Convention Wins!

I had to back-date this post since I was flaking on posting my Convention results.

I only brought one rabbit.. Lil'Bit Farms Harmony. She is a solid senior doe, and the one I felt had the best chance to win in my barn. You know... it only takes one to win, and it held true.

To cut to the chase.. she ended up winning 1st out of 63 does and BOSV SOLID!!!!!

This was such a huge honor and I don't think I can thank her breeder Melanie and Leanne from Lil'Bit Farms Rabbitry enough! They have been so good to me! Thank you so much to Melissa (CA) and Scott (CO) for judging!

Hard to believe..Convention time!

It's beyond hard to believe.. but Convention is here!!!!! 2 days until departure!

I feel bad bragging that I get to go in front of those that don't. I wish I could take everyone with me in my suitcase. But I have been in that position for so many years. Watching everyone else go but myself. Now is my time to actually get to go and enjoy and experience every ounce of it. I am so BEYOND ecstatic! Tonight I will finish up packing (er... or start it. hehehe) and do all my last minute preparations. I need to go to Wally World during lunch to pick up an extra memory card for my camera. I know I will be taking a ton of photos to share. Tomorrow I'll be leaving work early and will pick up Susie (Wooly World Rabbitry) along our drive to the Bay Area. We're staying over with Christina and her mother Tausha (Precious Fuzzy Farm), and going to San Francisco the next morning to leave on the plane. We have a big group of fuzzy breeders on the same departing flight in San Francisco. It is sure to be a morning full of wool!! After the first leg of the flight a lot of us split up, but we will all arrive in the same wonderful destination.. Louisville, KY!

I wont be able to update before I leave... so I want to wish everyone much success and enjoyment in Kentucky. See you there!

Blackjack!

Starlite's Blackjack is one of my up and coming Juniors. He turns Senior today, which is a bummer because I was hoping to enter him in the upcoming Stockton show next weekend. Grrrr! Oh well, maybe I will bring him along to get opinons on. He obviously has mucho maturing to do, but I see so many qualities I like already. He has such thick, short, and great shaped ears. And look at the crown! Perfect position. The bone on his front legs is phenomenal. it is so thick. His body is nice and short and solid as a rock. He has to lose some more of that junior coat so it looks completely black, but we're working on that. He should have a huge head as he finishes up his head moult.. and ages. He is combining two Hobbs lined rabbits I have, Hobbs Dayton (blue) x KAR's Carlie (tort).

Here he is as a cute little baby...

Why so blue baby?

Blue is one of my favorite colors in fuzzy lops. When I was able to buy my first couple I was beyond ecstatic! Leslie Hobbs (Hobbs Habbitry) was the first to let me get ahold of the color and I couldn't wait to get my very own! I don't necessarily "specialize" in the color, but I'm working on them a lot. I don't usually see very many on the show tables anymore, but I'm trying to change that. They can be a challenging variety with possible scattered white hairs and white toenails. You have to pay close attention to the dilution of the blue color as you don't want it to be too light either. I like a nice very deep blue color. Above are some photos of some current blues I have... shown as head shots so you can see the thick fuzzy faces!

Viper & Tulsa

The Summer is feeling practically over. I can say that I am very happy for the bunnies as I know they will appreciate the milder temperatures... but I have hardly got a chance to enjoy the hot weather myself. I think I've only been swimming twice! Ah well, I love the Fall.

The Violet baby I mentioned in my previous post is around 8 weeks old now. He is named Starlite's Viper. See pic above! He has been growing beautifully. I bet he is going to have a very nice dense coat like Violet does. His sire, Hobbs Oh Da Man, is going through his first major moult right now but is looking like he is going to come nicely out of it and look like a whole new bunny!

Lil'Bit Farm's Tulsa was feeling photogenic today so I have lots of photos to share of him:

In the midst of the summer

Summer is in full throttle.. unfortunately. A week ago we were battling 110+ degrees here in the Central Valley. I am so very thankful that is over. We had fans, misters, and frozen water bottles going full blast. Yesterday was a nice 80 degrees and slightly windy. It was perfect! The rabbits were loving the new weather. It's set to head back up to the high 90's again later this week. But we'll be prepared!

I have a doe named Starlite's Violet. She was out of one of my first fuzzy lop litters, and the first one that I actually kept from my own breeding. She has the chunkiest cheeks ever, and is the sweetest thing. No matter whether I could ever get her bred or not, she was going to live out her life with me. I tried breeding her for a looooong time, and the bucks would "get" her, but still nothing. I was pretty much settled that she would never "take". She had a top cage full of toys and lots of head rubs. Every once in a while I would try breeding her, if I was doing a round of breedings. By golly.. on her 2nd birthday she delivered a litter! And there was like 6 of them! Unfortunately, due to a first time mother syndrome, they were all DOA. The next time I would be prepared. A month ago, Violet was fat and plump. I brought her inside the house in a small solid bottom cavy cage. She birthed her litter inside my room, and there were 3 of them (1 DOA). Violet decided that being a spoiled pet was more important to her than rearing her own litter, so I fostered off the babies. I think part of the issue is that it took her 2 years to get bred, so she doesn't have the natural instinct that a 6-10 month old doe would have being bred the first time. Unfortunately, I lost one of the two to the heat in our horrible heat spell last week. Thankfully I do have one baby left, a really fat tort! (See photo above!)I think it's a little buck and he is totally adorable. He reminds me so much of Violet when she was still in the nestbox. Even though I have no clue what he will turn out like (besides his super big head!), he will probably live his life out here as well, since he is the only live Violet baby ever produced. Violet was bred again a couple weeks ago and we are hoping for another litter. Moral of the story? NEVER give up. This is something that I had to teach myself because I was definitely running out of patience. I think after the stress of trying to get her bred was over (since I decided whatever happens, happens) she decided to take.

No shows until the middle of September. We will be taking the brunt of the hot part of Summer off. I have a new show puppy coming at the end of the week, and I have some more dog events and school to take care of. Besides.. time to save money for Convention right? Only 3 months away!

Randomness

Spring has definitely hit our barn. I know Susie (Wooly World Rabbitry) mentioned in her blog that there isn't much else to talk about but babies, and that's the way it is here too. We have had several litters born recently, including some otters! Fairy (blue) was bred to AK's Quiddich (blk otter) and produced a litter of 4 with one black, one blue, and two blue otters!! Hopefully one of them will be fuzzy. Fairy is a fuzzy, but Quiddich is a holland x fuzzy that ended up with normal hair.

We also had our first holland lop litter born! THF Saynora Zayden (tort) was bred to THF Saynora Cookie (broken blue tort). There were two babies. One was squished in the box, and the other was cold and half-alive in the back of the box. I warmed the little singleton up and it has been living at my side basically for the past 3-4 days of its life. Since its mother thought the whole litter was dead she wanted nothing to do with her nest box. So twice a day I take little baby to its mother, or any of my other willing nursing does and let it nurse off them. Unfortunately all my other litters are almost 2 weeks old, so the size difference is too great to foster "little one" off. I already feel so attached to this baby! It's my first holland baby, so it's special no matter what. :)