Not Exactly Like I Planned...

Spring is here and everything is bursting with new life except for a little acre or so in scenic PEI nestled in a little sheltered corner of the island. I've been have a heck of a time getting my new generation of livestock going here on the farm. Talk about a run of disappointments.

The rabbits were the beginning of the run. I have a young doe I've been trying to breed for forever. She just won't have anything to do with it. Just my luck to get a purist rabbit. The real disappointing thing is I kept her back from the last litter my dear Earl Grey sired before he passed away. She grew well and had a good body shape and nice personality but so did the other doelings from that litter. The reason why I chose her was because she looked very similar to Earl. Earl was a great rabbit and I wanted to keep his looks around. But she is not co-operating at all. I've tried everything I know of to get her 'in the mood' but nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Of the other four does I bred at the same time, only one had a viable litter. My oldest doe had one large dead kit, the other two did nothing. It was after a fairly long break for them and I know sometimes rabbits take a while to get back into breeding mode but I never had that problem before. So the rabbitry should be 'hoping' with new life but it is not. It's got some but no where close to where it should be.

The chickens are fairing worse than the rabbits! First there was that whole false broody thing where I lost the whole nest of eggs. Then I had an incubator fiasco where it shot up to 110F for some unknown reason but I strongly suspect the water I put in the tray with was may-be too warm. Whatever the reason, I didn't get one chick, not one out of 42 eggs. During the three week incubation period, I hoped against hope that something survived. Two more times the temperature shot up but when I tried another thermometer, the temp. was a perfect 99.5F So I'm thinking it wasn't the incubator but a faulty thermometer. In which case the eggs didn't hatch cause I cooled them down for too long. Losing a whole hatch of my own eggs is bad enough but I bought two dozen eggs, Delaware and Americauna, to complement my own. Losing those just added to the whole disappointment. So I should be having peeps all over the place and I have none, nada, zip, zilch.

That's how it goes sometimes. It's really nothing disastrous, more like a series of setbacks one after the other. The DaM Farm holds so many surprises and unexpected joys that I think I'm just not used to having a bunch of disappointments anymore. I can't decided if that's a good thing or not. Anyhow, onwards and upwards, pip-pip, whoot-whoot and all that rot. Disappointments never killed anybody, probably builds character...or dementia.