Saturday, April 13, 2013

Temporary Rabbit 'Outage'

Hello Everyone,

          It's been months since I have last written a post, and I apologize for that.   A number of people probably know the news by now, but I wanted to announce that I have temporarily gone out of rabbits.

          It has become increasingly difficult over the last several years to keep up with the amount of work that a large herd and 3 angora breeds requires.  When my kids were young they were home most of the time (and also homeschooled), and that made it possible for me to feed, groom, and raise a herd of rabbits very diligently.  I did not work a lot then either, which helped as well:).

          Now my boys are all teenagers and the oldest has begun college, so while they are much more independent, they are now out and about everyday, getting their drivers' licenses, going to athletic events, visiting friends, and engaging in a wide variety of educational and non-educational activities.  They are still homeschooled, but our time at home is pretty much non-existent now with all the chauffeuring going on, and my husband and I have had to take on more work to afford food/clothing/college bills, and everything else growing kids require.  Because life is so busy (and increasingly expensive) at this point, I have had to take the painful step of temporarily selling off my herd.  This was one of the worst decisions I have ever had to make in my life and I FULLY intend to return as soon as things settle down, but for now I will not keep rabbits if I cannot properly care of them, and the angora breeds in general require maintenance that I cannot keep up with:(. 

          I will keep this blog and my website up, positively, since so many people refer to them.  If time allows I will also add posts occasionally, but for the next four or five years my focus will have to be on my family and I will not be online as much:(.  People continue to email me with questions about their buns and that is WONDERFUL----but I will not be as active on the lists or at public events.

          Again, this move is DEFINITELY temporary, but I did want to explain it to the people I know in the rabbit community.  I expect to be back within five years once the kids are 'old' and I am not running around like a maniac every 5 minutes, LOL.  Many families who raise rabbits have their kids actively involved but mine were never interested in raising or showing, so I did the work myself.  I plan to have a new barn constructed in the future with much more space and plenty of room for different breeds, but until then I will have to bow out for awhile and hope that everything settles soon:).

           Anyway---best of luck to everyone!  To my good friends who so GENEROUSLY took my rabbits and are continuing my line as I speak---thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!  I will be back as soon as possible---I promise---and there will be many more FAs/SAs/and GAs in the world:-).

Thanks again.