I will start off with the obligatory complaint about the weather: Who ordered more snow and cold? You suck.

It’s not quite historic cold, but it’s not far off. I really don’t appreciate this.

With that out of the way:

Thursday, I took advantage of having a pack of freeze-dried butternut lasagna in my drawer at work. I added a little too much hot water at the Keurig, so it was a little on the soupy side. I gave it several minutes, and stirred it well until the largest chunks were soft. It tasted as good as it had before freeze drying, though, and I appreciated having “home cooked” on a whim.

At this point, all of the rabbits are eager for their fodder portion, although I’m still trying to work out the best method for growing it. I’m barely growing enough for the adults, forget the kits. But even what I can give them seems to make a big difference. I’m working on trying to get a better sprouting rate than I have been. We’ll see if the changes make any difference.

Friday wasn’t terrible. I finished a certification exam, which pulled one “weight” off my brain. Came home, worked on the rabbit cages I still don’t have completely altered.

Saturday, we visited a friend a bit north, and I took a side quest to pick up an Ameracauna rooster, and five started chicks. The chicks are Black Copper Marans males and straight-run F2 Easter Eggers. The males further my longer term goal of being semi-self sufficient from a replacement stock POV. I have three Black Copper Marans pullets reserved from another breeder, for pick up soon-ish. Naturally, that meant I had to hurriedly clean out the chick coop, which I hadn’t touched all winter.

Sunday, I acquired more scratch grain and chick starter, as well as another bag of wheat seed for fodder. I also acquired dropping pan trays.

I had originally planned, based on pictures only, to attempt to use dog crate trays instead of the rabbit dropping trays. But once at the store, and comparing side by side, I decided it was prudent to spend the extra money to acquire the “right” things.

Then I had to fix the tray support I added to that set of cages, because … well. See, I hadn’t realized until this that those cages were handmade — and poorly. They’re some of the ones I bought off someone getting out of the business. They’re less than square (which IS really hard to do) but they’re not even measured closely. So it was a real struggle to get the trays to fit into the appropriate slots.

So much so, I may abandon my plan of adding the wire-base tray supports, and instead build wood support slats underneath all of the rest, and those those instead. I really don’t think it could be WORSE.

I am still mind-playing with how I am going to do this all. I want to have some “might be keepers” cages, grow out cages for the meat rabbits, and — of course — breeder cages. And then there’s any poultry I raise from egg. Ah, well. I’ll figure it out.

Eggs: Production is picking back up, although most of tonight’s collection were frozen solid. Yesterday was 10 eggs; I didn’t count tonight’s, mainly because I’ll have to do something quickly with the frozen eggs.