Exciting times at Blessed Acre Farm

The chickens are laying and laying here. We get an average of 24 eggs each day. Thank you to everyone who has been helping us keep the fridge from overflowing!

The rabbits are doing great, too. Our American Blues arrived on November 14th, after a long, long trip. Our friend in Rochester, NY, picked them up in San Diego for us and drove them back to her place. I drove out to Rochester and brought them home. The young lady who sold them to us had bred the does before selling them - and to a different buck than the one she sold us. I've said it before - rabbit folks are just plain Nice People! The first litter should arrive on Friday (the 26th). Hurray!

We also had a Thrianta buck brought in for us from the Convention in San Diego. He's a gorgeous, gentle boy, very cuddly. Last Friday we brought home "the last rabbits we're buying for a LONG TIME!" - two Thrianta does. They are adorable - so fuzzy and sweet.

I hadn't planned on any winter litters this year. However (you knew there was a "however" coming!) with the Americans arriving bred, and with several of our young does hitting 6 months now (those spring babies!) we decided to go for it. My Cinnamon doe, Maple, kindled a week ago Tuesday, on the first night in over a week that was below freezing. It was a small litter, only three kits, and they just couldn't keep themselves warm. It was very sad. We gave her a couple of days of eating fresh mint to dry up her milk, then rebred her. We bred Whiskers the same day, so that there would be two does kindling - always useful in case we need to foster. We wanted to breed the Creme d'Argent does that day, too, but they weren't having ANY of it. They'd been in a hutch together, and I had previously had sisters who wouldn't breed after living together over the winter. We separated them, and finally today, after a week of "Uh UH!" they deigned to be bred. That means their litters should be Christmas babies! (or maybe Boxing Day) Again, it's well to have more than one litter born on a given day. If another doe had kindled when Maple did, we could have fostered them all in together.

I also learned today that my friend Rick at Windy Pines had his first Cinnamon litter from a doe he got from us. I feel like a proud grandmother or something. It's all good - the Cremes I bred today we got from him!

Happy, productive chickens - and lots of eggs

My chickens have been producing like mad this week! I had 20 eggs today alone. Bottom line? I have six dozen eggs that need new homes. These are free-range eggs, local, sustainable, and just $3 a dozen. And, because of the variety of breeds here, the eggs are very pretty - yes, those *are* green eggs! Come, help my refrigerator before it explodes.

Four dozen eggs available!

I have four dozen eggs available today, and I will be heading up to campus around noon. They're $3 a dozen.

Eggs for sale

I have a dozen fresh eggs for sale - first come, first serve! We had our first dozen-egg day today, and hope that our girls will continue to provide us with like quantities of Hen Fruit on a regular basis. I put a light on a timer in the henhouse, and it seems to be working out well. I have it come on at 4 AM, since I read that it's harder on the birds to have the light at night, so that when it shuts off, it's abruptly pitch-black. It makes sense to me; I have no idea what the hens think, though.

I need help naming two rabbits!

If you read down a couple of posts, you'll see that we kept a breeding pair of black Cinnamon/Californian crosses, just for grins. These poor rabbits still don't have names! I'm looking for help naming them. The suggestions we have thus far are Midnight and Shadow, Blackberry, and from me, the Harry Potter geek, Sirius and Andromeda (who were the two decent members of the Black family, for those of you not in the know, you poor things).




I'd like to have these beauties named by the weekend, so let me know if you have any suggestions!

Eggs for sale

I finally have fresh, free-range eggs to offer! They're $3 per dozen, and I have two dozen available this morning. First come, first serve... I'm hoping they'll be in someone else's refrigerator here soon :)

The White Leghorns have been laying for about 2 1/2 weeks now. I saw a Black Sex Link in the nest this morning, and found an egg appropriate to being from her. However, I have a darker brown egg as well, which suggests that one of the other breeds has also started laying. Hurray!

Thorgerd comes through with 9!

Thorgerd kindled either in the night or early this morning. There were ELEVEN kits, though two of them were stillborn. Although the photo doesn't really show much other than a nicely constructed nestbox, I thought I'd put it in for the sake of completeness.



In a few weeks, the cage will look like this (photo courtesy of Vigdis)



and a few weeks after that, it'll look like this (also courtesy of Vigdis). Well, that's not a great picture, but the weather is gloomy and the rabbits are squirmy. It'll have to do.



So - well done, Thorgerd! Oh - and when I checked Bergthora's kits this morning, I realized that my son had miscounted - there are nine in her box, too! Woo hoo!

Kindle: verb...

trans. Of a female animal: To bring forth, give birth to (young).

[Appears in early ME. (along with the cognate

KINDLE v.²): app. a deriv. of cynd-, stem of ecynd, KIND n. Cf. G. kind child.]

As I suspected, the verb "to kindle" as it refers to a rabbit delivering young comes from the same root as the German "kind," meaning child.

Bergthora obliged us by kindling 8 wee babies this morning! When I looked in on her at 7:15, she had pulled a bit of fur as lining for her nestbox. When my eldest and I went out to feed and water all the rabbits at 8, she was actively kindling. He got to watch! What an exciting way to start the day! By 8:10 she was finished and cleaning up the placentas. I confess to a twinge of envy at such efficiency in parturition.

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!

technical difficulties!

I was hoping to do a post introducing my Californian rabbits by now - but my computer is experiencing the dreaded "technical difficulties" and is in the shop, probably until Wednesday. And, of course, all of my photos are on its hard drive (though I'm having a CD burner installed so I can back up said photos!) so I can't do diddly from this rental laptop... except my homework. Oh, that.