The neighbor lady isn't doing well at all. They're going to transfer her down to the cities for end-of-life hospice care. She doesn't have much longer. Her sister will be taking the dog in about ten days. The good news is that she lives near the hospital the neighbor is going to, so she can bring the dog to visit her before she passes. They said they plan to sell her house. I always worry when we get new neighbors in the area. It's not the best neighborhood, and crime and drug issues have been on the rise. I also worry now that my friendly "nosy neighbor" isn't looking out for me, who will tell me if someone is in my yard when I'm not home? Or if a stray dog has wandered too close to my bunny barn? She'd been telling me about flowers she liked and kept wanting to put in a rock garden between our yards. While I'm not going to do a rock garden, I did have Tony pick up some cosmos seeds today that I will be planting this week in the back flower bed in her honor. I had hoped that she would come home to see them, but I guess that's not going to happen. If nothing else, I will think of her whenever I see them blooming.
I also had Tony pick up some shade-friendly wildflower mix seeds. On his next day off we're going to (hopefully) go out to the local construction company and pick out a bunch of bigger rocks. My plan is to use the rocks as a border around the graves of our beloved dogs that died last year. First it was my Nadia, then my brother's dog Bentley, and then old Mowgli Bear. I'm going to make the border a big larger to include a space for my brother's other dog (Mitzu is Bentley's brother) because when he dies, he will need to be buried beside his brother. In the meantime I plan to plant the entire space with wildflowers that will reseed themselves year after year and make their resting place a beautiful area to visit, and one that my parents won't have to mow. They're all buried in a row at the edge of my parents' yard out in the country. The idea of a memorial garden over them makes me smile, but it makes me cry too. Sunday marks the first anniversary of Nadia's passing away. I miss her to no end. Aspie is a comfort, and I swear sometimes that he must have Nadia's spirit. He reminds me so much of her.
Today I put Cuddles in with Sushi. As a test pairing I also put Cinder and Bubbles in with him - though both had already been in his cage previously. Neither accepted his advances, so I'm going to lean toward thinking they were successfully bred last time (cross fingers) and that we should have babies from them at the end of this month or early next month - about the time the two litters are ready to start finding new homes. Cuddles will be due around 5/13/16.
The herd is currently going through about 50 pounds of food and a huge bag of hay cubes every few days. I'm going to cut back their pellets now that it isn't as cold out (we hit 80* today!) and start offering more hay. Once the grass starts to come in we can give them more fresh forage too. We need to start selling some babies to make up the cost on feeding them. Tony isn't too happy to be spending so much feeding them, as we haven't seen a return on that money yet.
I've got five black bunnies that will be ready to go 4/28 - they're already drinking from the bowl and eating from the feeder bin, but they do need to stay with mom for at least the first six weeks, so they can't leave before 4/28.
We also have seven harlequin and a black that will be ready 5/3. I think we're going to start our pricing at $20 for the black bunnies, and $30 for the harlequins.
If anyone is looking for snake or reptile food, or raw diet for their dogs, we do have some frozen. I'm going to try to set up a page to keep an updated list of what we have available. All are natural deaths, we will not kill babies just to sell as reptile/raw diet food.