an exact match for the color on rabbits.  The ermine is a weasel with a winter morph coat of pure white with a black tail tip.  Ermine fur coats were pure white with the black tips included for accents.  The color on rabbits is actually closer to what a silver fox fur coat looks like....white with widely scattered black ticking.  Maybe Silver Fox would be the correct term for the color following that line of thought, but there is a breed called Silver Fox so Ermine it became.  I'd have to look it up but maybe ermines do have an in-between phase where they look like the rabbit color.

BTW, I was an adult when it was still fashionable to wear fur.  I loved my rabbit fur coats and dreamed of affording the pricier furs.  Nothing made me feel warmer.  Silver Fox is a luxurious gorgeous fur!  Imagine how rabbits could be revitalized as a commercial industry if it was ok to wear fur again.

How do you tell the difference between an Ermine and a Tort Marten?  It's in the genetics.  Chin is agouti and dominant.  If neither parent is agouti, it's not Ermine.  Tort Marten is tan pattern which cannot carry agouti.  If the parents are tan pat, it's a Tort Marten.  If the parents are both, it's a bit trickier, but what I saw on this Tort Marten was that it was considerably darker than Ermine.  It was light gray instead of white.

A few years ago, an importer brought in what is called Yellow Chin in Europe, and tried to spread them around.  This was something entirely new to everyone and I was frustrated by the importer's inability to explain it well.  It looks like Ermine but it's not non-extension.  The best I could get from the very poor communication skills of the importer and what little info I could find is that it's a wideband Chinchilla.  Wideband is a completely different gene than non-extension.  It's what makes the Tan (color and breed) black and red, and fills in the white agouti markings on Steel with black or brown.  On Chin, it made the white band wider to the point of the entire coat being predominately white.  Apparently to those that understand its use, Yellow Chin produces perfectly colored Chins and Silver Martens with bright crisp white.  However, I saw much confusion and even the importer kept referring to it as Ermine.  If you use Ermine with Silver Marten, you are going to end up with Tort Otter/Marten!  It's not the same, and when people introduce a new idea like this, they need to explain it well or every newbie is going to think that Ermine that popped up in a litter is useful that way.  Oh and what about its name "Yellow Chin"?  It's as far from yellow as you can get so that makes no sense.

An example where an unrecognised color became accepted with just one name is Blue-eyed White.  Many years ago, BEW breeders agreed that the marked offspring from BEW x any other color should be called just one thing.  Before that, they were called sports, dutch-marked, mis-marked, depending on who you were talking to.  I even know someone who still calls them parti-color.  He puts that on his pedigrees, and the only one I've ever known to call them that.  Those terms actually refer to a specific breed or a separate gene.  BEW breeders (all breeds) all agreed they should be called Vienna-marked (VM) and Vienna-carrier (VC) to separate them from the other genes and breeds.  It became commonly known, and even Evans Pedigree Software included the VM/VC designation in its database.  It made things so much simpler and now everyone who gets into breeding BEW learns it right off the bat.

Another term I learned from Glenna is "ee".  This is the designation for non-extension in the color genetic code.  Rough example: Aa-Bb-Cc-Dd-ee.  I began to do as she did and call some things with this prefix such as ee Himi.  Why not call all the unshowable non-extension colors this way?  Non-extension Otter/Marten would be ee Otter/Marten.  It would be so simple if everyone agreed (like BEW breeders) that this best describes this color code.  The Sable Pt Marten that sparked this blog would be ee Sable Marten.  Simple.

What you call a color is important to understand it within your breed, and that includes the unshowable colors.  Can't we at least keep it simple and somewhat uniform?


tnt

Whipper

I just felt like devoting a post to him.  Whipper is a Smooth Collie, now about 8 years old.  I got him in Michigan just before I moved here.  He was about 4 months at the time, and came from a show breeder.  He is the best dog I've ever had.

Whipper is the guardian of the place.  It's mostly a night shift job because his main nemesis's are raccoons and coyotes.  Since I fenced the backyard, the birds and rabbits are completely protected from either of these predators.  He has a cozy doghouse on the porch with a thick bed in it, but I bring him inside on cold mornings (I'm up stupid early).

What prompted me to write about him is a behavior I occasionally see.  Smooths are rather rare in this country.  In the UK where they originated, they were the working collies where the Roughs became the more common companion dogs in the US.  However, Whipper doesn't have much opportunity to display his heritage as a herding dog here.  Except sometimes.

When he gets riled by something, he tears up and down the yard barking.  What does he get riled about?  Noise in the forest.  Often instigated by the neighbor's dogs (who run loose), but sometimes he starts it.  Any crashing noise in the woods puts him on high alert.  It could be a coon scrabbling in a tree, or coyotes running through the underbrush, or maybe even a bear.  I've never seen a bear but I've seen scat so I know they are there.  I can put him on alert by saying "Coon!".  He's so sensitive to this kind of noise, even chainsaw work sets him off.  Branches or trees crashing down, it's all the same to him.  Something is in the forest.   

When he gets fired up like this, that's when I see what I believe to be his herding instincts.  As he's running up and down the yard, he makes a quick little jog at whatever chickens are in the vicinity.  He lowers his head at the bird, and to someone who doesn't know him, it might look like an attack.  I think he's actually herding them to safety.  "Run to cover!".  He swings away from the bird as soon as it moves out of his way.

Most of the time, he ignores the birds, and I'm not the least bit worried he will hurt them.  They don't fear him and will peck the ground all around him when he's laying in the grass.  There was a time this summer when a rooster was annoying him while he was relaxing in the grass.  The bird kept trying to peck his front feet.  I don't know why the bird was so fascinated by his feet.  Whipper bared his teeth and swung his head at the bird, but that was all it was...a warning.  "Leave me alone, you annoying little chit."  

He's not what I'd call a guard dog in regards to people.  He doesn't bark when someone comes up to the house, although I wish he did.  He might bark at a passing car but not all the time.  We don't get much traffic back here other than the people who live here, so he knows who belongs and who doesn't.  The mail and paper carriers are the only other daily traffic and he doesn't react to them either.  Unlike the neighbor's dogs who are kind of stupid that way.  They chase my car, and the mail and paper carriers...pretty much everybody but their own people.

If there was one thing I don't like about Whipper it's his intense fear of thunderstorms.  I blame it on an incident a couple years after I moved here as he had never exhibited this fear before.  That July, the neighbors were shooting off fireworks.  Whipper wasn't confined to the yard, I hadn't put in the fence yet so he had the run of the place, and he spent a lot of time over there.  I didn't like it, but tying him up wasn't a good option so I didn't.  He actually learned his guardian skills from their dogs (different dogs back then), so it was good in that respect.  Anyways, he disappeared for a day and half.  I don't know where he went.  I looked for him but didn't find him in the area.  When he came back, whoever had him obviously meant to keep him.  They had given him a bath.  I could smell the shampoo.  I was so happy to see him again (couldn't help thinking "Lassie Come Home".), I tried tying him up, but that just doesn't work very well here.  It was shortly after that I invested in the fence.  And ever since, he's terrified by thunder, and gets anxious about gunshots.  I don't allow him to become a "velcro dog" when he gets like this because it just makes me tense (I don't like violent thunderstorms either).  He goes off to his "cave" under the back deck.  I don't know why he feels safe there, he gets wet when he could stay dry in his house on the covered porch.

Whipper is showing his age a little but not so much I think about the day he's gone.  He's getting a little gray about the muzzle and looks a bit stiff after laying down for awhile, but other than that he's pretty spry.  I try not to think about it.

tnt

November

I have babies!  Yay.  It's been awhile since I had anything to talk about in the rabbitry, let alone litters.

Baroquen x Smith's Lou had 4 nicely broken blacks just an hour ago.  I was so pleased to see the entire litter is broken and all have very good pattern.  I was hoping there would be chocolate, but I'll take it.  I'm actually surprised there were no chocolates since she threw it in her last litter without trying.  I was trying this time...Lou is lilac.  Also pleased the litter is live and healthy.  It's been 4 months since I bred any does so I was prepared for failure.  Good girl, Baroquen!  I didn't look to see if they are otters or selfs.  Being broken, it might be a couple days before I can tell.  Would be very helpful if the Smith's bucks carry self.

It took a while to get the rest of the does bred so the next round isn't due for 2 weeks.  I still have one who will not lift.  I had to do a lot of shuffling around to get the others bred.  No one was cooperating, so I moved the does to a different cage everyday until they did.  It's not working on the frigid one so I'll take her for a ride the next time I go to town.

It was such a great year for daylilies.  Mild winter, plenty of rain and sunshine through spring and summer, and now still mild in November.  Best bloom I can remember in a long long time.  What really amazed me is that a couple varieties not known for reblooming did just that.

Like this one.  This is Golden Gate and it has never ever rebloomed.  It's been kicking out flowers for the last month.  It's usual bloom period is early in the season (May-June) and then it's done.  Even had 1st frost yesterday and the buds still opened today.  Oh yeah, didn't get 1st frost until yesterday.

There's a few other blooms as well.  The pink Knock-Out rose has some, and the white coneflower sent up more buds that started to open.  I think the frost stopped them which made for an interesting flower.  The petals look like toothpicks sticking out of the cone.  I tried to get it with the camera when I got the daylily but I think my camera is dying.  It gets harder and harder to get decent pictures.  Seriously considering a new one in the near future.  Other flowers are still coming but that frost should put a stop to that.

Didn't get the snow they went on about out of hurricane Sandy.  It spit some mixed with a fine misty rain that day but that's all it amounted to.  I guess the highest elevations got quite a bit.  How odd that I had snow before Michigan.

I finally sold the 3 odd breed hens at a TSC parking lot animal swap a few weeks ago.  Now I don't have to worry about cross-breeds in hatches next year.  That leaves me with 8 cochins (2 roos, 6 hens), and the Silky hen.  I'll probably bring in more next spring.  I have a line to a breeder who has Mille Fleur cochins (pretty!), and I might try a hatchery order to get the colors I want.

tnt