Poppy is my beautiful little chocolate fox girl who was due to give birth to her first litter. Unfortunately she delivered several days too early and had a pretty tough time with the birth. The first and second baby were several hours apart and both still born. The third was very underdeveloped but alive until the point she bit through the cord.

Poppy was keen to receive all the cuddles I could muster. While I would usually put a doe back to the buck immediately in these situations, this time I decided against it. All the babies heads were very bruised and she had quite a substantial blood loss. Consequently she is going to be getting a good break and rest before we try her again. She's back to her normal, happy and cheeky self again at the moment and is being built up with plenty of ready grass available to her at all times. Obviously, in this heat she is drinkii

I have been sooo busy lately with a poorly little human boy and updating the website that I've not had much time to keep up with the blog! But, I've been completing my intake of rabbits to get my breeding lines going.

Here on the left you can see my new mini rex doe, provisionally named Olive by my son. She is a 14 week old lynx and so hopefully within 3 months or so she should be ready to breed and take over where my other doe is struggling.

We have also introduced Popcorn, a beautiful cinnamon mini lop doe, bred by my wonderful friend at Maisy's Mini Lops Birmingham. At around 9 weeks now she should be ready to breed for the upcoming spring and is a half sister to my buck, Coconut. They will both be involved in producing different lines for the time being and hopefully down the line we may be able to do a neice/uncle mating which would be wonderful.

It's a really exciting time for the stud at the moment, as we are completely done with bringing in rabbits and shall now be totally concentrating on type and running on our kits. We shall be keeping back two kits from one litter, a chinchilla buck, potentially going back to his mum as she carries the chinchilla gene. His sister, a frosted point will also be remaining for her type. In the other litter, one of the does looks very promising and so we shall be keeping her back to run on with her father. We are waiting anxiously for further litters and should have all that are going to come ready to keep or sell on by mid-September when we can take a break and a real good look at improving type within our rabbits.

A week into her litter of three gorgeous chocolate otters, Cinnabun has finally decided to keep them fed herself. All have lovely round bellies and are doing brilliantly. I'm so proud of her!

I've spent several months waiting for the right doe to breed with my BEW mini lop buck to produce dutch splits. I finally found her and today she joined us at Sarsen Stud.

From Wayback Warren, Claire and her husband are so welcoming and their love for the rabbits is evident in everything they do. I did very well in not bringing more home, but I do have my eye on a couple (I'm talking to you Claire!).

Dutch splits are going to be a new project for me, having never bred for this pattern before. I'm looking forward to this, it gives me a chance to work with another of my favourite colours, the blues. Space pending, I may be adding a second doe to the stud to create a small breeding trio for this new adventure.

This girl is still rather shy but really sweet and trusting. I'll be spending a lot more with her tomorrow getting to know her and I can barely wait!

Today we traveled from our home in Wilts to Birmingham to bring home my latest addition to our happy bunny family. Popcorn, a cinnamon mini lop is a gorgeous girl from Maisy's Mini Lops, she has amazing rabbits and is such a lovely, lovely woman herself. It's always a pleasure to see her and the bunnies are a fantastic excuse to keep in touch!

Popcorn is half sister to my buck, Coconut, both sharing the same mother, Pumpkin, a chocolate tort butterfly. She is getting on famously with Willow who is of a very similar age. Willow is encouraging naughtiness and Popcorn has already perfected her cute and innocent face. They're a good little couple of friends.

On the subject of Coconut; he is the biggest, silliest character of all my bunnies and has been mated to my chinchilla doe, Pepper. It took him a while, much to Pepper's annoyance for him to figure out which way up she went. He got there eventually and this is a very exciting litter for me. I am so excited about type and the colours I'll get from these two.

Cinnabun is still preferring to feed with me, her on my lap and the kits on her belly, effectively feeding upside down. I'm not sure I understand what she's up to but if it's working and the kits are healthy then I'm not complaining.

Our new mum Cinnabun has me scratching my head. Her three perfect little kits are still with us, but that's down to perseverance and bloody mindedness on my behalf.

Although a proven doe and having reared beautiful kits before, she seems to have forgotten the importance of feeding her babies. She's simply not doing it independently. Out of sheer desperation, yesterday morning I lay her on my lap and had the kits latch on to her that way. Last night, on taking her out, I put her on my lap, she lay back, arms out and eyes closed. She's loving it and seems to be choosing to feed with the cuddles. While it's fine at this stage, it's not going to be fun as the kits grow, so hopefully she'll begin to feed without waiting for me or as the kits develop I can encourage her to feed whilst sitting or standing over them. She's already into the routine, flat out on my lap, arms in the air and eyes closed with barley rings (her favourite) when it's all done.

It may be less than perfect, but I have waited too long already for this litter and I'll do whatever it takes to keep them and Cinnabun happy.

Tuesday brought a new little boy to live with us here at Sarsen Stud. Shared with a very good friend as neither of us actually needed a buck but we fell in love, he shall be spending his time here with us.

He is a lilac otter mini lop, born in March. He's ridiculously cute and very loving. He's a hit already.

I have attempted to let him play with Willow, but she chased and worried him, so saved from the nasty bully, he is living alone and enjoying plenty of love and attention.

As he grows I shall hopefully be breeding him with his nemsis Willow and possibly with my sussex cream butterfly, my favourite little girl.

Provisionally named. 'Ernie' we're still searching for the perfect name for him which no doubt will come through his personality. I love him already!

Crunchie's litter, now a little over two weeks old are doing fabulously. They're cheeky, gorgeous and thriving. Mum is going to need a little time out today I think as they're constantly scrambling to feed and her little face is looking at me with that 'Help!' plea. Although none of the litter are what I expected, she has thrown some beautiful babies and I'm really pleased with them.

Cinnabun on the other hand is causing me some concern this morning. I have been having no luck at all breeding my favourite buck. Cinnabun's last litter with him lasted under 24 hours. Now on 48 hours, the babies are warm and squeaking but they don't appear to be feeding. There are no bellies on them at all.

Obviously, hand rearing is the last thing I want to do. Mum is on dilute goats milk and is being given as much to eat as she can cope with. I am going to try to hold mum on my lap to allow the babies to feed. She's enjoying being handled so I'm hoping this won't stress her to the point of her milk drying up. If this won't work I may have to look at fostering the kits out. I'm quite determined to keep this litter and will be so disappointed if I were to lose another of Herbie's. Either way, following this, Cinnabun needs a good, long break and lots of fuss and love. If nothing else, she is eating barley rings like they're going out of fashion!

Yesterday Cinnabun delivered a litter it feels I've been waiting a long time for. My favourite buck hasn't had much luck in producing for me, but at this stage we have three healthy kits. They appear to be chocolate orange or chocolate otter in colour.

Mum is fine but having lost her previous litter she's rather defensive at the moment which is absolutely fine with me. After all, she's the boss when it comes to her babies.

It's so difficult to be strict with myself and not disturb mum and kits too much for the sake of my curiousity. Both mum and dad are of a fantastic type and I'm looking forward to a litter sharing their big heads and chunky legs.