What's New in 2011

I survived the cold and dreary days of winter. A winter that didn't seem to end. Spring hasn't yet followed into warmer weather yet and it is almost the end of June 2011.

The garden vegetables are sitting patiently waiting for the catalyst of warmer days. The flowers and trees are lush from the wet spring; flowers staying crisp and unwilted in the cool air.

The farm chickens are happily stretching their legs in their new outside run and following the elusive sun. No chickens were set this season and no new additions. Family health challenges kept the farm at status quo

A few rabbit nestboxes are full with fat and beautiful Silver Martens and a few Mini lops. I struggled with what direction to go with the Mini lops this season. The need to down size the rabbitry has made the difficult decision of dropping some varieties and numbers of Mini lops. I am keeping a few chocolates but due to the need to improve the type on this variety I have decided to mix them with my chestnut agouti line and pull chocolates out of that gene pool. I am working on selling about half of the chocolate herd. I want to work at improving the tri-color Mini lops and again I will do this by crossing into the chestnut agouti line and very selectively keep tri carrier animals for the tri program. I have held onto a trio of torts. I want to maintain a quality group of chestnut agouti, black, opal and blue Mini lops and eliminate all the other colors from the herd; chins, steels, REWs etc. I aquired a small herd of chestnuts from the herd sell out of Sunnybrook Rabbitry to add to my core herd. I will do few and selective breedings this year and trim the herd to about 20 adult Mini lops, maybe less.

At the moment I have a litter of tri-colored Mini lops; 2 tris and 3 harliquens out of Mitchell's Maddy and Sweetbriars Tony Tiger. I also have one orange? and one chocolate kit out of Mitchell's Snickers bred to Mitchell's Blake. I also have a nice litter of blacks and chestnuts both solid and broken from Mitchell's Black Dawn and Mitchell's Tommy Jr. Mitchell's Cubby has five kits out of Rah's Huffle; 2 chins, 1 sable, 1 bkn chestnut, 1 broken blue.

The Silver Martens have been producing wonderfully and have kept my fryer supply steady. Many beautiful animals have been raised, kept and sold. The quality is very consistant and the litter sizes healthy. I am running a herd of eight senior does with two to three junior does growing as replacements. I am upto four herd bucks with two juniors growing nicely as replacements. I will thin down the herd as the fall approaches to 8/3.

I will post again soon with an update of upcoming litters. The show season begins in about eight weeks.