Good and the Bad

Looking at last blog date, very interesting. The day after that blog was written I lost another great herd animal, this time the best animal so far produced. HD’s Mysterious Ways or Myst I found dead wed morning in her cage, Alana her cage mate in the corner, witnessed it all, poor girl. :( It was also unexpected as this doe was just shy of 6 months old. I did an autopsy and discovered she had an abscess mass on her stomach that had ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding ultimately leading to her death. (Sorry for the lingo, I am an EMP after all) This doe was just coming outta gangles the past month, the picture taken of her was a week before her death, she was going to be a show stomper for sure. She is what I am striving for in my herd, guess I was not ready to have that goal handed to me just yet but I will not give up! Maybe she reincarnated into one of the babies from my current litters, who knows.
Now before I begin updates for the past week, I must first say that these 3 deaths in a 1.5 week time were not related to disease or even bad food. They were just a “series of unfortunate events” that happened to take place at the same time. I figure best I can come up with is the last 2 weeks have been such nice weather might have triggered some of the internal stuff. I have a closed rabbitry and medicate/isolate rabbits when nessessary as well as keep tabs on a strict feeding regime. So please don’t worry when you buy a rabbit from me!
Ok so on to updates! With the 3 major losses comes 3 good things, almost like fate. First I had my first litter with Sobek born on the 18th with Bette. 3 happy fat babies. Two perfects with what looks like some very thick eyebands like dad and a broken sport! I just about died when I saw it, NEVER expected it! Ive wanted a broken for soooo long, not only because they are adorable but also they help darken/thicken the eyebands which I desperately need in 2 of my lines. Ive also seen/heard that brokens are nicer typed then any perfect hotot and can fix type by a mile. So the broken is most likely staying as are the rest, I may grow them all out unless some are ugly in type or all same gender. The same day I had my first homebred hotot flower give birth to 4 babies. She was bred to Laura-anns black polish herd buck Blackie who has at least 3 legs. Super nice buck! Strangely I was expecting broken marked hotots instead I got hotot marked with some black spots on face, ears and back. Just like the common places to find black spots on hotots. I will most likely keep a doe out of this litter to grow out, I really need a compact typed body and the polish bloodline might just fix it. The rest will be available as pets because they are F1 crosses…or crossbreds lol. But both excellent tempered and small size. The icing on the cake was on the 23rd, I come home to find starwalker giving birth in her cage. The night before I noticed she had pulled a tiny bit of hair so I happened to give her a nestbox, being 5 days early I thought whatever. She had the babies in the nestbox, premature but moving. I took some hair from bettes box to cover them because walker was struggling and exhausted from the birthing process. She ended up having the last dead baby 7 hours later, was stuck perty good. She is doing great now, babies are happy and fat. Not bad for a first time mom that’s almost 2 years old! I was VERY surprised, I was about to advertise her as a pet because this was her 6th attempt and this time she only took once with ELO, other times it had been 5-6 times. She will be however available to a pet home after this litter, I don’t want to risk breeding her again knowing this time was very hard to kindle, not to mention she was very early. I will be keeping this whole litter unless all same sex or ugly lol. Eyebands look very nice though! As for the last doe that hasn’t given me a litter, stargazer. I have put her in with ELO for 2 weeks in hopes she gives me something like she did last time. She’s only getting one more chance then she will be going to pet home as well.
So I have 10 new babies in the box, will be breeding both my thriantas and some new hotots after the chestermere show beginning of may and hopefully savannah will have a live litter in a couple weeks so my hotot program can move forward!
Note to all, I do have a pair of hotots im letting go, I wouldn’t call them a breeding pair as they are half siblings but good for a program nonetheless. I am currently out of town working in a camp for a week until the easter weekend so will get in touch with people who have contacted me after this time. I will be bringing just about everyone except pregnant/current moms at the easter displays this weekend…dawson creek co-op mall on Friday and easter extravaganza on sat. Will also have a whole bunch of other breeds to see and some for sale, lots of breeding stock in many breeds and of course information booths! Come check it out! Now to go enjoy this gorgous weather we have outside!