Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A few more pictures

Dad gave an inital mowing  to the cow feild.  He mowed half of it so the calves still have something to eat. 
Here's the height difference:
I also bought a new bucket as the calves wouldn't drink out of the 5 gallon pail once it got to a certain level. They drank half this bucket in 24 hours- it's somewhere around 10-15 gallons(Dad's guess was a 12 Gal.) 
So dad went through to chop the cut grass smaller, but not before I filled the tote and a feed bag full of the dried grass clippings for the bunnies.



While Dad was mowing, the calves were running about and I got a quick video of them scampering about. 

And here's just a picture of each boy- they might just be a little chubby . . .
Jerry:
Ben:

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Random pictures

Not have much of anything to do this month, it's been nasty hot humid and the drought, then crap loads of rain- rain practically daily- hasn't helped either!
Ben and Jerry are fully grazing and as of today they were cut off the bottle, they're eating a full 6 quarts of grain a day and grazing, they are at least 8 weeks old, if we use the figure of them being a week old(not the 10-14 days like he said they were) when we picked them up, puts them at 8 weeks old tomorrow, and are little chunky boys! 




And I know I never posted pictures of the three Dutch I picked up last Sunday from Kirkland Rabbitry.  Only one was intended to stay here, and that was the buck- who I named Eliot. 
Eliot got his first forray into the public.  It helped with his taming down. 
He got to ride ontop of the calf feed on the way home.


Here are the quick snap shots I took of the two does I had picked up, They are gross and they are cleaning up and the jr doe will be going to Catherine Compton this coming weekend- the Sr doe will eventually be making her way up to NY with Rachel. 
This is Catherine's doe:

And this is their mother, the sr doe- she still needs a name if anyone's got any suggestions:


Saturday, July 7, 2012

Bunny Cool off, Calves and Ponies tolerating it!

The calves just lay out in the shade of the trees in the grass,  I have a second bucket of water out now, 1 white 5 gallon bucket that is in the shade by the gate, plus their bucket in the barn.  The one in the barn is susceptable to the heat of the barn and does get hot.  

The horses eat hay and then stand in the shade at the top of the hill, they've eaten 3/4 of the roll of hay I put out. 

The bunnies have had ice bottles, Marcie and Raf have had cold chilled tiles and ice bottles, but Raf still over stresses in the heat.  Tonya may not like the ice bottle but her son sure did, I guess he was the smart one of the litter- survival of the smartest!

When Raf got to the point of lethargic even with his ice bottle on his tile to keep the tile cold I brought him into the house and Aunt LIsa is letting me borrow a cat crate to just bring him into my bedroom during the hottest parts of the day. 

Raf enjoyed coming out of the crate and laying with me today while I read. 
Even after ice bottles and cold baths, I had 6 that were also still lethargic, so I brought 4 of them inside in the New Zealand rabbit carrier, Kylie I moved into a lower cage and gave her a second ice bottle and Juliet I put down into an x-pen on the floor with a second ice bottle to keep cooler. 
Connie, Natalie, Anna and Belle came inside:

That left no rabbits on the top row of cages anywhere in the barn.    I turned my little fan down to blow straight down on these gals.  I brought all five back into the barn little after 8pm when the inside temps matched the outside temps. 
The AC unit could not keep up at all today, my room was super hot but you could tell when the sun was gone, my room started to cool down quickly.  I can only hope this heat breaks quickly tomorrow.