Today was ink day. Of the 10 in this brood I tattooed 6 of the kits who will be 8 weeks this weekend. 5 will be made available to sell and if I am looking correctly, all does. I don't know why but it seems when I want bucks I get does and vise versa.

The color all of them is fawn. Their junior coats are nice and full with lots of crimp. I don't know why I like to see the crimp, but I do. I will posts pics tomorrow.

Today I write about straw. The kind animals eat. Here is bale of orchard grass and the last bit from my last timothy bale at the top toward the back of the orchard grass. See all the brown in the timothy?

I normally feed timothy hay to my rabbits. It is the best of the best to feed your rabbits in my opinion. But, the feed store I use has been going up on the price everytime I buy it or the size of the bale seems smaller or both. Either way this stuff is getting expensive. And the last bale had way too much dead, brown, hay and chaff. Just too much waste.

Yesterday I discovered they also carry a baled hay called Cortez Mix. It is mostly orchard grass with a little timothy and a little alfalfa. Orchard grass is also good for rabbits to eat, but alfalfa is not. What I looked over was nice and green and healthy looking so I am bitting the bullet and bought a 3 string bale of the stuff. I have high hopes for it since it is a little cheaper than the timothy, but seems to good quality.

The ermine doe's litter has been weaned. They are now 5 1/2 weeks old. It is a bit earlier than I normally do this process, but it is her 3rd litter and I want her recovered for the coming spring warmup and summer heat. She is such a sweet thing.

I weaned a week earlier than normal and did it over a period of about a week. I am now giving her fresh peppermint to help dry her up. During the weaning period, the biggest 3 kits were removed and then over a period of days kits were gradually removed based on size. The kits are doing great. Strong and healthy. Even the runt has survived and thrived. Speaking of the runt. It is so small and yet so active and lively. It really is amazing to see it push its way to the feed bowl for it's turn.

The weather is very north Texas spring. Thundershowers and beautiful green plants everywhere. We even had fresh dandelion leaves with our evening meal last night. They were delicious. The rabbits really love them as well.

On the pet yarn front:
Warren has gone home to his owner. She was happy to see his yarn. I am glad I separated him into two levels of softness.

Currently, I am working on Reva and Toby, standard poodles. I am carding and spinning Toby as I go along. His hair is extremely short, less than 1/2 inch for the most part. His coat is fairly coarse. I thought I might have to put in wool , but he has enough undercoat to hold things together with a lot of twist. I am 3/4 through spinning him up. So I am pleased at that.

On the dyeing front:
I carded and spun 4 oz of my superwash Merino & Tencel blend for a friend. Then I dyed it a dark blue in my natural Indigo vat. It turned out really nice. She said she will knit into a small shoulder shawl. She has some of my sw Merino & Tencel (acid dyed) that she knit into socks and she says they are the best wearing socks she has. It is a great compliment coming from her since she once told me she thought a batch of my Christmas cookies weren't too good. She really is honest in her comments.

I have acid dyed a number of sw merino & Tencel batches. Still need to get a darker blue in the mix.

Here are the gang born March 29th. That makes them 19 days old. Eyes are open, nibbling at the hay, they are starting to explore their enclosure. I added a water and feed container this morning so they can start sampling those as well.

One is very, very small. I have been holding a few of the kits back at feeding time to give it time to get it's fair share. Once it gets a head start I put the rest of the kits in with the doe so all can feed.

I have been reviewing the last kits my deceased red doe had in January. I am still trying to decide if I will keep any from those births or not. I opted not to sell any of them at all. I wanted to see how they would come along once they were older. I am close to deciding, but this weekend will probably be the final decision.

For pet spinning, Warren is coming along nicely. I was able to separete Warren into grade A & B fiber. One batch of his fiber had a great deal of guard hairs in it. It has a high prickle factor so that is grade B. At the bottom of the bag was a smaller batch that was mostly undercoat. Fairly soft, but still has a few guard hairs. That was grade A. He is 2/3 rds done. I need to finish him up soon. I have an order for Toby & Reva that will arrive shortly. They are standard poodles.

My order for Tussah silk and Tencel arrived this week. I need to get on the stick and get my dying done. Hopefully the weather will hold. We have had so much wind this week and it is supposed to continue into the weekend. It looks like it will rain, but so far nothing.

Lots of news. Some good and some bad. First the good.

The DFW FiberFest was a great success for me. I meet some wonderful people and other vendors. I sold much more than I anticipated. I had heard mixed reviews on this event so I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a vendor, but I am glad I tried it out. I didn't bring any of my prime angora fiber. I am saving that for me. Now I am going to spend the next 2 weeks dying and carding to catch up my inventory.

I was also able to advertise my core business, spinning pet hair. Several people brought samples of their pets fur to be spun. I even had one very nice lady bring me a big bag of her pet's hair to me at the show. We sat and discussed specifics while I spun a sample of it to take home to show her family. "Warren" is now drying in a basket. This fur is very important since he passed away several years ago.

I was so busy preparing for this show I haven't written on the rabbits at all. Two does gave birth, March 29th, each having 11 kits. So much for any fostering ideas. The ermine doe had no problems at all, but my best red doe developed a prolapsed uterus. It was awful.

She successfully had all the kits in the nest. When I checked on her in the morning she was pulling fur. I looked in on her 45 minutes later and saw she had given birth, but she had way too much blood on her and she was just sitting in the corner in distress.

I put her down since I didn't want her to suffer by slowly bleeding to death. I tried bottle feeding the kits, but I lost them all by the 5th day. I have never had success with such young kits on a bottle. I can mange a good survival rate if they are about 10 days, but not newborns.

The ermine is doing well and so are her kits. The smallest in her litter did not make it past 2 days so she is nursing 10 kits now. It looks like a nice assortment of ermines, fawns, light torts and maybe a red.