Friday Already!

It's been another busy week! I had a lot of school work to get done and something to do every evening. The summers are always busy, but I'm ready for some quiet time. Hopefully I can make it to the beach at least once in the next week.

We did manage to get some cages put together this week, but it was much more time consuming than we thought it would be. Our English lop cages were easy but the cages we ordered this time around are doubles, so they have these metal dividers that are really a challenge to get in place! We were able to get the splash guards on no problem, but the dividers are something else. The wire on the floor of the cages is a lot smaller, that's where we ran into the most trouble.

Our 3 young litters are doing really well. There is one really nice dutch baby, it has nice cheek circles, which is what I was trying to obtain with this litter. I only have the two chocolate adults, one buck and one doe. Both are beautiful bunnies, their only downfall is their cheek circles so when I breed the two of them together I always get babies with hooked and uneven cheeks. So now I have a black who is a chocolate carrier that I can breed back to another chocolate and hopefully produce some chocolates with improved cheeks.

The other two litters are doing well, the Hollands are interesting and I think she has one solid tort, two broken torts, a broken sable point and a broken blue tort. The Mini Rex are...still black haha. They aren't too exciting yet, but once they get moving around we can start to pick and choose who we will hang onto and that part is always exciting.

Tomorrow is the Crapaud exhibition, so I will be there for the day showing rabbits. It's not a big show, it's only for fun, but I think there will be quite a few rabbits entered and I know it's going to be a lot of fun! I haven't decided what I'm taking to show yet, we always bring lots of rabbits so we can support the Island club. I won't bring anything that's molting bad and a lot of our juniors and young seniors are, but I'll be taking as many as possible.

Well, that's all my news! Here is a head shot of J' Challenger, this is my current favorite picture. He's one of my new Jr. Bucks from Lloyd Jenkins. I hope everyone has a great weekend and hopefully I'll see some of you in Crapaud tomorrow!

Another Busy Weekend!

Well, it was another great weekend overall! I did manage to get lots of pictures done of the rabbits and we got to visit one of my favorite rabbit people. The weather was great most of the weekend and the rabbits seemed to enjoy picture time out on the new deck. I updated the site with a lot of new pictures. My plan is to get every rabbit we own up on the site soon. I still have to get some pictures of our new litters up too!

The litter of 5 Mini Rex are growing like weeds, they're all blacks but at least they will carry the blue genes. Unfortunately we lost all 3 Hollands of Allie's.

We had 2 more litters since Friday:
Grace, a chocolate Dutch doe bred to Twitch had 5 blacks yesterday morning (2 really nicely marked).
Casey, a tort Holland bred to Moe had 5 big healthy babies this morning, 4 brokens and one solid.

So as I mentioned, we got to visit one of my all time favorite rabbit people this weekend, our good friend Lloyd Jenkins. Unfortunately he isn't able to show anymore, but he still enjoys his rabbits as a hobby and is still breeding some nice show quality animals.

Sunday was rainy so we decided to take a little day trip to his rabbitry. He had a ton of juniors for us to help sort through and I managed to take 4 home with me, 3 Hollands and 1 Mini Rex, as well as 2 senior Mini Rex does and Holland lop senior doe. There were lots of nice looking rabbits to see.

He has this one in particular who is absolutely stunning. He's a holland lop buck named Peanut. I remember 2 years ago seeing him in the nest box at 6 weeks...I wish I would have taken a picture of him that day, because I've never seen anything like him before. He did show once, and at only 10 weeks got BOSB as well as an honorable mention from the judge at the end of the show. He's probably one of my favorite rabbits.

Our visit with Lloyd took all day yesterday so we didn't get a chance to get started on our new cages yet. We should have that done this weekend if not before! Well I have to run, class is almost over and I have to go pick up my critters at Mom's since I didn't have time to take them home before class (we had an event this morning). Don't forget to check out our site updates! www.kritterkorner.net

What's up with our rabbits

Okay so, I've been so busy explaining my thoughts and plans that completely forgot to let you know about what's going on with our rabbits! We don't do a ton of breeding in the summer, but we do like to breed a few here and there. We usually always have a litter or two on the go.

Wednesday we had 2 litters born. Mom's chocolate Mini Rex had 5 blacks...at least they looked like blacks Wednesday(I haven't been over to see them again), she was bred to our last blue buck. We are trying to get blues right now and not having the best luck. We used to have a lot of blues and lilacs in our breeding program but now we're down to one old blue buck. When we got our new Chocolates from the states, we cleared out some of the mediocre quality Mini Rexes and a lot of them happened to be blues and lilacs. Now we're trying to get some more blues so we will be keeping at least a doe from this litter to breed back to her father. Hopefully the old blue buck hangs in there and keeps producing for us!

We also had a litter of Hollands, Allie a broken Chestnut (BEW carrier) had 3 babies. One looks like a blue tort and the others are Brokens (charlies) one has chestnut spots and the other is lighter, maybe lynx. I think this will be Allie's last litter with us. She is one sweet girl and I know I'm going to really miss her, but I have decided to focus on tort Hollands and get out of the Blue Eyed Whites. I've thought about this several times, but I made up my mind this time. I actually have a few Hollands for sale, not just the BEWs because I'm making room for some up coming juniors and new stock.

Here is what I have available:

Kritter Korner's Moe - Broken Tort Sr. Buck
Kritter Korner's Binky - Broken Tort Sr. Buck
West River's Ariel - BEW Sr. Doe

I will get pictures of them very soon! I plan to take pictures of a bunch of rabbits this weekend, if I have the chance. I want a lot more pictures up on our site and I have some nice looking juniors I want to put up there.

The other thing I have do do is put together some new cages, we just got 9 new double cages from Grandview Commercial Rabbitry. I'm looking forward to moving some rabbits into them soon. We plan to do a second order ASAP and gradually replace all of our old racks. Dad will be making wooden racks to hold these new cages. Our last ones were made from metal, they worked great, they're just old. Some of them are older than the barn, because I remember having some in the basement before they were in racks!

As you can see I have a lot to do this weekend so I probably won't be blogging. I also have an animal show (private party) on Saturday and I plan to enjoy some time outside with my dog, and maybe get to the beach with some friends if the weather stays nice. I hope everyone has a great weekend, see you all next week!

How to Produce A Perfect Rabbit.

So I have been doing a lot of rabbit-related thinking lately, well I guess I always have rabbits on my brain but, more than usual. I'm not sure what sparked it but I think it has something to do with a comment the Island judge made about our rabbits here in the Maritimes being "good quality, but not quite at that level you find down in the states some places and at convention". Ever since then I've been thinking well, why can't we be at that level?

Over the past 12 years, I have learned an insane amount about rabbits. Even from the beginning I just couldn't get enough and would read every book I could get my hands on (this was before we had the internet). I used to spend countless hours in the barn or on my bedroom floor with a rabbit and a standard of perfection, studying it until I understood and could see for myself. The conformation side of things always fascinated me.

So if I can pick the perfect rabbit, I can surely breed the perfect rabbit myself, no problem right? Well... not even close. To breed the perfect rabbit you need several things. The first thing is knowledge, which is something that you can't obtain overnight. It takes months, even years of watching and listing to judges, and studding standards before you can truly understand the standard of a breed. If you aren't breeding two rabbits together in order to improve certain characteristics of the breed, than you are breeding without a purpose, which is useless. So basically you want to look at ...Let's say a holland lop buck, just for example. A buck with a beautiful head and a nice set of ears, the downfall is that he fails slightly in the hindquarters. So obviously you want to breed him to your doe that has the best hindquarters, with the goal of producing offspring with the same strong head and ears as the buck, but with the hindquarters of the doe.

The next thing you need is some money and some good friends. You need money to buy your starter rabbits, and you need some good breeder friends who are willing to sell you some quality animals to get you started. It sounds almost easy. Being in Canada, especially over here in PEI is what can complicate things. I love PEI but trying to get rabbits here from the states is something else. In the summer it absolutely cannot be done, the airlines refuse to ship. It is also very expensive and many breeders just don't want to ship for whatever reasons.

You will also need plenty of time and patience to breed the perfect rabbit. Don't expect to buy two quality rabbits and for those two to automatically click and produce beautiful quality babies on your first try (especially if you're raising a marked breed like Dutch!). Some lines and genetics simply do not mix well and having two beautiful animals does in no way guarantee beautiful offspring.

Taking all of these things into consideration, I have come up with a plan. Since my biggest obstacle always seems to be how to get the rabbits here, why don't I go to the rabbits? So, I'm planning on making the 25 hour drive across Canada and the States to Indiana in fall of 2011 for the week long American Rabbit Breeders Convention. Now, sure, it's a long wait until fall of 2011, but that just means I have roughly 16 months to get things in place. While I'm there I would like to pick up a nice English Lop and some Dutch. I'm so excited to start planning for the trip!

So that's my recipe for producing a perfect rabbit, maybe after I'm done getting my ingredients...er starter rabbits, I'll go back another year and be able to compete with my own home bred bunnies at convention level, who knows?!

The summer is just flying by, it's hard to believe the annual Island summer show is all over and done with. I think overall, the show it was huge success. It was definitely a lot of work for everyone involved in putting the show together but we're getting pretty good at it now, and I think it gets easier every year...well, sort of! Still, I think we can all agree that it was well worth the work we put into it.

It was really good to see some of our good bunny friends from Bunny Hop Wabbitry win their first best in show with a beautiful little holland lop. There were lots of nice rabbits there, I felt that the quality of the Holland lops being shown on the island was at an all time high for the Maritimes, there were a lot of nice Hollands on the show table that day. I also noticed the quality of the Netherlands and American Fuzzy Lops being shown seemed to be higher than I remember it being before.

I had a great day, and we got some good comments on our rabbits. I didn't go in expecting any big wins, most of our senior rabbits are molting and had to stay behind anyways. Mom got Best Opposite Mini Rex with a buck who was just starting to blow his coat. Best of breed went to a Castor Mini Rex, that was purchased from us by a 4-H member. I got Best of Breed Dutch with my Black Jr. Doe, this is her second BOB win as a Junior and I have high hopes for her! We also got best of breed English Lop, which isn't really a big accomplishment seeing as he was the only one in his class. I was still happy though because he got some great comments and when the judge passed him back to me he said "not a bad animal at all". Now that might not sound very exciting but if you've been in rabbits long enough, you know that hearing those words from a judge is a huge compliment, and for me any rabbit who gets a remark like that is a definite keeper and a fine representation of it's breed.
I made a lot of rabbit decisions that day, I decide to sell of many "mediocre" hollands, which was a difficult decision for me, but I'm glad I made it. I also bought a new herd buck. With the judges help, I made my decision which baby english lop I should keep from my litter. I chose the broken fawn doe. She's been a favorite since day one so I'm really pleased with my decision.

When the show was over a small group of us went out for supper with the judge. It's something I look forward to at the Island show, since we have no need to rush home. I always like hearing what a judge has to say about the show, the Island and the overall quality of our rabbits here. I was a little surprised when the judge told me he had been watching me throughout the day. At first I was worried, thinking I had done something wrong but it turns out he thinks I know my stuff and he thinks I should apply to become a registrar. It's definitely something I considered before but now I'm thinking I might actually go through with it. I'm supposed to write to ARBA, telling them I want to apply and they send me a study book. We're planning on attending a Spencerville ON show in September, I could probably learn a a lot of that book in the 30 hours driving there and back!

Hello and Welcome!

Hey there, welcome to Kritter Korner’s first online blog. I decided to try something different, and keep everyone updated on what’s going on with our rabbitry and critters through this blog. Things just happen so quickly, the bunnies grow like little weeds and there just isn’t enough time in a day or space on our site (www.kritterkorner.net) to let everyone know what’s going on! I plan to post pictures of any new critters, pictures of litters, rabbit show information and results, upcoming critter shows, thoughts related to rabbits/critters and more! Of course we will continue to update our website, but don’t forget to bookmark our blog so you get any news and updates fast!