Bunny wabbit update

Here are some photo's I took yesterday of our Netherland dwarf rabbits, Willow and Muffin above, and Peter our buck bellow. I thought it would look really cute to take photo's of them if I stacked hay bales on top of each other to create a kind of hay background- and it worked! My favourite pic just has to be the one of Peter- he looks so cute! It wasn't easy to take photo's of them... they just wouldn't keep still!

 Willow and Muffin are 10 and a bit weeks old now so we should be able to start breeding them in about two and a half months, I can't wait!

P.S. I finally found out what colour Willow is- she's a siamese smoke pearl... fancy rabbit!

Roald Dahl

One of my favourite authors is Roald Dahl. I really like his books because they are always lots of fun to read and there are usually lots of made up words- I haven't ever read a boring book written by him!
 Two of my favourite books by him are 'Matilda' and 'Danny-champion of the world'. They are really good books because like all of the other books he did are completely unpredictable with lots of laughs!
Some interesting facts about him are....

*that his favourite colour was yellow-he always wrote on yellow paper
*he loved chocolate but didn't like chocolate cake or chocolate ice cream!
*the first book he ever wrote was called 'Gremlins' in 1943
*he was defiantly not a shorty at 2 metres tall!
*his favourite food was caviar
* if he had not become an author he would have been a doctor 

 
 

Willow and Muffin

These are me and Abbi's new rabbits, Willow and Muffin. If you want to be fancy, I'm pretty sure you would say that Willow is a blue or lilac, i cant decide, silver martine Netherland dwarf doe kit, and Muffin (Abbi's bunny) is a sable martine Netherland dwarf doe kit. Their mother I think is a smoke pearl Netherland dwarf, while their father is a black otter dwarf kind of like Muffin. We only just got them last Saturday and they are already pretty tame! Unlike what we did when we got Peter, we didn't hold them straight away. Instead we did things properly (although Peter is fine and likes being held) and put them in their brand new walk in rabbit run, just sitting in there every now and then for them to get used to us and offering them food. Only two days later did we start picking them up and holding them. But it wasn't easy! They still run away when you go to pick them up but you can't expect them to kind of jump into your lap or something just because you feed them, especially not at their young age of about 7 weeks old!  

I am hoping that they will grow into their ears like Peter did- as Netherland ears are supposed to be 5 cm in length- no longer and no shorter. I did measure them the other day and they where perfect, so fingers crossed! The reason why I want them to be a good length and everything is because me and Abbi are planning on breeding them with Peter and possibly supplying the local pet shop with some rabbits because Nethies aren't always available there. Or just selling them on trade me etc. The downer is that we have to wait until they are at least five months old before they can start breeding!

  They are really cool rabbits and I would suggest Netherland dwarfs to anyone interested in buying a pet rabbit, despite what most rabbit books say about them being nervous and grumpy, our Nethies are anything but that!

Pepper and Penny- growing up

Pepper and Penny have been very busy recently, eating, sleeping, scratching, peeping... but mostly growing! You can see the difference in them and how much they are starting to actually look like real chickens rather then cutesy little Easter chicks. Photo number one is of their first home out of the egg, when they started to hatch we rushed out to town to buy the heat lamp and put wood shavings in a plastic box, which WAS being used for school work stuff in the sun room!

This photo is of Pepper when he hatched and had dried out a bit.

This is Pepper and Penny all dried out and a couple of days old.

Pepper and Penny are starting to get their adult feathers on their wings in this photo!

Pepper and Penny in their day time home- the newly built rabbit run which Peter is very happy to share funnily enough! It also just happens to be right next to the hens... and their mother! They no longer need a heat lamp so at night time they go to bed in the sun room.

Pepper is growing fast- he's already getting feathers on his tail and all over the rest of his body!

Lilly's 5 star meal

Yesterday, I went to go and give the dogs their breakfast and there where no Tux left! So what do you do when you have two hungry dogs and no biscuits? Make them a rice master piece!

It was heaps of fun and Ben and Lilly really liked it!


Here is a recipe for how to make a 5 star meal for your dog...





Lilly's five star meal, chicken surprise!
  
Ingredients:

*rice
*pasta sauce
*chicken
*two treat sticks for dogs
*chopped up training treats
*water
*tomato sauce
*mint leaves (optional)

How to:

First of all cook up the rice, one cup per dog depending on how big they are. Next put as much rice as you can in a dessert bowl, making sure that it is smooth on top and put your chicken in the middle. Once this is done, get a large dinner plate and put the bowl on top like making a sand castle. After this you can put the pasta sauce on top  of the rice and then stick the mint leaves in it. To make the sauce with treats in all you need to do is mix some water with the sauce to make it a runny consistency, pour some on the side of the plate, and sprinkle  the treats in it! To add the final touch, get your treat sticks and put them in the side of the rice. Et voila!

   
  

Pepper and Penny-new adidtions to the farm!

On the the 11th of march, two of our eggs hatched! They are called Pepper and Penny and they are both black little balls of fluff. Their Mum is Gem, Abbi's funny little mongrel chicken who is also black. Pepper and Penny are really funny, if you put your hand in there they will both come over to have a look at the foreign object. They also start pecking each other if they happen to have a bit of wood shavings on their back or if they just get in each others way. When I was taking the picture they were eating and when ever I took a photo it made a funny noise and they would run over and start pecking the case or trying to get a better look at it! Another thing about them is they NEVER stop peeping!!!!

eggys!

When we got our 5 laying hens about 3 weeks ago, they had been living with 4 roosters. And of course this means fertile eggs which was later confirmed after cracking open an egg for a cake and seeing the 'bulls eye' which is the early sign of a fertile egg! So Dad borrowed an incubator from someone from school and we set it up about 24 hours before putting the eggs in so it had plenty of time to heat up.
And 15 days later, we just candled the eggs to see if they where alive and they are! It is so cool looking at them because you can actually see all the veins and we even saw them moving around! I'm also sure i saw some little toes in one of them.

I can't wait for them to hatch, it will be so awsome to have six little chicks running around. I will definatly add photos when their time comes to hatch!


Here is a website that I really like and has helped heaps,  http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/candling-pics-progression-through-incubation-of-chicken-eggs

Enjoy!