 My name is Julie Ingle, and I received a serigrant in 2010, and it has helped me a lot. I have rabbits, as you can see, or maybe you can't see. And I raised them on pasture, and the serigrant funded several key aspects of moving the project from sort of working to working better. Those aspects were kit mortality, record keeping, and the fencing system that you see here. As part of the serigrant, I received funding to buy a computer program and install it on my computer, and that has helped greatly to keep track of genetics, and then also keeping track of how many are born and where they are and how old they are and who has good mothering skills and who I should keep. And so I've been able to effectively keep track of that data and use it to breed the dose that are the most effective mothers and to put down those that are not. And so I went from about 17 dose at the time of the grant, and now I have 50 to 53. And not all of them are reliable, but again I use that computer program to look at the information that I'm gathering and see if the dose meets the criteria that I've set forth, and then using that information is whether or not she stays in the breeding cycle or not. So it's been really, really helpful to have that computer program. Another aspect of the serigrant focused on the fencing, and this type of physical barrier fence is what I developed. I used to use electric fencing, I used an electric net from Premier 1 that was meant for poultry, and I had about a 23% escape loss, and I built this physical barrier fence and I went from a 23% escape loss down to zero. So even though sometimes rabbits make it out periodically, I usually, well I have always found them and put them back in. And so it's been a really effective way to control where the rabbits are, which of course then has a great impact on the landscape because I'm controlling how much and how aggressively they graze in a certain area. So the rabbits are entirely dependent upon the forage for their nutrition, I don't supplement with pellets or any other type of off-farm feed in the summer. And so having this fence and having them stay where they're supposed to stay allows me to be able to have that control over the pasture and then also over their nutrition. So this fence is a hog panel, hog panels that are 16 feet long, I cut them in half so they're 8 feet long, and there's chicken wire on the bottom 24 inches, and then I sew the skirt at the bottom, and that takes away the visual cue for the rabbits to dig here because if they see light under the bottom of the livestock panel, or the hog panel I should say, then they tend to gravitate to that section and dig under at that point and then they can get out. But the skirt is a pretty effective barrier. It stays on the outside of the fence and I kick it up towards the hog panel and it keeps the rabbits from digging under the fence. They're allowed to dig in the middle of the pen, but they don't dig out. Rabbits have a great potential. They are herbivores, but they also have top and bottom teeth, unlike a ruminant. And so they are very effective at grazing things and taking forage down to the ground. And I think they can be used, as you can see here, this pasture is somewhat scrubland. I think they can be used very effectively to renovate areas, as long as they're controlled effectively and in combination probably with other mechanical types of mowing and other types of things to keep the thistle down. They are the most effective and efficient converters of forage and to meat and they're small and I think it's really a nice supplement to operations that already have diversified grazing going on. They eat different types of plants in a different way and they can layer out or fill out the layers of a diversified grazing operation. So I feel like it's just kind of a win-win-win situation. They're also really healthy. Rabbits like this, grazed like this, have virtually no fat and virtually no cholesterol. So it's really heart-healthy meat. Rabbit in general is really heart-healthy and then pasture raising them, having them 100% forage fed or 100% grass fed, I think ratchets up the health benefits even more. So it's a win for the land, it's a win for the producer, it's a win for the consumer. I think that it's a really good system to implement on a sustainable farm. So we are about to move the rabbits from the section that they are currently grazing to the section that they will be grazing. They've been in this section for about 32 hours and they will move into this section and I expect them to take about, I don't know, anywhere from 30 to 36 hours to completely graze this down to look like what it is here. And so in order to do this I have a modular system, each panel is 8 feet long. So I have three panels heading south and I have five panels heading east. And then I don't have any three panels on that eastern arm. And so I'm going to pick up these three panels and move them into those western arm. And the reason I'm picking up this panel here is because the rabbits will be attracted and come and graze right here and usually as soon as they shove their face in some forage they will not be that interested in traveling that far. But should they be curious they usually go in a straight line and so they're going to hit that fence and not escape while I'm setting up the western arm. And usually it takes them a while to figure out that that western edge is open. Hi kiddos, you know you're going to move don't you? And so I have enough time because I'm taking it from the northwestern corner and moving it to the southwestern corner I have enough time in that space. So let's see if it works, we'll see if I prove myself right and if the rabbits cooperate which you never really know with these mysterious little creatures. Hey kiddos, come on you guys, come on you guys, come on you guys. So it doesn't look like there's 180 rabbits in here but as they all start swarming across I guess seeing is believing right?