Bunnies

Hope all my blog friends had a great Christmas. I have been super busy trying to keep my animals warm and alive in this cold weather. My Fall garden didn't make it this year. The chickens have demolished the greens in the raised beds. I'm hoping my garlic and onions survive their wrath. They have ate the tops off everything. My cauliflower died after the first couple freezes. My broccoli survived the snow and then died the first night it got down to 22* The only thing I have left is my brussel sprouts. I planted them early enough to have harvested by now but my soil is still not that great so I think it hinders their growth. After the ice storm I cut down my asparagus ferns and saved some seeds from them. I am also attempting to grow persimmons from seed and two new grape vines from cuttings. I'm hoping the grape vines work :)
Hubs didn't have much luck hunting. I had grown fond of mamma deer and her twins and of course they were the only ones he had in his sights at the beginning of the season and because he loves me he didn't kill them ♥ I'm afraid someone else killed them since I haven't seen them in a couple of months, so next year, if it's brown it's down. We did hunt one evening after a snow storm, it was so bright outside we could see perfectly and we got a fox. The hubs has tanned it's hide and a deer hide his friend brought him. I plan on keeping the pelts off our meat rabbits when we start to butcher them too.
The ice storm caused a lot of trees to fall. One landed on my daughters car. $5000 in damage :/ The hubs has been burning the downed trees this week since we had another snow. He had quite the bonfire going and the yard is looking less messy.
Two days after Christmas I went out to feed the animals and my doe Baby Ruth was pulling fur. I shuffled all the buns around and got her settled in just in time for her to birth my first litter of meat rabbits :) They are so cute, I'm already having a hard time thinking about eating them. One of the babies had crawled to the corner of the nest box and was cold when I found it I brought it in and warmed it up and took it back to mamma. They are both doing great now. After that birth we finally got the rabbit hutch situation fixed. We spent all that weekend adding two more hutches. We put floor mats, rugs, feed sacks, and a heat lamp for the babies to protect them from this cold snap. During the coldest day. I was on my third trip out to thaw rabbit waters and found that my other doe Watchamacallit had eight babies. They were scattered and frozen to death. It was soo sad. I tried to warm them up and hoped for a miracle but we lost them all. The cold was too much for tiny wet babies. The only way I could have saved them was to have been out there the second they were born. The hubs is wanting to install light sockets in each hutch for cold weather. I'm thinking we don't have babies in the heart of Winter, who knew it would be this cold :/ We are expecting one more litter in two weeks from Jelly. She is huge! I can't wait to see how many she has.
My chicken situation is out of control!!!! My babies have grown up and there is way too many roosters. They aren't big enough to butcher yet but they are annoying. I'm going to put some of my chickens up for sale. I have 44 and they eat too much. My Tom turkey has also taken a liking to me and follows me everywhere and then proceeds to hump the air, it's weird. I'm hoping him and Tilley figure out the birds and the bees soon.
My little one got a guinea pig for Christmas. His name is Cheese. I never had a guinea pig before. They are fun to watch and the noises they make are adorable. We've had Cheese since he was 25 days old, he is soo cute but he has started to bite. I'm hoping it's like a puppy and he will grow out of it.
There has been so much going on, I hope to post more often this year. Have a great day ya'll!