Hocus Lepus Farms

15/06/2024

Exciting news and changes coming very soon here at HLF. In the meantime, say hello to our fresh guinea keet and chick flock. 😍😘

19/01/2023

It’s with glee that I finally officially announce the arrival of our first sable project babies at Hocus Lepus Farms!

Born on December 29th to my stunning and oh so sweet Sable doe, Leticia, and to my Ruby Eyed White buck, Evander, we have 5 gorgeous little babies taking their first cautious leaps into the world.

Leticia is a family favorite here at HLF. Consistently asking for affection, she is always head first through her hutch door, eager to deliver nuzzles into hands and faces alike. She loves a good head scratch, some love behind the ears, and has been known to flop over for back and side pets. She’s also a frequent kisser, delivering gentle licks to wrists and noses whenever the opportunity to do so strikes.

This is her first litter at 2years 8 months of age. We were so worried we’d not see her produce, as she was resistant to male advances despite our best efforts for well over a year of being blessed with her on our farm. Finally, in November of 2022, she must have decided it was time! She was remarkable throughout her entire pregnancy, and her kindling on 12/29 was phenomenal. She ensured a deep, very fur laden nest wast prepared a full 36 hours before arrival of her little ones, and had the hay and location of her nest structurally designed to her specifications several days before that. She’s been an incredible first time mother and the results are better than we could have hoped for from this pairing.

Our 3 week check on the sable litter commenced last night, and the results are now in!
It would appear we have two sable does, one sable buck, and two ruby eyed white does! It’s hard to evaluate the quality of their confirmation at this age, but I’m optimistic about their ear length, head shape, and stance so far overall. We will definitely be keeping a close watch as things progress and these adorable little balls of floof develops into the big, strong bunnies they were born to be.

I’ll absolutely be checking/updating again in 3 weeks to verify my accuracy on their sexes, as at only 3 weeks old it can still be challenging to make a precise assessment of their little parts. However, I’d say I’m around 90% confident in my guesses! I’m really looking forward to being proven wrong or right, and hopeful that I will be able to continue to improve my identification and evaluation skills earlier in the bunny rearing process.

Already this litter has such personality, likely in huge part to their darling and incredibly docile mother. The little buck currently has the most striking, rich sable coloration with the most adorable fat little head. The two REWs are adventurous, clever and oh so curious, and the sable girls are much too cuddly for my own good. How can I be productive with such charming babies in my lap? 😍

**NFS**

09/02/2022

If you or someone you love is in the pet trade, please contact your senators.

If you have ambitions of owning any pets besides cats and dogs someday, please contact your senators.

Please.

As this situation continues to develop the pet industry will continue to take action. This bill has been passed into the house and gained traction. For a full update, click on the link below on how this affects you and your hobby, and how to take action at the bottom of the article. Let your senator know your views on the last-minute amendment to the COMPETES Act, H.R. 4521.the House.

https://www.naiaonline.org/articles/article/federal-legislation-threatens-pets-zoos-and-aquariums-and-biomedical-research .wphTvXMe.dpbs

Click the link below to take action

https://cqrcengage.com/pijac/app/write-a-letter?0&engagementId=513850

22/01/2022

Woah! We’ve gotten a bunch of new followers lately! That’s really exciting, to see so many more of you tuning in to our little journey! We at Hocus Lepus Farms are so sincerely stoked to get to share everything we’ve been working on!

We are still eagerly awaiting the availability of the RHDV2 vaccination within our area, and until we are able to vaccinate 100% of our current rabbit herd against the virus, to protect everyone living in our barn and yours we are living still in a fairly formal lockdown. However, the beauty of this lockdown is the amount of focus we are driving into bettering the entire ecosystem of our farm and family. It’s funny how, for us, so much started with an undeniable love of rabbits, but who knows where it will all end up! With the new 1/2 acre we’ve been afforded the chance to explore and get to know, we’ve also found time and resources to conquer a lot of small projects that we hope will continue to come together to make for a more fluid system overall!

The team here is comprised of a wife and her very supportive husband locally, but with a huge support network of so many veins that makes the learning and implementation of better practices possible! We are focused this year on building our rabbitry up and really working with the standards of perfection to better our rabbits (not to mention to help focus all of our goals!!!), but also taking huge steps into learning how to produce enough to happily feed everyone we care for right here on the farm!

We’ve made some investments into hydroponic gear to get our pre-spring starts the best possible set up so that they may continue to grow and cycle to produce food for the farm for the rest of the year, and ideally (we hope!!!) for years to come! That’s a new project for me to jigsaw together today, so I hope to post more updates once we see it flowing and green! Along with some of the more basic and typically annual vegetables which we are so excited to grow again this year, (heirloom tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, carrots, potatoes, and so much more than I can even remember to list here!), we are also learning a great deal about herbalogy and medicinal uses for native and more perennial plants we can grow. We hope that implementing more preventative and hopefully healthier measures will help everyone on our farm! We are also expanding widely into edible flowers for the overall food forest goal, because I can’t deny liking a certain, wild but bountiful and beautiful, aesthetic! 💜🐇 It’s truly remarkable how much the conservation of energy and the symbiosis of sister crops will help the farm overall! Finally, I’m working on a fodder rotation system using wheatgrass, and constantly looking for and considering other, additional options for a more well rounded and more sustainable project!

We know we have much to learn! We work every day to digest as much information as possible so that we can effectively and respectfully implement many of the (new to us at HLF, but arguably and often very old!) techniques to be able to give that which we love so much the best life we know how. It’s a long journey, and we’ve got so much left to do, but we are so grateful to be where we are!

We’ve also been majorly focused on making sure our rabbits (and, of course, the other animals living here!) are getting adequate space and exercise while making their homes a bit easier for us to keep tidy overall! We’ve gone through an assortment of hutch designs for the rabbits, ultimately discarding each due to it either not being spacious enough, or being quite a rigorous process to keep adequately clean to prevent any illness among the rabbits. We are considering moving towards more of a horse stall and communal living arrangement for different rabbit family groups and completing them with litter boxes as almost 3/4 of our rabbits now are “box trained”, or possibly working to figure out an adequate multi colony system outdoors! Again, we know our work is cut out for us, but we are making great strides with everything we’ve learned and been considering, and frequent but manageable efforts on getting things done almost as much as writing them down and asking questions.

We hope to be able to post photos and more updates of our work as things progress and come to fruition, so thank you so much for tagging along for the ride!

As always, if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Otherwise, I hope that you enjoy these very honest and helpful (and darling!!) infographics as much as we have!

Hope to catch you again soon!
Sincerely,
The HLF Family!



(Thank you to the incredibly talented Alex Nakamura for sharing these cute info graphics)
[if anyone knows the original posted source, I’d be much obliged if you’d share it so I can credit the work properly!!!!]
For now, here’s a cute Twitter link where I found the artist credited.
https://mobile.twitter.com/rabbitfriendly/status/738497970589433856

24/07/2021

Edit: Both Boys 💜🐇🏡💙

20/07/2021

This funny little guy came out of my F1 Harlequin/Conti project!
He can and does hold his ears up, it’s just hot so he’s being a bit lazy. 😬😅
Still, what a charming little face! 🥰 And it’s always fun to see some new questions pop up from a line I’ve worked with for 3 generations that brought me this guy!
We’ve got a blue/grey left eye and a brown right, which is a first for us! We’ve not seen a heterochromic rabbit pop up here before!
We have both Chinchilla and White Ear in the background on the Continental side, and this means likely a bit of Vienna somewhere back there also!

*NFS*

14/07/2021

Edit: all babies 💙🐇🏡💜

Apple and Augustus are proud to present their litter of five!
These little guys are almost nine weeks old now! Wow, how the time flies!

They’ve been a lot of fun, and each one is so incredibly sweet and loving! We had a few dreaded experiences and surprises this litter, like our visit from the gender fairy when a few extra bucks popped out of the woodwork where I thought I’d had does just a few days back, and the obstacle of losing their mother when they were just three weeks old- but from the very beginning this litter has been a blessing, a joy, and also and always a lesson. I’m so excited to be watching them grow up and begin to show more enthusiasm individually towards adventure and affection both. They don’t always love to pose for photos, but they line up each and every morning, noon and night for pets and for kisses! 💜❤️ We are so charmed and blessed to have been involved in their care.

Reminder to read our sales policy before inquiring about any available bunnies.
Please pm the page to discuss any questions!

And definitely stay tuned for future updates on litters, goats, bunnies, and other exciting developments at HLF!
Thank you for following!

24/06/2021

Well, I suppose it’s well past time for an update!
Our two litters are doing very well, all things considered!
We’ve had some rough temperatures and rougher situations the past few weeks, but we have a number of happy faces to greet us every morning, so we figure we’ll just ride these coattails to the finish line!

Apple’s litter is growing, and is currently 6 weeks old today! Despite the tragedy of losing their mother, mostly due to the high heat waves we have been dealing with, Mommy HLF has stepped up and tried our best to get them to thrive, and it does seem to be working! I still urgently need a scale to be able to more appropriately measure their growth, but all five are still going strong, and each and every one is such a doll for human attention! I suppose the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, and it certainly did not here! Apple was probably the sweetest rabbit we’ve ever had the opportunity and honor of caring for, but her little squeakers seem eager to grow into fitting the shadow she left on our hearts. 💜❤️

Luxe’s *F1* litter is also going strong. One little agouti buck does seem to be struggling to keep up with the growth of his siblings, but we are still pleased with her progress as a first time mommy and with the little munchkins she brought to us. Aren’t they just so cute? 😍😘

We are so grateful to have all of these little loves with us, and we are looking forward to getting another air conditioner set up in the barn to stabilize and accommodate for these high temperatures we’ve been seeing before we do any more breeding for the season. We have some tall plans though, so do stay tuned for future updates as we continue to settle in and get the new place working for us!

03/06/2021

We at Hocus Lepus have the outstanding pleasure of watching these 12 little munchkins grow!

Luxe’s lovely ** F1 ** litter is now 11 days old, and I can peek into 14 open eyes between the seven of them! We are so excited and blessed to have discovered two harlequinized babies from her, and from the looks of things, we’ve got a little boy and a little girl between the two of them! They are growing nicely, though they are sincerely dwarfed by their barely older cousins!

Apple’s astonishing pure Continental litter of five precious babies is three weeks old today, and she’s doing an outstanding job! We are so excited to watch these little ones continue to sprout, and to evaluate who will be staying behind to continue our own lines!

Luxe began to struggle with motherhood about four days in, so her babies are divided between herself and Apple each day so that everyone gets the best chance of fighting for another sunrise. Apple, also a first time mommy, has taken to motherhood beautifully and with a natural, astonishing grace.

All babies are currently shelved so their mommies can get some much needed alone and recuperation time! Both ladies have been supplied their favorite snacks and some delicious frozen treats to help keep cool and bide their loneliness on this hot day. They’ll get their little broods back this evening in time for dinner, but both Dam’s seemed grateful for their short break!

So much love in this barn ❤️💜

25/05/2021

Luxe, my Opal F1 holdback doe from last year, had a beautiful litter of 7 fat little jumping beans on Sunday night. ❤️🙈😍

All 7 babies are doing great at this time to our determined first time mommy. Luxe certainly seemed to inherit her Grandma Fawn’s habit for larger litters and outstanding maternal instincts. She pulled SO MUCH FUR! She’s since mixed her nest box up a bit to put the babies more on the hay (likely due to the high temperatures we are already seeing this season) but she and her loves are tucked safely in my locked, air conditioned barn!

Luxe hails from my very first Continental Giant Line I ever purchased, and her litter now has the first project babies we’ve produced at HLF that align with some of our long term goals. I’m so excited to watch these little miracles grow, and I’m even more excited that these pieces to our harlequin puzzle are descendants from the rabbit who made me fall completely head over heels in love with rabbits.

We miss you immensely, my sweet Fawn girl, but I bet you’d be so proud to be a great grandmummy now. We will always honor and keep her legacy alive right here at HLF, and this is both a deeply bittersweet and hugely proud moment for us.

Apple’s 🍏 little family tree 🌳 is also doing so good. Everyone looks chunky and is growing nicely. We even have 5 bright pairs of eyes today! Tomorrow I’ll disturb them for pictures, but today we just wanted to enjoy them all ourselves.

Thank you again for following along our adventure, and we look forward to sharing more of these perfect little munchkins with you in the coming weeks.

22/05/2021

Behind every dark cloud exists a silver lining, as long as you’ve the strength to find it.

T & R Rabbits and livestock’s precious and sweet Apple welcomed 5 beautiful babies into our home.

She’s doing phenomenally as a first time mother, and we are so incredibly grateful to have her here.

Apple the Yellow Continental Giant Doe and Dejokimaaz's Green Herbs Rabbitry’s Augustus the Blue Steel Continental Giant Buck proudly present their litter of 5.

Looks like one precious agouti, one little black, two sweet blues, and one darling opal.

Bittersweet 💜❤️🍏

21/05/2021

I do apologize for our slow stream of updates.

We have had... a rough week.

Monday evening, a neighbor’s dog managed to wiggle/wedge himself past the big sliding door on the front of my barn while we were not home. He ripped into multiple of my hutches, and took several of my most precious babies from us.

In a single night, I lost about 2/3 of my purebred Continental giants, rabbits I have poured my soul and sweat and tears into for years, and every single life lost was one I expected to get... so much more time with. These were my permanent rabbits, many of which I produced and was growing or had grown out for our program. 9 of my giants are just... gone. 5 of which were my beloved witchy Laveau who I worked with for over a year to gain her trust, and her 4 precious babies: Valkyrie, Carys, Eros and Cupid from my Valentines Daybies. Aradia and her daughters were also lost.

We’ve since put our cameras up in the new barn (I hadn’t gotten to it before, there’s a million super important things to take care of when moving, so it just kept getting nudged on the priority list before tragedy slammed it to the top) and we added a latch to the inside of the sliding door of the barn so it can’t budge when I lock it. I’m planning to completely change the layout of the barn so it looks and feels totally different walking in, and any broken hutches will be fully disassembled/re-built to be stronger and more ideal for my rabbits.

We are definitely still reeling from this catastrophic loss, but working very hard to dust ourselves off and try to pick back up.
We will never not miss our babies, and they will never be replaced. We are devastated that this happened, but we can work hard to make sure we are better because it did.
I loved them so much, and the one thing that brings me solace in this is that I really did give them my all for their whole lives. They always knew love and kindness, and that brings a small sliver of peace in this.

I’ll try to keep up with updates more.

Thanks everyone for following along our adventure, and we hope to have sunnier news to share in the days ahead.

10/05/2021

We are so proud and excited to have welcomed two 🐰🐰new beautiful Continental Giant buns to our home and program this week!

🐇The adventurous and awesome Aloysius, a strong, chocolate buck made of sugary bulk and a heart of gold, joined us from Cannon Fire rabbitry in Georgia and was delivered by the fantastic Christina Mauer of Glory Be Bunny (and small animal) Transport.
🐇The serendipitous and sweet Sybil, a gorgeous red eyed white doe who carries chocolate and harlequin, was produced and delivered by Parson's Rabbitry and Parsons Transport from Virginia.

These two stunning rabbits represent the first of our chocolate lines in our rabbitry, and Sybil presents a beautiful piece for our harlequin puzzle as well!
We are so excited to have them both here! They are quarantined in our home away from my bunnies in the barn for the next few weeks- all the more time to get to know and bond with them!!

27/04/2021

Never a dull moment on the farm!

Thanks to my fabulous Mr Hocus Lepus Farmhand, the new goat holding pen was ready to go this morning!
I’m putting together a more functional pallet shelter and ramp, as well as planning a hay rack for them to enjoy- but for right now, we are just so excited to be out of the barn and basking in this beautiful, sunny day between our next few days of rain!

While attending other maintenance on the farm, we made a few unfortunate discoveries, one of which was the poison ivy growing into my beautiful big lilac bush I was so excited to find here!
After what felt like hours of chipping away at it, I relented that I’d probably need to sacrifice my lovely lilac to eradicate the treacherous invader.
Luckily, my Goaty Girls are more than happy to do their share of the work in disposing of the poisonous plant and other weeds. Rosa, Toffee and Unagi were certainly eager to help once they got a whiff of the issue.

They of course had no problem conquering an entire tote of the stuff I’d managed to pull down and chop apart, devouring everything I put before them and then still sniffing for more of the poison! 😱

Not only will turning them loose onto the plant certainly pave towards elimination, but my lilac may even be able to survive their advances!! Not to mention, the girls will be thrilled for an opportunity to play to their strengths!
These goats are AWESOME!

Today the bin, the bush this weekend, next week- probably the world.

They just might also need to be washed and or shaved after the job is done... 🤣

We have a host of updates upcoming for every corner of our homestead. Everyone here is hard at work on improvements to the farm!

26/04/2021

Have you met the bunnerflies yet?
They are just so cute! I definitely am not just getting these to frame and hang around my rabbit barn
😉🤣🥰

Anyone know what you’d have to cross with a conti to get one of these? Asking for a friend, of course! 💜

https://www.heathersketcheroos.com/bunnerflies

https://m.facebook.com/heathersketcheroos/

24/04/2021

Haha! 🤣
This guy found
The 🌙✨ P r o m i s e d L a n d ✨🌙
Made us crack up! Thought we ought to share!

15/04/2021

Valentines Babies ❤️
Almost 9 weeks old!!! 😱

My Mr. Hocus Lepus Farmhand was doing some cleaning and other chores so I could just sit down with my rabbits for a few hours yesterday. I made sure to at least greet and love on everyone as is per the daily routine, but the extra help and time gave me over an hour bonding with these kids!

These guys are growing like weeds and are so dang sweet! I’m so excited to have them here!

* NFS *

12/04/2021

Sorry for the slow updates, we’ve had our hands quite full these last three weeks!
Well... it’s officially official. We’ve MOVED from Idaho to Illinois! We arrived just in time to enjoy a beautiful, sunny Easter here.
The cross country trek was a success and despite a few chaotic and last second obstacles, we made it unscathed!

Now my babies get a barn that is bigger than my house!!! Of course, we knew and planned for that, but a (wonderful!) shocker was that almost everything that grows in wild abundance here is fully edible and healthy for my rabbits or goats! 😱 there’s only two exceptions I’ve found, but after a week of wandering the property and carefully identifying everything, I feel totally secure letting my buns trounce about in the weeds and floribundas, munching to their hearts content on the clover, purple dead nettle, peonies, meadow violets and dandelions that are rich all over our new property.

We are all settling right in to the new place. The bunnies and goats love it already, and I know they’ll be even happier as we get our new kennel assembly line rolling. Everybody is going to be getting upgrades!

Due to having just moved from a RHDV2 hot zone, we are under a full 90 day quarantine, and as such I will have no available bunnies until at least the weekend of July the 4th.

We are so excited to be here!

23/03/2021

Our sweet F1 boys Penn and Teller are loving life in their new home 😍 They are settling right in and have made fast friends with this adorable little human!
It seriously warms our hearts seeing our babies go to such awesome, loving homes!

17/03/2021

We added a few new faces to the farm!
We picked out miss Rosalie the Oberhasli goat, and Toffee and *Taffy the Nigerian Dwarf Goats. They are so funny and sweet!

Thank you Wcwanderlust Farm for the beautiful, affectionate girls! We love them so much already!

08/03/2021

3 weeks and one day old today!
Laveau and Augustus’s Continental Giant litter.

*NFS*

28/02/2021

Our Valentine’s Daybies are growing beautifully, and we are starting to see eyes!

Babies are taking their first hops out of the nest box, looking at the world for the first time, and giving their first kisses these last few days! 💜

Laveau, our stunning white ear blue Continental Giant doe, has truly taken to motherhood this go. She’s incredibly attentive to her precious 4 babies!
Dagmar, our incredibly loving magpie Harlequin doe, is a more experienced mother and proving herself once again a pro over her equally charming 4 half conti kits!

I’m incredibly pleased each morning and night when I check our 8 fat, growing bellies!

Something to be said for small litters, both sets of babies are growing at impressive rates.

Still, the size difference between the continental giants and the F1s really is incredible! We are talking litters that were born less than two hours apart. Yes, one litter is full Giant and the other only 1/2, but it still takes my breath away. I almost wish I’d had another Continental litter to compare to Laveau’s babies just to verify if I’m going crazy or these really are just gigantic! They just seem so massive, especially compared to Dagmar’s babies or even to my (potentially flawed) memory of other conti babies we’ve produced here at HLF.

We are so beyond excited to watch these guys grow!!

*NFS*

19/02/2021

Valentines Daybies! 😍😭🥰

I can NOT handle all this cuteness.

*NFS*

16/02/2021

Laveau, our boisterous but beautiful White Eared Blue Continental Giant, gave us 4 perfect, fat, vocal little blue Continental Giant babies on 💕💜 Valentine’s Day!
Less than 48 hours old, and even the smallest, the runty solid blue, seems so big already... 😮
The blue is just about average size for our conti babies at this age, only a bit larger, but their siblings are all at least 2x the size!
My heart is so full! 🥰😍 We have high hopes for these babies!

12/02/2021

Laveau is hard at work this morning and has me waddling out into the snow every 20 or so minutes to check on her. No fur pulled yet, but she’s insisted her whole floor needs covered in hay as a fail safe, so what choice does a bunny slave have but to lovingly comply?
Praying this beautiful lady figures out motherhood on this second go! She makes suuuuch gorgeous bunnies! We are praying and manifesting for the best while preparing for the worst.
Due ❤️💜Valentines Day-02/14/2021!
I’m so excited to meet our little Valentines!

24/01/2021

We absolutely LOVE to get updates about our bunnies in their new homes!

I just received these pictures today, and boy did they make a cold, hard day a lot warmer. 🥰

Lovingly named Samara by her new family, one of my amazing girls has done a lot of growing up and is living large in snowy Montana!

First picture was taken here with her litter mates late August/early September, and the second two were taken recently. Such a massive difference a few months can make 😍😍

14/01/2021

One of these things is not like the others! 🎶🤔

Apple absolutely adores hanging out in bed with us.
From burying herself in my tower of pillows, hopping around with us when we are listening to tunes, and her insistence on laying very nearly on top of me while we relax and catch our girl shows.
Unbelievably sweet and so funny, Apple has absolutely stolen our hearts.
I’m soooo excited to breed her out this year. She just melts my heart every single day.

* NFS *

08/12/2020

😍😍 my freaking heart
These guys are just sooooo dang cute. And so docile and sweet! Almost every one of them is so eager for loves and pets, with the lilac white eared buck being the only real exception- he’s just a lovable little spazz!
These are from my F1 Continental Giant litters (50% Harlequin)

19/11/2020

These F1s are growing out to be sooooo cute! 😍
We have 17 thriving babies from 3 litters.
Dagmar and Helen have proven to be extraordinary mothers and each have perfectly round, healthy babies, but Honey did lose 4.
Loving, friendly, curious little jumping beans!
My heart is so full ❤️

25/10/2020

Dagmar gave us 6 little bundles of love yesterday!