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BuniPaint

New member
Joined
Feb 26, 2015
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Location
Cameron, NC
Folks - my intro is LONG - JAVA time. I have a tendency to "write books" when I time...

Found this site a couple of weeks ago and have been doing as much reading as time permits between dealing w/ the deep freeze/ice and snow where we don't normally get any.

I was told that I should get rabbits years ago. Our family breeds American Shetland ponies - started on 4 acres leased land 8 miles from our home, then leased an 9 acre farmette for 10 years and now just moved to our own 21 acres. Still getting it set up for the ponies and chickens and I've started looking around to figure where the rabbits will go. Our youngest daughter has moved back in with us, our middle daughter is about 45 miles away - working and attending college and our oldest w/ a family of her own(hubby & 2 GD) is about 4 miles away off of the same main rd.

Ever so slowly, we are becoming sustainable (woof it's a HUGE learning curve). Now looking to start w/ meat rabbits - for starters pedigrees aren't necessary (though I do want from reputable breeders) and we'll see if we end up doing more than meat for just family (MIGHT become a "true" commercial rabbitry).

A chicken acquaintance who is in the area we were in 11 yrs ago, has a x-bred litter - Sire is NZW, but mom is a steel cross between a Flemish Giant and a Californian. I may be purchasing the whole litter - to raise some for meat by May/June and retain two does (looking at the steel and the blue for that) for breeding for more if we decide we like it (I've had rabbit - family has not yet).

After that - looking at a getting both standard Rex and maybe mini Rex - I LOVE BROKEN COATS... and I want a "mixed" coat blanket for our bed. IT"S been COLD here (for our state - not compared to Northern States). We moved down here from MT and hubby especially would prefer for the "deep freeze" to stay there!

What do I personally want rabbits for? Meat, garden pellets and fur. My family - not so much at this time. We've owned a pet rabbit for several years now - he has toys, treats, several different hays to choose from (!), pellets, gets heated water several times daily and comes into LR to watch tv w/ us. He does live outside - he has two barn cats that curl up with him in his "coop". Supposed to be a mini breed x - think the cross was a giant rabbit because he's pretty darn close to 8 lbs... He's not neutered at this time.

Currently get large brown/blue/green & olive green eggs from our larger chickens, cream/tinted eggs from a couple of banty hens. And have 4 roos way past time to butcher but got "off" due to packing/moving/closing on house and then moving in - still living out of boxes though. Once we have everything re-sorted and moved into the pasture/barn area for the ponies - they will start "working" again, too. Getting into shape for wagon/cart pulling, training, pulling trees out of the way and helping to set up the "Pony Playground" (will be sized for large horses, too - and will have invites out to folks to come play). Still have fencing to put up, the "barn" to clean and set up for proper feeding (its a two stall "shed row" that was split into 3 areas).

Think I covered everything...
 
Welcome to RT!

I don't have ponies, but I am with you on the chickens, gardening, self-sustaining, and rabbits.
 
Poooooooooooooooooonies!!! Bring on the ponies! I'm an ex hunter/jumper/eventer that can't afford to play in that league so much anymore. I learned on a naughty little Shetland and then owned a Welsh, an Appendix QH, and several OTTBs that would have been more useful in a bottle of Elmer's.... but ya know, they grow on ya.
 
Thanx for the welcome!

I sorta posted a pony pic. "Iggy", our 2nd stallion (he is a silver dapple tobiano pinto) is my avatar pic for now. I have about 5,000 photos between PhotoBucket and Picasa.

Well - here's one of a filly with one of my main driving mares. Larry likes playing with the babies, but I don't usually get pics of him doing so... This was the 2nd filly born in 2012 - and she's now ready to start in harness. She and her 1/2 sister born the same year are staying really small - they will make a matched pair and may become part of my future 4 - 6 up hitch.

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This forum is different - we'll see if that works.

If it does - here is a pic of 2 mares driving in October 2014. We went to a church event and gave wagon rides for 3 hours. The 2 littles in the back seat are our granddaughters'.

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The girls' have also worked pretty hard at some of the draft horse events we've gone to -

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and the shetland x's we bred when the girls were younger and riding (ALOT!) went on to do well in the show and eventing worlds -

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And our 1st stallion got it all started in 1995 - he was a lead line pony, a WONDERFUL (and quiet) trail riding pony - even in mixed company, lesson pony for all 3 of our daughters and my driving pony as well as a phenomenal sire for us... AJ was laid to rest in 2012 at the age of 20 yrs. Young for a pony but he'd developed some issues going to his broken hip and they weren't really fixable...

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I'm sure he's heading up a group of various sized mares over the rainbow bridge!

Both Iggy and AJ are homozygous tobianos and homozygous black - neither produced a red (chestnut or sorrel) and both put spots on all of their foals. We never knew how much white there would be. We now have a jr stallion that is again homozygous for tobiano markings (paint), and also for bay - so all of his foals will be bay, red (carrying bay agouti) or silver bay and all will be paints. And AJ's last son will be turning 2 in April - we are hoping to eventually breed some more foals and we'll see what he may produce. Echo is the ONLY AJ son to remain a stallion - out of 36 offspring sired by him. Echo is heterozygous for black and has not yet been tested for tobiano. He could be homozygous (would love that, but it's not necessary).
 
Beautiful! I love a good silver dapple. You don't see too much of that in the hunter rings. AJ was gorgeous! Something about those minimally marked tobianos gets me. We had a warmblood that cleaned house in the ribbons. He was pitch black with a star and snip, a sock, and a white and silver tail.. little spot on the butt right around the top of the tail. If you didn't see the back of him, you'd have thought he was just black.

Apache looks like a nice little jumper, good focus and Kenzie has good hands there too. Hard to stay with the little ponies when they launch themselves.
 
Sooooooooo, looks like I was a member of this forum and totally fell "off the grid". LOTS of things happening in the family, with the ponies and a marriage, a birth and a death and <life> .... FINALLY, this last week got our first group of meat mutts that may be used for producing more...

Our property, it turns out, housed pony lice. So every year since March 2015 (2 months after we moved the ponies in here), we've dealt with them - first in just some and then spread throughout the herd... We've not been able to eradicate the problem and it's been miserable... We have also had not one but two genetically passed anomalies show up - locking stifles and cryptorchidism. Both COULD be dealt with by some, but to me, that's not the best way and it's not affordable in our situation (3 cryptorchids & the sire/dams of them need to be dealt with; 8 of the 11 foals sired by my beloved silver tobiano stallion, "Iggy" have either 1 or 2 locking stifles - some severe). We are slowly getting our herd number down by some leasing out and selling (& quiet dispatching as well). 2018 will be our last year with new foals (at least for a few years)... All 3 of the 2017 foals have been dispatched - the dogs have good quality meat in our freezer & the area where our fruit trees are going is being treated with burned/ground bone meal - at least some good has come from our gosh-awful situation.

Our two rabbit hutches are out in the large/perimeter pony pasture, kinda beside/behind the "barn". I have access to power for heat source or fans. Considering purchasing a small chest freezer that can keep 2 ltr bottles of water frozen for this hot weather we are getting ready to have - Oh so early... This weekend I will be purchasing enough cattle panel to fence off the area the hutches are in, so the ponies can't come up to them - potentially destroying them with rubbing or knocking them down/over.

I have now transferred the pics of hutches to Laptop, but haven't done any adjusting yet. will do that in a while and come back to post them... They are attached at the bottom of this post.

The 5 rabbits are mixed meat mutts. The original 3 they had - a "giant" mixed doe, white, now 1yr old; a smaller NZ doe, broken red, now 1 yr old (both have had litters now) & a NZ buck, now 1 y old, broken red. The large white doe was pregnant when they acquired her and have a white doe from her and a black buck - both are 6m old. Will be breeding the 2 white does to the broken red NZ buck; and the broken red NZ doe to the black buck. I will be trying that soon - thought I'd let them get used to the new set up.

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Now, I will go back to lurking/reading...
 
Well welcome back and I am so sorry to hear about your ponies. i hate when things like that happen, but I've found the pared down herds, pony or rabbit, are better stronger herds in the end.
Your new meat mutts are darling. Good luck with them. :)
 
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