I paired up four does with bucks again today, this time with much more success. I paired Kaelyn to Servine again to repeat last year's gorgeous Rex / Vienna litter (last year produced Peanut, who is currently for sale). I paired MooMoo to Little Timmy for a purebred Holland Lop litter. I paired Calliope to Mister Cellophane for a Holland Lop / Jersey Wooly litter. I paired Lilith to Rascal for a repeat of last year's litter that brought out the recessive harlequin coloring from our old herd buck Bennett (who's in both Lilith and Rascal's pedigrees). That last pairing is also where our new herd buck in the colony came from. All four pairings had successful falloffs, so I'm hopeful for four litters around May 14th. I will pair a few more does in two weeks and see if we can get a schedule going so we can have new babies every other week.
The purebred Jersey Wooly that we bred Mister Cellophane to last month is due on Easter. The doe Celery bred to is due on Memorial Day. We're getting pick of the litter from both litters in exchange for stud services. I'm excited to see what the litters look like. I'm especially excited for the second litter since the momma rabbit is solid blue. Gorgeous rabbit.
We had to separate Princess Poppy and Pocahontas today. Pocahontas has been getting aggressive with Princess Poppy and now poor Poppy has no fur on her cheeks or dew lap. We ended up pulling the Rabbit Tractor out from the storage area and now Pocahontas is going to be out on the grass (if it'll ever actually grow). In the meantime she's still going to be getting pellets daily.
Today I set 8 duck eggs and 12 chicken eggs (9 dark brown, 2 blue, and one that came from the blue cochin hen today) into the incubator. One chick hatched from a brown egg, and one dark brown egg and one regular brown egg have pipped in the hatching incubator. I'm hoping for more babies tomorrow.
As of right now I have the one black chick from last week's hatch, and the black chick that hatched today that are available for sale. From the number of black chicks we're getting I think Doodle (the French Black Copper Marans) is definitely fathering more of the eggs we've been hatching. I'm still hoping to find some with beards like Sherlock (our Easter Egger rooster). Perhaps some of these blue eggs will yield bearded beauties, since they're from the Easter Egger cross ladies.
Tony seems to have settled on naming the puppy Arya. The problem is that nobody else in the house wants to call her that. I keep reminding them, she's not our dog and it's not our choice. This is Dad's dog and he gets to name her... But still, we've been coming up with all kinds of options and he doesn't like any of them either. I'm hoping if I give him a few more days maybe he'll change his mind, but for now it seems like puppy's name may be Arya.
Arya might fit. I mean, she's small now and feisty. She isn't afraid of Moose (who is many times her size presently). She's smart. Much smarter than Mazikeen was. With the return of Game of Thrones, this being the last season, and George R R Martin openly admitting to loving killing off characters once people get attached to them... Well, I worry that maybe we shouldn't name the pup Arya until after the series finale of GoT, just to make sure we're not making a mistake (like when I named one of our beloved rabbits Hodor, and then that thing happened to Hodor in the show)... no spoilers here.
The hidden irony of naming the new puppy Arya? Arya Stark is played my Maisie Williams. Our last Saint Bernard was Mazikeen, but we called her Maze. Maybe a stretch, Maze, Maisie, but it seems oddly connected to me. Alas, not my pup, not my choice.