Oct/Nov :)

Well its coming to the end of 2012 and as with the last couple of years it has been interesting, busy, sad, funny and as ever...hectic :) most i wouldnt change as there have been some great moments lol. The last 2 months have seen some new changes at 'The Warren' the main one being Kim and her mum joining together to form a stud partnership with their guinea pigs. Kims stock were in the rabbitry but i realised they needed to move else where...so i lost the potting shed :) Kims Dad helped get it ready

Insulation and boarding up first. Then everything was painted which made a big difference straight away with the lighting :)

the difference in temperature was noticable straight away.



The next job was to do the doors, this was to be done by a friend of ours who Kim and Kay have met through the hobby; Bill (both him and his wife breed and show guinea pigs) makes hutch blocks, carry boxes and tables and has been asked by Kim to build her hutch blocks, he also offered to sort out the doors on the front of the shed which were originally big heavy cumbersome sliding doors....and as of now are light easy to use swing doors :) (which helps Kim brilliantly). The Hutches are due to be built later in December so she will have all her guinea pigs in their new homes for the New Year :)
We have been to a few shows where the rabbits are concerned, the best was London Championships of which we took  some mini lops, some Golden Glavcots and some Hulstlanders, Kims mum came with us on the second day to see what it was like with a big show....what a brilliant 2 days and we did ok  with all our rabbits which was a boon :)

This is Daren a very good friend of ours who was judging the Mini lops in the main show

 These are the Swiss fox being judged on the Rare varieties table

 The Glavcots being judged

 This is a swartzgrannen which is an unstandardised rabbit in the UK (possibly a new rabbit in our stud for the future?)

 some other breeds include the Hare

 Other animals were judged at the show as well including Guinea Pigs, Rats, hamsters and mice etc.

 What made the show even better was that it was an agricultural show so there were other things going on such as weird looking ducks

and Pygmy goats to name but a few :)

 

All in all a brilliant time for us. November we went to a few more shows, but for me it was a Rare Varieties Stock show that was to be held in Colchester that was the important one :) We had some very good and old friends come to stay Karen and Jenny from Yorkshire, Peter from Swindon and Judy from Devon a brilliant but tiring weekend lol.

 The Best Rare Variety was a lovely Perlfee of Botany Stud

 Steve Armstrong judging on the day



Another of my favourite people Trina Cook (showing off her new white coat :) ) she was judging fancy and lops.

 

So for the showing side of things we are stopping until the New year as we have Kims Craft Fairs to look at now, that she is a work at home person :) and she wants to promote her business as it will be part of our income to the household. On that side of things our produce has done quite well, all our eggs sell out and we are down to 6 jars of honey due to doorstop sales. The chickens have slowed down considerably on egg production but that is to be expected this time of year, the bee's are my main worry as they have not produced a great deal for themselves to get through the winter so i will have to make up some syrup solution for them or aquire some bakers fondant (probably the later). Hopefully the bee's will kickstart off ok in the spring as our next nucleus of bee's will not be ready until june of next year so honey production will probably be quite low this time :(

 

Other news is more to do with family, evryone seems ok lol just gearing up for xmas really, but i'll save that for the next newsletter :) until then l8rs 



Explanation....

Back! (and so quickly? wow i hear you all say...) well i needed to get back or i would have another senior moment and forget what i was supposed to be doing :)....anyway where were we...oh yes exciting things were starting to happen. After the rabbit show and picking up our new car i think we thought we would have a quieter weekend next time around...Ha! and double Ha! nooo such luck; I'm not sure where abouts i put that we were expecting another grand daughter in September, well we were and Gemma (the mum) was due in Hospital for a C section on the 10th which gave all the family time for a big get together for Kim's mum and dads 50th wedding anniversary on the 8th.

 It was a lovely evening

 Myself and my son Michael (yes he actually came lol)

Kim even got on the dance floor for some wheelchair dancing....except because i forgot to put her stabilisers on and she was dancing with my daughters boy friend and got carried away....her wheelchair tipped over backwards.....she was fine and laughing but its put poor Alex from dancing at the moment lol. Our Grandaughter had decided she did not want to go to the party and poor Gemma went into labour the same day and Skye was born weighing 7lb.
Well that was certainly a hectic weekend 'so thats it then' i hear you say....lol nope :) since then we have had more guinea pigs turn up in the shed (not my idea...)

which meant Kim and her mum wanted to go onto the next stage....showing lol. They took a couple of gp's to kent and came 2nd in both of their classes which was good considering it was their 1st time..
The other peice of news concerned us as rabbit breeders...out of the blue i had an e-mail from a freelance writer wanting to write a piece on rare breed rabbits and how to find them, they used a lot of the wording from our old web site, i sent a few pictures of some of our breeds and hopefully we will see another write up about us and rare breed rabbits soon (will post a link as soon as the pet magazine is printed).
Lastly the explanation of the Ha! caught ya! lol
The last weekend of the month was my birthday....(thank you :) ...what? emm 43...47? okay...52 well anyway on the friday kim and myself were standing in the hall way when next doors house alarm went off about lunch time...well we often have alarms go off by accident and i always stick my head out the door and walk around next doors property just in case....and in this case it was a good idea as 2 men came running around from the side of the property...swore when they saw me then they ran off down the road. I called the Police straight away and luckily though stupidly the burglers had parked their car in the carpark of the nursery opposite who saw the men run in and jump into a car and speed off....not before the nursery people took the make and number plate of the car....the car was stopped 20 mins later and the occupents arrested unfortunetly one item had been stolen but not recovered :( we are hoping with my description and the make and number of the car, results in them going to court. They had broken in but whether it was the alarm or seeing the owners dog that made them panic we wont know at least nothing else was taken or the dog was not hurt.
The next day i did it again and was successfull in helping to corner and catch.....a chicken.....what? chickens can be quite dangerous at times? we had someone knock at the door earlier that day asking if we had lost any of our chickens (which we had not) but i went armed with a box and a fishing net and after battling brambles, nettles all in the dark i captured our new addition to our flock :) so an eventful weekend to finish the month of september off lol. Anyway b4 you go i found a couple of pictures of our new grandaughter Skye....here she is with Nanny Kim at the hospital :)

 and here she is with me at 3 weeks old :)

 

Next month have us going to the 2 day London Championships show so will take pictures etc. for that, Kims going to do a little mentoring with a very nice & polite young man who has just got into rabbits and wants to know about showing and stockmanship of mini lops.....I also have the bee's to sort out b4 winter sets in, so we will see how it all goes :) until then my friends l8rs

Ha! caught ya!

Wow I just realised how much the title of this particular blog actually means..., I meant it as 'I bet you all thought i was not going to write anything for at least another month or so' comment, which was the original idea but 2 pieces of news for september has it meaning something else as well :) confused? good, you will just have to wait until the rest of the news has been discussed lol.
So what have i to chat about this time :)......bloody loads and its all so different (grin) so like the stories lets begin at the start...of the month.
The first bit of news for September is that it was our wedding anniversary....which i forgot!!!! i never forget!!! so a lot of making up to do (we went out for a meal so dont worry and i got her a coffee machine lol) so just got out of that one but what else also helped was we decided to aquire a new car for Kim (ok so i get to drive it a lot as well!) the thoughts behind it was because of the past few winters we have had here.



I know it doesnt seem much snow compared to some areas around the country or world even



 but with the ice as well as the snow, and now the area we live is a little out the way; journeys to and

from the house are a little shall we say....exciting :) well for me it is as it reminds me of my youth going down the road sideways etc. but for Kim its not great, so we had discussed the possibility of trading in her Mazda 5 for an all wheel drive of some sort. In an ideal world (and lots of money) i would love the Range Rover, BMW X series or the Audi Q series....but trade in for a 10 plate Mazda dont give you much to play with. When buying things i am a stickler for checking stuff especially on the internet, which is how we found our new car, many of the car magazines gave this the top awards for a AWD cross over vehicle, which had us popping over to our local KIA dealer and choosing a new toy

(This is Kim posing by the one she wanted....she wouldn't do a swimsuit job across the bonnet for some reason???)

So here is Kims Essex girl car....which i really like....and considering the cost (you could buy 3 of these for a range rover) has so many extras....which Kim likes to point out....a lot....

Well as soon as we got the car it was straight out to purchase the next thing on the list of things that happened in September (note i said list....yep i did one this time lol) and that was off to pick up some thing for the rabbit shed.....'not more rabbits?' i hear you cry!! 'you said no more rabbits??' yes your correct...no more rabbits...which meant Kim could diverse slightly into...guinea pigs! yes you heard correct, we are now doing guinea pigs....well not me actually (phew) as there not my cup of tea, but Kim and her mum have joined voices...err forces i mean and are breeding and showing together as a daughter and mother team under the name Kaimyk Cavies Kim does Rex's and something else and her mum does other ones (i dont know!! i'm a bloke i switch off when its not something i'm into that much) you can see their stock on their face book page https://www.facebook.com/KaimykCavies or their web page https://sites.google.com/site/kaimykcavies/  i will leave you guys to look at so i dont need to put up any pictures....what?? :)

Ok next on the list was that Kim and myself went to our first rabbit show to show our own rabbits...in 6 years, it was the Kent County rabbit club which is about an hour away and we showed some of our under 5 month rabbits :) well it was a lovely reintroduction back into the 'Fancy' i stewarded on the fur and rex table whilst Kim stewarded (from her chair i might add) the lop table. Kim did really well coping with the show all day (which meant gearing up for london champs show would be ok and our rabbits didn't do to bad either with my glavcots getting best under five fur and 3rd in the challange (dont worry its rabbit show talk lol) then to top it all the lovely people of the rabbit club had us a cake made to say welcome back to the 'Fancy' after our 6 year break....well it caused a few tears lol but it definetly made us feel very welcome :).

The following weekend turned out to be a very hectic weekend but in the loveliest way possible :) it all started a few weeks before when....naaa i'll tell you a bit later...in the next blog....September part II or 'Ha your nicked!.....or 'gotcha!!'.....or 'my life wiv anuver bird'...or...well you get the gist  either way your gonna have to all wait :) l8rs!!

Bi-monthly?

Sorry everyone when i get caught up in other things i forget the important ones sometime lol, the trouble is i have not written a list (as i usually do) of all the important things that have happened each month....(smack wrist!!) I will try and remember what i can so please except my senior moments if i forget things...i am sure people will remind me later lol. So July...
My mum came over from Ireland which meant we had lots of visitors so that was good....drink, barb-q's and chatting were the order of the day :)
With the school summer holidays i had a chance to do all the jobs i wanted especially with the animals and jobs around the house and garden....which i sort of nearly finished. The first was to clean out the chicken coop and run and aquire new chickens....which we did :)

These are our morans which lay a lovely dark chocolate coloured egg.

These are our Jasmins, they look a littel plain but they lay lovely light blue eggs...quite striking :)

Lastly one of the new brahmas, we bought 3 including a striking sussex colour which unfortunetly died last month. Just as i thought we had enough birds i mentioned to kim the breeder had young buff orpingtons and we ended up with 2 more lol.
August was a crappy month weather wise with the odd sunny day thrown in, with Kims leaving date from working with the NHS looming up we looked at ideas for income...we even purchased a market stall to sell our wares from such as home produced honey, fresh eggs, bagged hay and bespoke crafts

We have signs out the front of the house which look a lot more tasteful than i realised lol

and thats it nothing else for the summer hols :) September is a little different which i will do later...another grandchild, a Wedding anniversary, our 1st rabbit show, guinea pigs and a new car lol l8rs people :)



June post :)

Time flies when your having fun...not! time still flies even when your not having fun which explained June adequately i think, rain...rain and just to be interesting...more rain OK the garden has never looked so good we have had plants sprouting up and flowering which they never did the last 2 summers the strangest being walnut tree's...and even stranger is the places they have been growing from. Hanging baskets....the back lawn 2 of the raised beds and 2 flower pots? so who ever you are that's planting them you can stop now i have enough walnut tree's thank you!
2 highlights of the month was that we received our new queen for our hive, she came with her entourage of 6 workers and had a lovely yellow disc attached to her back with the number 99 on it...which has been great the few times we have checked the hive as we can spot her straight away :) which with my eye sight has been a boon lol.
The other thing that happened in June was the acquisition of some more rabbits....yes more! well since we got the glavcots and the brown siberian 'sibs' we have fallen for this lovely breed, now ok there is an ulterior motive for them but i will  chat about that another time but here are the pictures :)

these are lilac siberians a wonderful colour, this is the doe Vivienne

and this is the buck Trevor, both of these were aquired through the help of a lovely lady Laurel Benson who informed us that a breeder in Ireland was given up his rabbits due to ill health, well i did have to travel to Grimsby to pick them up from another breeder who brought them over which was great.

This last doe is from Lauren who we have named Lillie, so these are our latest ...and last...additions the the rabbitry...honest...no i mean it....
The last thing that happened in june was my mum came over for a couple of weeks, now straight away i have to thank someone who actually ended up looking after her and having her stay with her own family longer than with me is my ex wife julie and her partner colin....i know i know 'your ex wife' your saying but we have always got on really well even when we parted, my son and daughter stayed with her she met colin i met kim and we get on really well you should of been here for my sons 21st birthday a few years back totally unreal my wife...my ex wife..her partner my ex mother in law my current mother in law, my mum, my wife kims ex husband and his partner, my brother and his family and kims brothers and their families??? and we are all pictured together having a great time lol.....dont know why lol but pretty proud that we all get on ok :) anyway hopefully that explains my ex looking after my mum...it helped us out as Kim and I were both working so mum would of been by her self more often than not if she had stayed the whole time. Anyway it was a great couple of weeks with a barb-b to finish with my brother andy and his wife and 2 girls coming over and staying over night :) so although June was a wash out in many ways it ended up finishing ok :) so that was June i will start on july as soon as possible so until then l8rs .

May part 3 ups and downs

OK here's the last part of the May newsletter :) as you have all more than likely read over my numerous blog posts life at the warren is very busy at times and the month of May has been no different lol. We have Kim's brother staying with us for a while which is always strange when we have someone else living with us.... not that its a problem in anyway its just that i seem to be consuming more alcohol than i used to...well you have to be sociable when you have guests (grin) anyway i digress :) as mentioned in the last blog we have come back into the rabbit fancy with the help of a very good friend Darren, Kim's mini lops are back in the shed with a new project in the pipe line chocolate harlequin's which she is very excited about. As seen in the pictures i have my rare breeds again so looking forward to promoting and working with them :) with more rabbits we obviously needed more hutch space so the last of our hutches arrived mid May and all stock moved to their new accommodations.

it all looks really nice now, although our old shed was brilliant considering we made it entirely from scraps of wood, this is so much easier for Kim...a myself obviously :). The mini lop bucks have the hutches to the right, the does to the left with my rare breeds at the bottom and around the corner. It has an alarm system (came with the shed) extractor fan, automatic pest control and is fully insulated which we noticed helped the rabbits considerably when we actually had some hot weather. So the shed is finished, just waiting for some stock i'm picking up in june for another project in the pipeline (another story...) and litters running on so we can start showing again :).
Our Good friend Darren came over one weekend and ended up watching a scene at the bottom of the garden which made him late getting home lol but he wanted to see the outcome..?? let me explain :)
we have 2 bee hives at the bottom of the garden, both are very different in personalities and production...its my fault as i need to keep a regular eye on them and after our last check and taking away some of the honey we left them to long. With the weather being bad the bee's needed to get out and about....and boy did they, we ended up with a swarm, now not having the space to put it anywhere we called a bee keeper to collect the swarm which he did and i helped him...all the while Kim & Daren sat watching the whole show :) the hive that was causing problems we decided to check and found.....14 queen cells at varying stages including some with queens emerging as we were watching!! Anyway to cut a long story short we sorted the hive leaving one virgin queen behind. The next day we checked the second hive which luckily was ok and only had a couple of queen cells, so that was it....or so we thought, we had another swarm turn up...which wasn't ours and that was duly taken away, the next couple of days Kim, Karl and myself got attacked in the garden where ever we were including the dogs....so on advice we sealed the hive up as we cannot have aggresive bee's in the garden especially with our neighbours and our grandchildren.
They have been persistant buggers and it took over a week b4 we were able to open and clean out the hive ready for next year. So everythings OK you ask me....haa! we checked the other hive to take the next lot of honey...and its queenless no eggs, no brood so we are back to square one lol so today i have ordered a new queen which should turn up tomorrow  and we can start all over again :) so thats part 3 bee problems, lots of rabbits and crappy weather lol but i'm sure June will be something else entirely so until then...l8rs bloggers

May newsletter part 2 the rabbit side of 'The Warren' household :)

As usual cannot just have a quiet month at The Warren lol...you name it and it seems to happen, animals, people, weather etc. etc :)
So where to start?
Both of us are fine...well just about, Kim and myself decided to watch our health and fitness a little while ago to the point we had someone come over 1 hour a week to help Kim with her fitness and back and me to help with stamina and posture. This has been good except halfway through May she did her back in then when it sorted itself out it went again during the keepfit so we have put the fitness regime on hold for the moment.
Animal wise its been very busy as we went to a few rabbit shows which were fun the 1st was at the Essex Champs

always a show we have supported in the past. This time it was at a different venue which unfortunetly was smaller and a little cramped but still it was a good show, Kim chatted to lots of past friends

what was interesting about this show was that we had some german judges come over and did some judging to the euro standard and obviously saw our rabbits a lot differently in fact put up more of the rare breeds than the standard breeds with sallanders winning best pair and a swiss fox going best in show. The following week we went to the southern champs which was partly to see the show

but it was a nice excuse for Kim to see how the choc tort lops had advanced in type as seen above with a stunning mini of Stephanie Chambers :)

We hung around to see the end of the show but the main reason for going to the show was for me to pick up a stud of rare breed rabbits. I was contemplating starting with a new breed of rabbit and was seriously thinking of the deilenaar but saw an advert of a breeder forced to give up all her animals including a stud of Glolden Glavcots...knowing there were only 3 breeders in the country with these rabbits I did not want to see them lost so arranged to take the rabbits off the breeders hands. They are a lovely breed, delicate in bone timid yet friendly nature looking very similair to wild rabbits.

one litter even had a fostered english lop

I've also got a real character of a buck that came with the stud, a siberian which is used to help keep the colour within the breed

everyone has fallen in love with his personality one i will be keeping for a very long time his coat is lovely for a fur breed and his 5 years old :) other new additions include some Hulstlanders which i got from Harry Arnold and Trina Cook

These are a breed a did a long time back and are basically a blue eyed white rabbit

Lastly another breed of rabbit we did a long time ago...Hemp a perlfee from Botany stud :)

 Ok with so many pictures i am finishing this particular blog but I still have other pieces of information to add so i will make up a 3rd blog of the last few items....swarms....hutches and bad bee's lol so until then have a good week guys :)

What a month :)

I Know its May and the April newsletter has not been published...but this is a belated April one lol :) so let see whats April been like...wet and windy with the odd sunny day thrown in....the bee's have hated it. The bee's should be getting quite busy this time of year which judging by the activity down at the hives is an under statement lol. Anyway with the Rape starting to flower we started to panic a bit as we have no honey extractor, jars etc. luckily we got a hand spinning 4 frame extractor and Kim ordered the jars. Last weekend we decided to take some frames out and set the rest up ready for the rape honey as its not a great honey to work with as it sets very hard and very quickly. Since we took out the frames and put clean ones in, it has not stopped raining!!! which stops the bees going out and foraging, so any time the rain stops its a mass exodus lol

We need to do a brood check to be honest and we are leaving it later and later but with the weather its not getting to be easy :( anyway we decided to have a practise at honey extraction and soon got our extractor

its a nifty machine as it has a filter and settling tank fitted below it which saves a lot of time :)
the comb caps are removed and the wax caps and honey left on a heated ban marie

the heated wax and honey mix together then pour out into a bucket then once cooled the wax is taken off as a complete piece as it cools on the surface of the honey

the combs are put in the extactor and spun very fast so that the honey spins out

the empty combs are then stored for the bee's to clean and the wax to be extracted to sell or melt down :) It was a good practise run for us as its the 1st time we have done this so once we know its ok we can jar it up and start giving out.
Lets see what else has happened this month...oh yes the rabbits :) well the hutches went into the shed ok

which has had all of our old stock of mini lops put in plus some new stock from a very close friend and mentor Daren Morris and also a couple of rabbits from Cara and her daughter Charlotte. Kim has a new project up and running so is hoping to start a harliequin programme up in the shed with some babies already having been born :) this one being Kims favourite at the moment lol

well we have caught the bug again lol and i have started back up in the Rare Varieties again, Karon Malcolm (another very close friend tried to pursaude me to start up with dielenaars which initially i said yes to...in the mean time i aquired 2 of an old breed i used to keep having gone up to Bury St Edmunds to meet Harry Arnold of Rarity Stud....2 lovely does later :)

Now up until last week i was sure i would be having deilenaars  except i saw a plea for help on the Rare Varieties Rabbit Club facebook page for someone having to give up all her rabbits including an entire stud of Golden Glavcots....which i found very hard not to help out by getting the entire stud (5 adults and 3 babies) i even have a perlfee winging its way to me by the end of the month lol. So thats it i think for the month :) whoops no...one more piece of newsas you already know our other son Chris and his partner Gemma are expecting their 1st child...the lovely bit of news is the scan showed its a girl and they are naming her Skye....lovely :) so thats it people lets see what the month of May brings....more honey...more rabbits and hopefully warm weather l8rs my friends.