Updates

So its been a couple weeks since the wetaskiwin show. I did attend with Laura-ann and we had a bit of fun. This show was more of a learning experience for me and my hotots in trying to understand the type and characteristics of them to make better show animals. I ended up bringing my jr buck devil, jr doe myst outta aly, bette, starwalker and flower a just sr doe. I also brought the three babies out of sweet who I just sold to a pet home. Im keeping both her daughters to grow out and see well they do. Funny thing is who to pick! Sweet emotion looks like a carbon copy of her mom but with a much fuller HQ and smaller size, still lacking in head but more defined eyebands, excellent body doe. Jewel on the other hand has a super cute head with correct ear and very very DARK eyebands, just not as clean as id like but definitely a start! Body wise she is short but lacking in shoulders like her half brother devil She is a head and eyeband doe lol. What to pick! We shall see I guess haha.
Getting back to show, my comments with both judges was very harsh but definitely what I needed and was aware of. These guys are a project and will take a while to get very nice in type. I was mainly lacking in correct size eyebands and depth with shoulders. Devil took BOB on 2 tables and very surprising myst took BOS & 1 BOB on other tables, she has great potential and was told she is nicer then walker and bette, both my best does, both judges agreed. I showed my jr thrianta doe Alana, both judges commented she has excellent body type and is a BIS contender when older and molted out of her jr coat. Im sooo excited for chestermere now! Im definitely kicking myself now for not bringing roo my frenchie buck. I tried for a month to get him back to normal weight after his little crisis over a month ago, he went off feed and refused to eat unless I was around, geezz separation anxiety or what. He was in coat for the show just was .4 pounds under the sr buck weight..damn. Maybe Chestermere, id really really like to grand him, he has placed so well in past and I know he has nice type and super cute personality! No I did not come home with anything haha. Just sold bunch of thriantas and the fuzzy and Holland bucks out of my lines. Leslie who bought BJ my blue tort Holland buck showed him over the weekend. He was of course DQ’d for being overweight but I was truly amazed at the comments. Both judges quoted he has excellent shoulders, excellent depth, HQ and bone, just folded ears and needs tiny bit more width between eyes, if he was underweight he would have gotten perty high in class. I was stunned considering how many hollands were there and how tight the competition is! Good luck with him Leslie, he should give some color and fix some bodies. He was also bred to Suzans broken blue doe out of Marg’s stuff, so should be some gorgous typed babies in there if she took, cant wait!
Arriving home from the show I had a sad sight of finding Ballade dead in her cage from what was pregnancy toxaemia. I preformed an autopsy on her and found she had 6 babies inside, 1 day from being due. So sad. :( RIP Ballade
Now this begs a serious question, where are my hotots going, I just lost ballade which was my other 2 lines. I do have her daughter starwalker who is excellent in type but I cannot get her pregnant. I have a feeling she was never bred before and she’s almost 2 years old now. I bred her to ELO once again last week, this is the last attempt for her, if she doesn’t have anything I will pet her out. So now that is 2 full lines ive lost.
I do have sav due today who is bred to sobek for his first litter. Sobek is another one im worried about, he picked up something at some point before getting to my place and hasn’t been better ever since. Currently im unable to give him antibiotics because he has lost so much weight this past week, will try to get his weight back up before dosing him again, poor guy.
Stargazer is also due this week but im not sure if shes pregnant or not. Ive palpated does for years and these hotots I just cant figure out, they are definitely pregnant, u can feel the lumps in lower part but they never have the litter. I’m wondering if its all retained kits or something, who knows. Why I’m trying to get something out of these older does to replace with younger stock I can at least get bred. Will have to wait and see.
Bette is supposedly pregnant too with sobek but who really knows. The only one I can confirm on is flower who is bred to one of laura-anns polish for a test breeding and see if eyebands improve, hopefully! I will be breeding all these young jr does after chestermere show in may so hopefully get some nice stock!
The real question here is where do I go, I currently have 2 real lines with little bits in between. They are BOJ’s Calvin which is in EVERYTHING I have, I don’t think I have a single animal without his name in there pedigree. The other major line is RC’s Colton which goes back to Charisma which is also related to everything I have, my goodness! So the plan for this year is to somehow find a black, blue or chocolate netherland dwarf buck and doe to put into my hotot line to fix the eyebands and type also to get a decent sized head on them. Not really much of a choice because everything I can find out there is still related to my stuff so tightly. The convention this year is in Minnesota which turns out is super close to the Canadian border so I may end up either driving there myself to go shopping or someone bringing back a super nice pair of dwarf hotots to use in my program. Otherwise im screwed for my breeding program. One consideration to put into play is if I do end up losing starwalker and then sobek on top of that I will put a hiatus on my hotots until I can find some decent stock to work with, maybe get a pair of Netherlands in the meantime to play with. Breeding full siblings and half siblings related to uncles and aunts just doesn’t work for me.
So that is the plan for this year in terms of breeding, now easter is coming up in April which I will be going back to the park of course for the easter extravaganza. I would also love to do a display for the gp mall this year if possible, will have to see! That is all for now, I will post again if any babies come along!