California Dreamin'

My computer is back home now and behaving itself nicely. It must be time to update again! I've chosen the Californians for today, since both Thorgerd and Bergthora are due with litters tomorrow. Bergthora was making a nice hay-stache earlier this evening - and this is her first litter. What a good rabbit! Note: neither of them is pictured, because they were heavily pregnant the day I was taking the pictures and didn't want to harass them.

Bergthora is 29 weeks old, born March 15th. She's not pedigreed, but is a pure-bred Californian.

Thorgerd is about a year and a half, also a pure-bred Californian from Rick Kudlacik's barn. She has an 8 week old litter born August 6th, who are now available for purchase. I weighed her on September 1st when I bred her - 8 pounds 5 ounces while nursing 6 four-week-old kits! Here they are now:



A bit of background on the names: when we got the Californians, we had only had Cinnamons up to that point - only brown rabbits. The children were so excited by white bunnies that they started with icy/snowy names for them. I had just finished a semester of Old Norse language study, and was then taking Scandinavian Sagas, so I made the leap to Icelandic names.

So - meet the rest of the family!



This is our buck. His name is Sigurd, the Dragon Slayer. He's a fine gentleman, very sweet with the ladies, and is a robust 9 pounds, 8 ounces. He's originally from Rick Kudlacik's barn.

This is Thorgerd's sister, Vigdis. She's a LOVELY girl who consistently bears large litters and weans them all. She's given me a litter of 8, followed 2 months later by the litter of 7 shown below. I weighed her on September 20th, while she was nursing 7 kits, who were 18 days old - and she was 8 pounds 12 ounces.


Vigdis and her September 2nd litter - 7 gorgeous babies!



This is what you get when you cross a Californian doe with a Cinnamon buck - some Californian marked, and some solid black.



Oddly, if you cross a Cinnamon doe with a Californian buck, you get these - Cinnamon marked and solid black. We kept a buck from the white and black litter, and a doe from the brown and black litter... and we'll breed them in the spring, just to see what happens!