Usually i'm a better blog mom, i swear. But the past few months have been hectic! with school winding down, and most recently a slew of internet connection problems the blog has been neglected to say the least, and there is no lack of news.

Hmmm where to start...Ah ha! Dominion cennetinal show, held the same day as nationals and with only three rabbits to show, we decided to attend this one instead. This show marked the DRCBA's 100th anniversary!! it was a really large show and the area around the show was great too! Our senior buck Bbeary's Aviator was BOS show A and BOB show B he then went on to take best fancy and Best In Show!!! i was thrilled! our first buck to win a BIS!! he just had it that day..i couldn't help but wonder how he would have done at Nationals! the prizes were fanatastic too, and we took home a Behemoth of a trophy for BIS pictures of all that to come in a later post..i have ALOT of catching up to do! This was our last show before Fall we decided to sit the other shows out since Aviator was clipped and Hooligan went to his new home with Ginette, leaving us only Eclipse to show.

Now for the BIG news!! no litter dryspell..no more!! on May 16 Bbeary's Serafena x GBF's Legend had a litter of five kits! and June 17 Bbeary's Aviator x Bbeary's Calliope had a litter of two!! needless to say were thrilled and i couldn't be more excited to see how these guys turn out!! a few months of no babies has sure made us appriecate them so much more!! pictures to come!

Our herd has undergone some major changes there are several rabbits we do not have anymore, and of course the newest additions, i'm hoping *soon to have the new site up, i'm no pro at using Dreamweaver and it shows, i have the site finished but i'm having trouble uploading it and am feeling discouraged at the moment, but i'll get back at her soon!

Stay tuned for a slew of pictures!!

Ginette wins her first BIS 2x!!!!

The winning pose!


Ginette's BIS winner Five fern's Inara


Our new boy SVR's Eclispe!

We attended the Rockton Spring show last weeked, and had alot of fun!! however this blog is to intended to talk about the high point of the show; Ginette won all breed  BEST IN SHOW in BOTH shows!!!! this was her first time winning BIS, it was so cute, and so nice to see her hard work pay off! The winning doe is out of our G.C Bbeary's Sposabella and Dark Star's Frick! GC Bbeary's Aviator picked up two more legs for winning the Sr.bucks class, i was suprized, as he's starting to slip and felt. Julie's agouti bucks took BOS, it was nice to see the agouti's win!!

We also came home with alittle black buck, Ginette very kindly gave to us, his name is SVR's Eclipse he's out of Bbeary's Sambua Slide (tila's littermate brother) and a lovely broken black doe Hunneshagen's Image. He's a solid boy! we look forward to showing him, he has already earned two legs.

With all this said, we will not be attending Nationals next weekend, unfortunatly it's just not worth the trip with only two rabbits in coat, one who is molting and the other (eclispe) very young to compete with the 'big boys', were looking forward to hearing how it goe for everyone else! will post the results here,when they are known.

Stay Tuned!

Bbeary's Diego Rivera

Diego's new dad Ricardo getting Diego ready for show

Diego being groomed

Diego wins Best of Ooposite in the all breed show!!

Way to go guys!!

This past fall we shipped Bbeary's Diego Rivera out to Texas to live at Road to Angora Rabbitry, Ricardo and his family have done a wonderful job maintaining Diego, despite something we don't deal with much in Canada, HEAT! Diego's most recent wins were best opposite sex then he went on to Best Of Opposite in show!! A huge congrats is in order to them for getting Diego so far, he looks fabulous!
For more information on Diego's win aswell as alot of other intersting angora info visit:
http://texasangorablog.blogspot.com/

On the rabbitry homefront, Tila has completly recovered from her GI and is doing very well, which is a big relief for us. We attended the Baxter show last weekend with our friend Julie Martin of Smokeyhollo rabbitry, were Bbeary's Aviator (Diego's littermate brother) won BOB, it was a DRCBA show. Julie had some awesome agouti juniors at the show, its nice to see someone working with the Agouti's, too often we see the same colours on the showtable.

Other than that things have been very quiet around here, we are just enjoying the warm weather for a change, and i know the bunnies are too.

Stay tuned for pictures of Bbeary's Barcelona!!

Well it's been awhile since my last post, and for good reason things have not been going well here. As i'm sure many of you realize the site has not yet had it's makeover, this is because of a whole new string of computer problems that are preventing a successful upload, but hopefully we get get it sorted out soon and launch. My fawn doe Bbeary's Solstice got woolblock over the Winter, and i tried very hard to cure her without cutting her down, but it was not happening, thus she is now clipped a grave disappointment when she only needed one more leg to grand and she was one of very few i would have to show. But the good news is that she's back to normal, and thats all that matters.

The latest disappointment was a horrible case of GI stasis which affected our doe Bbeary's Tila Tequila. GI stasis strikes quickly and without warning. Tila gave birth to 5 babies with Divinci on March 2nd, she went off her feed two days before kindling,normal. But she didn't start eating again, even days after kindling, she stayed huddled up in the corner of her cage. A few days pass since kindling, still no change, and now she has 5 mouths to feed. We decide to take her to the vet, the vet does x-rays ultra sound, to check for any stuck kits, but there are none, a relief. She is diagnosed with Statsis and we are given pain medication, and IV fluids for her. IV's are probably the most important thing to have to a rabbitry especially with kindling does, it's good if you can get a vet to show you how to put them in properly, and buy the fluid bags from the vet, this can save you alot of money as the bags of fluids run about $15 each whereas a vet will charge you roughly $40 just to put the needle in, that doesn't include the cost to see the vet, all those charges can really add up. We also gave Tila Oxbow critical care by mouth, if you don't have critical care you can also grind up their regular pellets, and add yogurt or a high calorie paste such as STAT. A week goes by, Tila still hasn't eaten or drunken on her own her poops are he size of the babies, which are severely underweight due to Tila starving condition, although we continue to supplement her and do IV's a few times a day, the babies are getting barely enough to eat and Tila's milk dries up. This is good and bad, good for Tila so she can put more energy into regaining her own health, bad for the babies as they are still so young, and haven't had the proper nutrients to set up their bacteria balance.

So we cross out fingers and start feeding KMR to the babies, they start gaining weight, and seem more healthy, but still behind from their initial lack of nutrition, they make it to two weeks and their eyes open, the colours are fabulous two blacks, a blue a chocolate and two broken blacks, one absolutely perfectly marked, ok so now were attached hand feeding babies, certainly makes you love them that much more. We are hopeful, they are looking good all things considered. Wenesday March 18 comes around, i wake up to find the Blue kit dead, strange as he was eating well and competly fine the night before, the only thing noticably wrong when i found him was a bloated stomach. The rest of the week goes by, and his/her littermates begin die off, this time we notice the sytoms strained breathing, an unwillingness to eat, closed eyes and lastly the bloated stomach a few hours after these sytoms appear the baby dies.

The last one, the lttle chocolate died yesterday. We are heartbroken. We are planning on having the babies checked out to find out what went wrong so suddenly, that caused them all to die. We are certain though after this experiance we will not try and raise such young kits on formula, we did breed another doe at the same time as tila, but she missed, it would have been ideal to foster them as they were healthy and there is no doubt in my mind they would have survived if Tila hadn't of gotten sick. The good news is Tila in on the mend, eating and drinking on her own now, still not eating enough, but the healing process is very slow. Next time you have a healthy litter, keep in mind how lucky you are, how many things could have gone wrong, it was hard to even go on the computer and see everyone else's thriving litters, when yours is struggling even when you are doing absoululty everything you can. Here is an excellent article on GI stasis: http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/ileus.html

With all this said, I highly doubt we will be attending any US shows this year and very few Canadian shows. We will also be cutting our herd back abit and will have some nice animals for sale.

I hope no one else goes through this heartbreaking experiance.

Ok so its looking like the new site will not be launched this week, the laptop on which all the website stuff was saved got a virus, so we had to wipe the hard drive, meaning all my files for the new site are gone, so it's back to the drawing board, this time i'll be saving the files on my main computer, you just can't trust laptops these days!

Stay tuned!

Schoolhouse Hooligan is getting cuter by the day, his furnishings are coming in really thick, and he looks just like a little Ewok! I'm see how he will do on the tables!

In rabbitry news, i've started designing a new layout for the site, that i will be able to update my self, so it will be kept up to date. I'm hoping to launch by the end of the week. The blog is also abit broken right now, i deleted some photos with out realizing it would also delete them from the blog, so i will also be fixing that soon.

Stay tuned!

Roger Cota judging coloured Sr does

Bbeary's Solstice, a lovely Fawn doe

English Angorabreeders

The Rochester showroom over 1500 rabbits!!

Angoras

Our buns, a light load this time

Our new Guinea Pig on the right! she is unamed

Zeplin on the right and the new pig on the left

Hooligan, you would never guess he's an English Angora!

Hooligan again, the adorable chocolate agouti squishy faced buck!

Well we finally got to beat those Winter blues by going to a show. Without a proper vehicle, our Truck being too cold in the Winter and horrible on gas, we are lucky to have gone to a US show, thankfully Caley's boyfriend Alan's dad lent us his van, which was wonderful!! the ultimate bunny vehicle!
There was a TON of fabulous Angora breeders there, it was so nice to chat with them, afterall we hadn't seen eachother since the Fulton show in March. It was also nice to see that a few other Canadians got out to this show, i guess i'm not the only one going through the Winter blues, appartently us Canadians were the registarars best customers, with only a handful of judges in Ontario, it's very hard to get rabbit's registered at our shows, so we make the best of going to the states, i registered Aviator and Solstice, i meant to do Solara as well but i forgot her pedigree at home. These guys will all have red/white/blue seals on their registration papers. I was happy to see how our rabbits did considering they are young seniors in very very tough classes. Tila however is now stepping aside for the younger generation as she is blowing her coat, and will be clipped, but i'd say she didn't have a bad show career winning a total of 7 BOB's, 3 Open ARBA RIS, 1 Open DRCBA BIS and a total of 6 legs.

Here's how our Angoras did at the show:
Show 'A'
Bbeary's: Aviator 1st, BOSV, BOS (leg)
Bbeary's Solstice 4th out of 9, Best Coloured Wool
Bbeary's Solara 5th out of 9
GC Bbeary's Tila Tequila 6th? of 9
Linda Cassella's white sr doe that was BOSV at convention won BOB

Specialty show:
Bbeary's: Aviator 1st, BOSV, BOS (leg) Best Coloured Wool NOW A GC!
Bbeary's Solstice 4th out of 9
Bbeary's Solara 2nd out of 9
GC Bbeary's Tila Tequila 5th? of 9
Linda Casella's coloured sr doe was BOB and Specialty BIS Congrats Linda!

We also brought home some new guys, a beautiful Peruvian sow who is yet to be named, she was shown and got excellent comments as well as 1st of 3 in both shows. And we brought home a chocolate Agouti buck, that is basically our breeding,out of Fern Valley's Pekoe x ELS Daisy Locks, owned by Joanne Draper of Little Schoolhouse rabbitry. Daisy is sister to our ELS Goldie Locks.  Hooligan is an excellent little buck with gorgeously tiny ears and heavily wooled face, he also has excellent density, he is long and low in the shoulder but has an excellent hindquarter, i look forward to showing him, and seeing how he develops, and possibly using him in our Fawn program.

In rabbitry news i am offering For sale GC Bbeary's Fantasia, a stellar doe with 11 legs and earned our first Open ARBA BIS, she is also a proven producer, dam to GC Bbeary's Tila Tequila, who we are replacing her with. Fantasia is a hard one to let go, she was out of our first litter, and has great lines out of Angel's Tona truck x Chu's Cupid took aim. I'd love to see this go to a home where she pass her great qualites along,and give someones herd aboost, she's an excellent mother. Please inquire if you're interested!~SALE PENDING~

Stay Tuned!

Two skeins of 100% Angora

Closer look..


Two skeins of 45%Mohair 30%Merino 25% Wool

These are some of my latest workings..all of which are for sale.
The 100% Angora, is lovely, sooo soft and uber warm!
Green ball,63 grams Handyed. $20
White ball, 70 grams, natural Angora 2 ply with a shimmery rainbow thread, can be seen more clearly in the second picture. $25

The Two skeins of 45%Mohair 30%Merino 25% Wool
They are both natural grey, and have a nice sheen,
One ball is 50g the other 60g-$15 for both.

This is the first post of 2009!!!!!!!!
Happy New Year to ALL!!

I've been browsing some boutique spinners and knitters shops online, and Wow! these people are very talented and creative, it reminded me that the possibilities are endless. So if you need some inspiration to get your knitting needles clicking and your wheel spinning i highly recommend these sites:

http://www.pluckyfluff.com/pluckyfluff.html
-A very talented novelty yarn artist, and hilarious blogger!

http://www.theyarnmuseum.com/gallery_shows_changing/gallery_index.html
-A collection of images of Handspun yarns from talented spinners, check out the spin challenges!

http://www.anacam.com/hats/
-A talented knitter and spinner, she creates fascinating one of a kind knit hats, that look like they are fresh from a runway show!

On the bunny front nothing new to report, Winter is always difficult especially for grooming, i haven't been able to blow for the past weeks since it has been cold and snowing, i know were all looking forward to Spring when the buns can hop around in the grass. I did get some festive outfits for the buns hopefully i can get some decent pictures.

Happy Holidays! 

My creations! the two i spun are on the left, and the commercially spun one is on the right.

My first 100% Angora project! (excluding the tassels which i spun from raw Alpaca)

Well i know it's not Christmas yet, but i got my gift early from the UPS lady, what is this gift you ask? it's the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine!!
I found hand knitting to be very time consuming,and tricky. I do have alot of spun yarn piling up and now i have found the perfect use for it! The 'Sweater' machine is amazing, i did the projects above in a few short hours, and although there were some bumps along the way, as there is with learning anything, i think i'm getting the hang of it, i also learned to do the eyelet stich, and made a flower pattern on the two outside 'half' scarves on the ends. By half scarves, i mean that the ends are connected by the tasseling, so instead of tying it, you simply put it over your head.
I'm now on Christmas break from school so i'll have lots of time to play with my new toy! i'm going try to learn the cable stitch next, and who knows maybe start a sweater?!
For more info on the sweater machine go to: http://www.bond-america.com/products/usm.html

Also my spinning 1 teacher Tabi spun a beautiful yarn with silk and some of our Angora, this gorgeous skein is available at: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=17329412
they also have some other wonderful yarns for sale, it's defiantly worth checking out!

Stay Tuned!