Hoppy Summer

Baby birds on a shelf.

Lilac Pearls getting bigger.

GC Shepherds Sunflower finishes her show career
.

Liam learns to drive.

It is finally summer and the weather has cooled off for a bit. We have a metal bakers rack on our front porch where we put birds nests we collect from the ground. The other day there was peeping from one of them. When we looked inside, the top photo is what we saw. Mommy bird took atvantage of the pre-made nest and went crazy as she realized that her babies were really accessable to human hands. We left them alone and they are really big now, almost ready to leave the nest.

The last show of the season was at the Carroll County fairgrounds in Maryland. It was a midnight madness show and we were almost showing our angoras at midnight. What a nice set up for the wool room with AC and huge fans. We didn't even have to use the blower, just set the buns up in front of the huge fan. The judge even came to us and judged in the AC. Prizes were adorable with small concrete lawn ornament bunnies for BOB and BOS and large round FAT bunnies for BIS, BRIS and even 2nd RIS. What a showing of English Angoras with 9 colored senior does on the table at once and each one was just as beautiful as the next! Makes for a very hard decision by the judge. Donna won BOB with her beautiful REW doe and Alyssa won BOV and BOS with her two beautiful torts. Anita had some beautiful tort sisters she was showing. Lauren and Chris did a beautiful job with the two tort does they were showing in youth as well. And Liam is growing up so fast, he is even learning how to drive now. So cute and so much fun to be with the little guy.

Cool Thoughts

Snow storm last December

Looks refreshing!

Shoveling was no fun.

Just trying to bring some cool thoughts to the bunny bloggers. It is only June 9th and it was 100* in New Jersey today. It's crazy, just saying. But it could be December and the cold and snow could be back. What's worse? I can't decide. Bugs are out in force with the flys being the worst I have ever seen and now we have an ant invasion. We all are being punished for some really bad things we must have done.

Went to the North haven, Ct. show this past Sunday and had a delightful day of showing. I haven't been to this show in years due to my not always being able to get my entries postmarked by a certain day. Who wants to be charged a day of show entry fee for 15 rabbits? Anyway, they have come into the modern world and now accept e-mail entries so all is well with the world. It is not a bad drive even at 3 hours and we found an even more scenic ride home through the backwoods of Ct.

My breeds were mid-way through the group so it was really relaxing to groom and chat. I even got to have breakfast sandwich, which never happens. We had some different judges including the ARBA president, Mike Avesing ( spelling?) for the second show. I am always so happy to hear a different judge's opinion on the stock that I may like or dislike. It is always a learning experience for me even after 22 years of showing. There is so much knowledge in the comments from each judge that it can help you improve your herd if you just listen. Very thrilled to have a mention of second Reserve from the ARBA president for Shepherd's Sunflower. He said it doesn't come with anything but a hand shake but it meant the world to me. It is very nice when after all your hard work and time spent on the bunnies, someone notices.

The range of breeds and the quality of the breeds at this show was amazing. Where do you ever see about 20 Belgian Hares? It was a smaller show but there must have been every breed there and they all looked great. I don't know how they could choose a best at the end. Oh and the woolies did well with some very nice comments. One of the REW does I had planned on selling won a BOB in the first show so I guess she is now a keeper. Entered her at the last minute, thought I might be selling her if someone was looking for a doe. She looked pretty nice. Who knew that little white bunny sitting in her cage would do so well? Stay cool everyone, think cool thoughts, look at my snow pictures and maybe that will help.

Happy Mother's Day

Pepper with her twins.

Sugar with her cocoa colored baby.

Jersey Wooly GC Blue Diamonds with her english angora adopted daughter.

Our friend Julie doing Sheep to Shawl at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

What a fun weekend, a rabbit show on Saturday and the sheep and wool festival on Sunday. Then I got news that two of my angora goats had babies on Mother's Day. What a fun surprise! Sugar had a cocoa colored baby and Pepper had twins. It is so much easier to have baby goats in the spring instead of the coldest day in February. They have a much easier time and have such a fun time frolicing about. The rabbit show was fun and we had some different judges. It was interesting to hear the comments and learn something new. Donna won a Reserve in Show with her beautiful REW doe in show B. The festival was fun and I ate too much food. We got to talk to all of our friends that we don't get to see very often, walk around in the sunshine, buy beautiful yarn, goats milk soap and even more beautiful jewlery. Some of the girls took classes and some of us just looked at all the fun projects we could try if we all had more time. Wish I had more time and energy to see everything that was there but it is just too big. Now I see why you need 2 days to spend there. I bought my Mom some black 100% Alpaca yarn and some handmade knitting needles. She was very excited to see what she could make from them. My daughter, her husband and my grandson Liam gave me a beautiful pink alligator patterned Ipad case to keep it protected. I just love it and was thinking about getting one for myself. My son, the poor college student, gave me a nice phone call to wish me Happy Mother's Day. Hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Blue-eyed white and other colors

Ha ha, blue eyed white!

Lilac Pearl Buck, Shepherd's Luster, mad about getting groomed
!

His sister lilac pearl, Shepherd's Iridescence.

Another shot of Iridescence.

Everyone knows I have a thing for odd colors of angoras rabbits. My favorite angora color of all time is lilac pearl. I had a lilac pearl a few years back named Shepherd's Thistle. She produced many grand champions and mostly sable pearls and torts as I was breeding her to darker colors. One of her grand children, a blue tort Shepherd's Bouquet,was bred to a REW buck with lilac tort and dilutes in his background. I finally got some lilac pearls. They were raised by the Jersey Wooly mom show in previous blog posts. She did a real good job. They have such a delicate coloring but have are a bit of a cranky temperment. They are related to Shepherds's Sweetpea, who was famous for growling at the judges. Even when she was up for Best in Show, she managed to get a growl in. They were always surprised as angoras are know for their sweet temperment and would back away from her. I will have to work with these guys to get them to calm down a little. Their first show will be this Saturday. I hope the behave.

Thought I would tease a few people with my blue eyed white angora Webkin that I got for Easter. LOL, it is a different color.

Who says.........

Litter of 6 woolies, 4 black and two white!

GC Amber Pearl's white litter.

Angora litter of pearls, lilac tort and blue tort.

Litter of 7 Jersey Woolies! There is another one under baby on left.

Who says Jersey Woolies only have one baby, they are all peanuts, the first litter never lives? Whoever said it are wrong, wrong, wrong! With the cold winter we had, not any litters were born. Rabbits are smart. They know it is too cold to raise babies. Now that it is warm, they say it's now ok. Just had a wooly litter of six last week, Mom is doing great and it is her first litter. The babies are very active. I usually bring the nest boxes in the house overnight as I worry about the babies. This Mom was doing so well that I left them in with her. The next morning two were missing. A white baby and a black baby. I crawled around on the floor looking for them and found the black all huddled up on a two by four. The white baby was no where to be found. I looked and looked and looked. Came back out about an hour later to look again and this little white baby was sitting in the middle of the isle like "Here I am, what's the matter with you, do you see me now?".

Next, a first time wooly Mom has 7 babies! Just crazy! I did split up that litter with a wooly Mom that just had two. She had 3 smoke pearl or blue, 2 broken blue and 2 broken black, all of equal size. Next, I have a english angora litter of 12, it was almost like two litters. She is down to just 5 babies now but they look to be pearls, blue tort and lilac tort so far. GC Amber Pearl had a very managable litter of 3 white babies with GC BIS/RIS Seismic. This is a most exciting litter for me. I haven't had REW babies in a very long time. GC BIS Contessa and GC BIS Wyatt's babies are coming along very nicely. More photos soon. No Easter photo's as Liam was teething and finally got his first tooth, so we spent most of Easter distracting him from his pain. Hoppy Easter everyone, sorry I missed my usually Easter blog post.

April Showers

Shepherds Sunflower

Shepherds Picasso

Where's Mommy?

Jersey Wooly Mom with her 6 week old adopted angoras.

Hard to believe that I have not posted on this blog for so long. Life gets in the way of the fun things I like to do. The Jersey Wooly/ angora litter is doing well. I feel like the angora babies flip over their adopted Mom for a drink these days. They are almost 8 weeks old now and will go to their own cages tomorrow so I think I will have to get a final photo. The angoras seem huge by comparison to the wooly baby buck and his Mom. I think that I will have to breed Mom again as she will be so sad to see them go. Never saw such a proud Mother bunny, she sure knows she raised some special super big and fuzzy babies.

Have been to a few shows but I need to work out more time for my grooming. It really shows how little time I had. Hamburg was a hectic show and Shepherds Sunflower won BOB in show A and Shepherds Picasso won BOS. Not sure what happened in show B as Tia showed my buns for me so I could leave for work. Long Island was a fun show as usual, Donna came up to join us and Linda made the treck down. Shepherds Sunflower won a BOSV in show A. Linda and Donna had some beautiful bunnies and Linda won a BIS for the second show with her beautiful REW doe.
I will have some updated photos of the wooly/angora litter soon. Lots of babies in the nestbox so hope for some nice baby pictures also real soon.

Not Like The Others

Liam Says Hi!

Only 6 weeks old and almost the same size as Mom. Same age wooly on the left.

She is good to cuddle with.

We love our adopted Mom.

Well, the angoras are almost as big as their jersey wooly adopted Mom. Very funny when all the nursing is going on. As you can see by the photos, they are all very attached to her and she has been a terricic Mom. She has saved some very nice angoras for me and I owe her lots of gratitude. Her baby is very nice also, except her is a charlie, not enough color to show and no nose markings. I usually don't keep charlies as they are not showable but He likes his angoras siblings so he might just have to stay. We will see.

Liam is walking very fast around the furniture. He is in his manly pajamas that Granma bought him. He says Da-Da and Kitty-cat plus lots of other words that no one can understand. He is very much fun to spend time with.