Latte (My Bunny)!!!

 46 Paw Prints in My Heart

During the Fall, I adopted a bunny from a local farm that closes for the winter. They have lots of animals including, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens, bees, and a few more. The farm also does pick your own fresh strawberries, blueberries, peaches (not as good as the ones I had in Georgia but that is another story for another day!), cherries, veggies, apples, pumpkins, flowers, and make baked goods. I highly recommend going to this farm, but I shall not disclose the address to the world, if you really want to know, email me. Anyways, they had about 20 bunnies, but they started with 4, so most of them needed good homes. When we went to go play in the hay maze I found a baby rabbit and the next day my mother and I went to go bring it home. My father wasn't very happy, but how can you possibly say no to his cute little face??? My friend whose guinea pig, Butterscotch, had died, gave me a cage, because with my guinea pig Rolo, we didn't want them to fight, we didn't even know if they would get along. But they get along hoppingly (ha ha ha) now, so don't worry; Rolo likes to groom the bunny, it is so funny!!! My mother and I got the food, litter box, and hay manger at a pet store, which does not sell animals and such, it is a family business. And so the bunny was all set; except it didn't have a name! I had the following picked out since he is mostly white with some brown and black spots;

Yankee Doodle Dandy
Latte
Pebbles
Taffy
Coffee
Echo
Acorn and a few others.




My brother didn't like any of them, but I convinced him to like Latte. My brother thought Yankee sounded like a Hankee or towel. So now I will be competing with him in 4-H showmanship classes with Rolo too. Latte is a mutt though, so I can't show him in classes other than showmanship. He is the sweetest bunny!! He will sit on your shoulder, or in your hands, and just like nibble lettuce (not Iceburg!!!!!!!). Latte is soooooo cute too, they way his nose moves up and down makes me want to squish his little cheeks, but that is weird and it might hurt him so I won't... But since he lived almost 'wildly' my brother and I had to get him used to human handling (it wasn't hard), because on the farm, they had humans around them, but they were just thrown treats with no handling. Latte is litter trained, it wasn't a hare (ha ha ha) hard, he seems eager to learn, even when playing with homemade fleece toys, so I want to trick train him. Litter training is so much easier than not litter training!! With they type of cage he is in, it was a pain to change the bedding, and clean the double tray under the newspaper and bedding. He is happy and healthy, except for a healing scab on the base of his neck, which was a bite from another rabbit, at the farm. So wish him good luck at his shows!! I will get some updated pictures soon, this is when he first arrived! So Long For Now, Caitlin.

Chickens!!!

46 Little Paw Prints in My Heart
Hey fellow followers! I thought I would talk a little about my animals on this post, so here we go! I will start with the chickens.
I have 11 chickens in my back yard. Yes, chickens, most people are like, "What?" and I just nod my head and smile (it seems to fix everything). My awesome father and I, built the red coop and fenced in run by hand, with some electric tools, but so far, the design has held up well. It is four feet by five feet, including the four nesting boxes on the right side, with three levels of roosting bars. For those of you who don't know, roosting is when chickens sleep. They sleep on poles, or trees if they were in the wild, but the higher up in the 'tree' you are, the more important you are to the flock. There is actually a pecking order, with the dominant hens on top, who will actually peck the bottom of the 'pecking order' if they get out of line. If one of the members goes missing or dies, they have to reorganize the whole flock. Kind of like a lead stallion or mare in a wild horse herd. (Mikayla, remember our little horse 'pack' and how it works if your having trouble, which I doubt you will!)
 We have three breeds; Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Barred Rocks, and Cinnamon Queens. Here are the chickens names...
RIRs
Rosy (she is the largest)
Kneazle (she tends to get broody a lot so we call her 'Brody')
Pippin (is the mama hen)
Hidey (she hid from my brother and I, during a snow storm when we let them out, behind the grill)

PBRs
Headwig (she likes to perch on my head, and she is the whitest out of all the PBRs)
Kah Ki (she is the sweetest bird you will ever meet, she used to be the smallest chick, and Kah Ki is child in Hawiian)
Paprika (is a bit large, but someday will be a show bird, if I join poultry in 4H)
Maybell (is also one of the sweetest bird ever, she had her back torn open by a dog... long story... and spent a month in the basemen once her wound healed)

CQs
Tweety (she is the loudest hen, and has really pretty white and gold feathers)
Marmalaid (she is the darkest CQ we have, and almost looks like a RIR, she likes to escape out of the fence, she is small, so she can almost fly)
Alfredo/ Kniffler (she is the smallest, and at the bottom of the pecking order, but is really nice, she has a gold and white mix of feathers and a white almost necklace around her neck)

Hey There You Guys!! This is my first post... so bear with me! I will have many more posts to come, but for now, this is it. So I have decided to say on this very first post... Happy Holidays!!!