No wonder I'm always broke!

I really want to go shopping tomorrow with Cristina and our mom, but I can't really afford to do that. I couldn't figure out why I was so broke, until I figured out what it is costing me to feed all my animals. I just about had a heart attack(okay well maybe not that extreme) ;)

But! $850 a month is animal feed. No wonder I have no money. No wonder I can't afford anything I want to do anymore. GEESH! I know half the problem is that prices have gone up so much but wow!

$407 of that is rabbit feed/shavings/hay and treat mix cost. $102 is cows, $110 is chickens and ducks, $125 is cats, $115 is the 4 dogs(and that is only one bag of dog food a month with 4 dogs(3 big and one small) at $75 a bag. But the 2 old dogs aren't eating that well these days, only about a cup each(they have great appetites for people food or canned food mind you(buggers!) so we don't go through near the amount of dog food we used to. Wow.

I will try to figure out a way to cut costs from here. I've been reading Keeps Rabbitry blog on cutting costs.. So far I haven't found a way for the animals. The above doesn't include the cost of hay for the cows- except 2 bales of Orchard Grass a month as a special treat(they have pasture and round bales) the round bale cost our uncle covers since he bales it himself- thankfully! This also doesn't include shavings for the ducks,chickens or cows... I could basically include another $300 every 3 or 4 months when I get a load in.. Just finding a load is proving to be a VERY hard thing. Shavings are a hard thing to find around here these days. We buy bags of shavings for the rabbits. The cows are out on pasture so their barn doesn't need shavings right now, and the chickens/ducks I am using straw for now.

Wow, I can't believe how much I spend!

And Sunday show results- just a few days late

Sunday was another good showing. We also sold one cavy boar.

Mini lops- under Cliff Dick

BOB went to Jody Mitchell with Posey's Austin
BOS went to Posey's Lynette a broken chestnut jr doe.

Cliff loved Anne Marie. Damien was 2nd in the solid senior buck class. Flying Solo was being a jerk so he didn't get a good placing, he was spraying all over everyone!!

Satins got great comments under Jan Coffelt but no major wins. She really liked our jr buck

Netherlands- again BOG with very nice type for the otter buck

And French lops Jan absolutely loved as well, and Cliff really looked at Rugby for BIS but his coat is not finished.

Today our plan is to go through the Mini's again for what we are parting with. We have decided not to continue with our chocolate program due to space. We have 100 holes, and we don't want to have to keep buying more stackers LOL!

Anyway we are going to be posting the rabbits for sale for convention hopefully this week. We have room for 8 more to go to San Diego convention

We also plan to go through the 2 French lop litters, and the one Satin litter to decide who is staying and who is going. They are right at that stage now.

We need to get Mini lop numbers down STILL as we are over the 50 holes for them yet again... with a whole bunch of planned breedings and does bred now! It will help eliminate the chocolates but..... still need to do some major culling!

So look for more animals posted for sale. The ones on hold should hopefully be going in the next few weeks which will help cage space some more!

Show Results for Saturday

We had a good show yesterday.

Satins-
Best of Breed with Posey's ? Can't remember what I named him but "4B" anyway, red jr buck. 10 animals shown by 4 breeders, 3 of the animals shown came from the US from Oregon. I was pleased, Cliff Dick said he was beautiful!

Mini lops- Best of Breed, and best opp sex of breed with Posey's Damien, and Posey's Anne Marie : ) We also had 1st solid jr buck with a black jr buck. I don't know all the placings but they did well!

French lops- unfortunetly our 2 were the only 2 shown!! So they were BOB/BOS however, Cliff LOVED them and said they were gorgeous and even had condition for this time of year and for being French lops LOL! He really raved over them. That was Rugby and a broken blue chin doe from Sarah : )

Netherland dwarfs- we just showed the one buck who got excellent comments and BOG but didn't go any further then that. Was marked as a "nice animal" but needed better color(black otter, he wanted to see him "blacker" which I can completely agree on. :- )

We sold all the feeders and carriers we took to sell. Now if we could just sell the rabbits and cavies I would be happy today!!

Will post show results for today, hopefully tonight!

Show entry & rabbits in general

Well we have made a bit more room in the barn - we culled 12 today, which helped open more cages up. With the 20 leaving, what was that 10 days ago, or so. That really helps cages and the feed bill!

However, when we weaned more juniors / litters today, all cages are full again!

We did decide to sell 3 more Mini Lops: Tessa, Cappuchino, and Marley. They are up on the for sale page.

We are showing 12 Mini Lops at the show this weekend. Wanted to show Kayden too, but he is blowing his coat like crazy... Maybe by Saanich it'll be better!

Need to figure a few more out to sell, to make more room for Fall breedings. But will decide in the next few weeks.

More website updates done!

Lots of website updates have been added on - loads of new Mini Lop juniors added (all page 3 is new, plus the last 2 on pg 2).

Also For sale page has been updated!

Dwarf pages also have been updated - Shaded and Self pages added on...

Dwarf litter, Mini Lops bred & Dwarfs bred!

Had a new Dwarf litter born today. Twig's Emma had 4 babies by Sonshine's Keno. 3 were peanuts, all dead. So she has 1 alive, it's tucked in under lots of fur. We couldn't foster any Satins to her, as they are like 5X's the size of the little dwarf... So here's hoping it'll do OK!

Had 20 rabbits leave over the last 2 days. So that helped our space out a LOT!!

Bred a few Mini Lops yesterday and Dwarfs:

Milky Way X Kayden
Rosalind X Braxtin
tried All Summer Long X Ethan (but they were not coorperating)
Cali X Rocco (need to try her again as well, she really wanted to be bred, but he was being a bit of a dork)

In the dwarfs we bred:

Olivia X Matt
Mae X Keno

Today I bred:

Sara X Evan (original plan was to breed her to Dominic, but he couldn't get it right...)
White Gold X Matt (Dwarf litter)

So I need to go order 3 dwarf boxes. Emma had to have a ML box for her litter today, as I hadn't got myself organized in time to order a few smaller ones... I'm not sure where July even went!!!

Working on a autumn design for our website... Should be done by September!

Some open cages starting this week!

Starting on Wednesday we should start having some more empty holes. Right now we have 3 empty holes.... On Wednesday we have 4 adult French lops leaving along with Kingston, CoverGirl, Daphne and Grace and Tulip and Haley are all going. Which means 10 empty holes right there!!

Then we also have 6 Mini lops going to Shawn- Don't you know, Gavin, Lena, Show stopper, Eclipse. Which only is technically one free cage of those 6 because all those does have litters needing to be gone through/weaned but at least that will be 11 cages...

:- )

Still quite a few rabbits for sale.. another litter to go up this evening. Keep checking back!