Denim had 5...no, 6....no, 7 babies yesterday. She's a grand champion broken black with a smooth body and we bred her to Kay Miller's Jason, who has a great head and nice bone. (He's a grand champion, too.) If we can get a bunch of babies from this cross, and if they're as nice as we're hoping....

Well, a lot of "if's" but that's the nature of breeding rabbits. The hope of the new match, the plans for the future matings.

We'd love to get a black out of this mating to use in our otter program. Of course, we'd love to get a batch of Best of Breed bunnies, too!

This is a nice linebreeding, with enough outcrossing to hopefully strength Denim's head while shortening her body. We'll see if the idea worked.

We're excited

We were at the Elbert County Show on Sunday where Timothy showed a junior buck, Pyro, for the first time. Pyro picked up two legs including a Best of Breed and a Best in Show.

The funny thing is that we have two junior bucks about the same age and similar in conformation. We've debated for two months which one is better but the judges were unanimous Sunday.

Feed experiment

We decided to try a feed-change experiment this week. I'm not big on changing feed a lot. I think most condition issues are genetic, which means when I see rough bodies, I need to address my breeding program.

But, this time, we found rough bodies across the board in our barn. We tried very hard to find genetic patterns. Was every offspring of a particular buck or doe rough? Did it take generations to develop?

We evaluated our top 5 animals in terms of body roughness and looked at what they genetically had in common.

In our case, we were finding the spine rough and bumpy while the hindquarters were flat, pinbones prominent.

The best animals had much less of that. So we studied their pedigrees. And couldn't find a common genetic issue.

Because we've had hard, smooth bodies on our Hollands in the past, we decided to explore the feed option. I'll let you know how it goes.

The big switcheroo

You may need a list of players for this story, but we need to talk about fostering. So here goes.

First, my does surprised me with one of the first 4 for 4 deliveries I've ever seen. Four does were due over the weekend,including a first timer. When working with Hollands, we've gotten used to all sorts of complications. New mamas sometimes have storms of the brain (as opposed to brainstorming) and have all their babies on the wire. Or the babies are born dead in the box. Or the mama stomps them in her in-and-out dance with the nest box.

But this time, we have four mothers and four litters. One mama had two but one was DOA (dead on arrival) and so we're back to the single litter. That makes no sense and I will foster that single baby into another litter. (In fact, that's why I like to kindle in groups, to make fostering at least a possibility.)

But here's where things get complicated. I have a buck on loan for a couple of weeks and, of the four does who just delivered, Ribbon is the one I'd most like to breed to this buck while he's here.

Ribbon has 3 babies in her litter. But I plan to foster those babies, one at a time, over to Tinsel, who only has one baby. So Tinsel will be raising 3 babies which are not her own. That will free up Ribbon for a breeding to Jazbo, the visiting buck.

Fostering isn't hard. I usually only transfer one baby a day into the new nest, but I've never had a doe even sniff twice. She usually hops into the nest box, feeds whoever is in there, and is then off duty for several hours. The reason I transfer one at a time is to give her a chance to increase her milk supply a little more slowly than going from one baby to four.

The other complication is keeping track of whose baby is whose. I prefer to foster where the color of the fostered baby is different from the original litter. And I keep good written records.

The challenge today is that Tinsel and Ribbon both have tort babies. So I may try to tattoo a little line into the ear of Tinsel's baby. At this size, that's a challenge.

Or I may (hang onto your hat here) foster Tinsel's tort single into Knock Out's litter, which is totally otter and blacks. Tinsel's tort would be easy to find in that litter but it does seem odd to make Tinsel raise somebody else's babies while forcing another mama to raise hers.

Welcome to the world of fostering.

Heat

Summer heat has hit Colorado and I am grateful again for my husband's wonderful construction skills. When he built the bunny room inside our barn, he insulated all four walls plus the ceiling and poured a concrete floor. I have three windows into the room that I can open for ventilation. And two doors on opposite corners of the room. He also plumbed in a water hydrant in a corner of the room, making watering sweet.

Then he installed a swamp cooler. If you're not familiar with a swamp cooler, follow this link. They work in dry climates like ours. Because the cooling happens through evaporation, a lot of moisture is pumped into the air. This is fine in June and July when it's been so dry but by August, we often open the doors just to dry the place out a bit.

But we've done all right with the extra moisture because we keep our feed and supplements in sealed plastic containers. The feed sacks are opened and poured into a trash can with lid. The supplements go in plastic ice cream buckets.

Even the hottest days, when the temperatures get over 102 degrees, we don't see our bunny-room temperatures go over 80. Admittedly, the bunnies still think they are suffering but we've never lost one to heat and they are able to breed all summer.

This year, for the first time in a while, we've placed a hutch outside. It's in the shade all day long and we like to put frozen bottles of water in the cages when the temperatures get into the 90's. Because of the shade, and often there's a slight breeze, those bunnies are doing pretty well, also.

I know other places have to use other systems for dealing with the summer heat, but that's our way and it's worked so far.

Our latest experiment

Timothy's favorite doe, Skittles - a broken black otter, delivered four babies recently but only one survived. However (and if you breed black otters, you'll understand the joy), the survivor is a black otter. And, even better, out of Bart, our young senior black buck who is very promising.

However, raising a single baby presents a problem. The last time we tried this, we ended up with a FAT baby that never could get its legs under it. That big belly on overweight babies presses the legs out of shape and they don't come back.

So we're trying an experiment. After leaving the nest box with Skittles 24/7 for 3 days, we are now removing the nest box and returning the box with baby to Skittles once a day. We'll be monitoring the baby's condition (Specifically, how's that belly looking? We don't want a wrinkled starving belly but we don't want a sumo-wrestler look, either.) and hope that by the time the baby is ready to come out of the nest box, it is healthy and sort of slim.

We've put the nest box inside an empty 24x24 cage and placed a reflector lamp with 75-watt bulb on top the cage. Because I wasn't sure how warm the baby needed to be in the current summer heat (we can hold our barn at between 70-80 degrees), I placed the lamp at the front edge of the cage top so the baby (I hoped) could wiggle under the lamp or away from it, depending on his warmth needs.

I learned something interesting in this experiment. It is the baby that forms the lovely fur cloud in the nest box. When I put the baby in its own cage, its bed of fur was pressed down from Skittle's last feeding trip.

But today, when I went to return the baby to Skittles' pen, there was a lovely airy puff of fur. The baby had moved from the back of the nest box to the front.

I'll keep you posted on our experiment.

The escapee

This is the story of a little black doe that doesn't even yet have a name, although she's secured a place in the barn for a while.

Our saga begins when we took her mother and sister from her cage for an overnight visit to a friend's house. We hoped to breed the doe to a wonderful buck there and show off the sister. Somehow, we didn't latch the cage door completely.

On our return, the door was hanging open and the cage was empty. We frantically searched our rabbit room. But we'd left a side door open while we were gone to let in the cool evening air and we were afraid she'd jumped out the door into the jungle.

I felt very guilty. Because I hadn't double-checked that door latch, a little doe had fallen pray to some horrible demise.

The following day, when I went out to do chores, I saw a flash of black on the floor. Yep, the doe had not left the building. So I grabbed Timothy and we corralled her. She's safe and sound.

Moral of this story? Several:

• Double-check your cage doors.
• Don't give up too soon. Black juniors apparently hide in the shadows well.
• Teach your young ones to stay inside the barn. There's a dangerous world out there!