Popples!

Willow has had her first litter of PoPpLeS! She had 4 beautiful babies early in the morning on the 30/9/13. Three out of the four are still alive as unfortunately the little runt passed away :(

They are exactly two weeks old today and man their growing fast! They all opened their eyes about three days ago and they are also starting to hop around instead of just kinda wriggling everywhere like they did when they where tiny.

I think that there is one Chinchilla (like Peter their sire), one Smoke pearl (like willow, obviously their dam), and another Smoke pearl or a blue otter?

Winter On The Farm

 These are some photos I took recently of the critters and thought I would share them!
 Willow and Muffin are being cheeky as ever and only have about one more month of growing to do before they are fully grown! And also, more exciting bunny news... Willows having pOpPleS!
What on earth are 'popples'?! Popples are what rabbit breeders call new born baby rabbits! (and then they graduate to kits, then Junior doe/buck, bla bla bla etc...) She is due to have them on the 26 of August, which also happens to be exactly 4 days before my birthday! ;)
Peter and the guinea pigs are all well, ok.. apart from a bit of hair loss with Autumn, but she had a bath and shes fine now :).
We have been letting the chickens out into the veggie patch as their run is now (literally) a complete pig sty. Pepper and Lenny are now pretty much fully grown to! They have also started to crow EVERY SINGLE MORNING! So Abbi has to put them away in a carry cage in the laundry ever night when she feeds them so they don't wake up the neighbours.
The goats and the dogs are all good, lots of running around letting out all that pent up winter energy!

And the last photo is of me on my favourite pony Meg at the place me and Abbi now have riding lessons every week!!! We also go a couple of times in the holidays and it is so much fun!

Meg the apaloosa with Amber the chestnut horse peeking in around the corner!

Happy Birthday Squeak!

Remember this post?... http://graceherringherring443.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/mouse-party.html

Well a couple of days ago, it was the remaining sister Squeaks THIRD birthday!

For the party we hung some left over balloon  string to the roof of the party place, made a 'happy birthday' banner, put some more decorations on the walls, and set out the food! Me and Abbi made everything last night so it was pretty easy setting up. There was a raspberry tart, carrot sticks with dip, chocolate cookies (no real chocolate), rainbow truffles, and a heart shaped cake! I had heaps of fun and I think all the guests and Squeak did to!

Photos of the party bellow...

Mice

Climbing up a tunnel, not up a tree, wee I'm in the wheel-
just look at me!

Running, running, and running some more,
there's just no stopping this mouses little paws!

Faster, faster, and faster still, I'm not stopping till
 I've done my drill!

The wheel goes round and round, makes a funny
 squeaking sound, now I'm running like a little hound!

Slower, slower, ans slower still, I think I'm done now-
I've had my fill!

Climbing down a tunnel, not down a tree, so so tired that
I'm wobbly!

Snuggled up in a little nest filled with hay, drift off to dream
 land... snore snore away.

















P.S. The model for these illustrations is Peaches.

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!