Petaluma, Goodbyes, and a Summer Lesson Learned

Summer is over and Elliot is back in school, but there’s already a lot to catch you up on.

Elliot and I drove further than we ever have for a show the second to last week of August — all the way up to Petaluma. It was a great day. We got to connect with some familiar faces (love watching how Bella’s rabbits are growing out — who knew Bunson would turn into such a tank!) and met some new ones too, youth just as passionate about the breed as we are. For the first time, we saw more Youth Hollands entered than Open — 64 of them, 12 of which were ours. It was a long day, three different shows back to back, and we held our own: no legs, no variety or breed wins, but a handful of class wins. What mattered more, honestly, was the read we got on how our fur babies are shaping up for Convention.

It was so good to be back under so many fantastic judges. It had been almost a year since Chris Zemny had the chance to actually get her hands on rabbits coming out of our barn. I’m glad she got to watch Elliot’s progress and see how her line is developing. Her enthusiasm for supporting youth breeders never runs out — she’s a treasure, and having her in Elliot’s corner is invaluable.

We had a couple of surprises along the way, too: Averi is, in fact, a girl. Argyle is, as we’d been suspecting, a Normal. And Eloise turned up with an orange spot, which is a DQ — she’s so darn cute, do we still breed her? The real standouts of the day were Antonelli and Dot Matrix, two broken AJ babies out of Snug and Annie who’ve been front-runners as our real Convention hopefuls. They got positive feedback from the judges too, placing at the higher end of their class. Momo, a cute solid senior doe and Weedy’s only baby, held her own as well. We’d originally planned on bringing her to Convention, but we miscalculated her age — so she’ll probably be sitting this one out instead, since we bred her to AJ and she’ll likely be home nursing babies rather than showing.

We also hit a first for us: our first MAJOR herd reduction. Over three days, we rehomed 7 rabbits — none of them to the Condor Project! Letting Mellow go was the hardest part. She’s our very first brood doe, and saying goodbye to her felt like closing a chapter. But she’s headed off to become the foundation of another up-and-coming youth breeder’s herd, which makes it the right kind of hard. Ink went up north, and Mocha’s off to live his best life as a herd buck — here’s hoping he passes that gorgeous head down to his kits.

It was an exhausting day, and we still made the 4.5-hour drive home hoping there might be babies waiting in the nest box. Red, Muffin, Snug, and Mox were all bred and calendared to kindle while we were at the show, but when we got home, no babies had graced us with their presence. Our does sure like to keep us on our toes — it wasn’t really surprising that they held out closer to the 33-day mark. Unfortunately, the temperature was inching up, and the insulation in the barn was trapping heat, so it didn’t cool down nearly as much overnight as I’d hoped. Huge lesson learned when I woke up Monday morning and found Snug had kindled outside the box, on the wire. None of the babies made it.

I checked the weather and saw the temperature was about to climb even higher, so I dragged the freshly fixed AC unit back out to the barn to keep things ice cold (sorry, electric bill). After an uneventful day, I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Around midnight I got a feeling, went out to the barn, and found Muffin pulling fur. I settled in to wait with her — about an hour later she was done, and our Muffin/Boise baby hopes were dashed. I went to bed.

The next day, Elliot and I were both convinced that neither Mox nor Red had babies in them. Red would’ve been the furthest along, and she wasn’t acting grouchy at all; Mox was so petite and svelte we were sure there wasn’t a baby in there either. But that night, around the same time, I checked the barn and found her nesting too. I hung out with her until a little after 1am, then went to bed hoping she’d have her babies in the box. She did — just one — but it didn’t make it.

And Red, it turns out, had been playing all of us the whole time. She was never pregnant at all.

Now I understand why people don’t usually breed in the summer. Lesson learned, the hard way — but learned all the same.

There’s already more on the horizon. A few more ladies might be due in the next 10 days. We bred Momo right before Petaluma (line bred back to her daddy, AJ), and since I’ve since been told you don’t breed just one doe at a time, Cherry and Annie got test bred to Sharpie — a small, petite, super-type boy out of Snug and Spork who just turned senior. I’m excited to see what he throws — just hoping the last heat wave didn’t leave him sterile. And this time, we’re being extra careful: watching food intake, doing extra water checks, and keeping the barn as cool as we can. Luckily the weather’s cooperating for now — instead of high nineties and low hundreds, we’re looking at low 80s, which the fans and swamp cooler can handle just fine. Here’s hoping it holds.

That’s where things stand for now — some wins, a few losses, a couple of goodbyes, and a handful of does we’re still waiting to hear back from. We’ll post an update once we know who’s actually bred and confirmed. Fingers crossed for live babies.