LOCK? DELETE? OLD Rabbit Owners- NEW LINK INSIDE

[FlynnEugene]

I am kind of upset that I have to leave my babies again. My mom and I are going to California for a vacation, and I have to leave the buns with a sitter. It took us forever to find someone that both my mom, and I trusted ( since we are leaving my buns and her dogs with them for 10 days) and I was able to hunt down an old friend. Since we just recently moved back to the southern area it was a bit difficult to get in touch with people we are friends with but haven't seen in a while since we moved out of the East Coast and into the southern area. Anyway, it makes me upset that I have to leave them, but I know they will be in safe hands. I think it's just the problem that I will be away from them for about 10 days

[_breezy_star_]

Used Lennox and Timber to introduce my grandparents' German Shepherd Dog, Addie, to rabbits for the first time. Those two fear no dog xD Addie was actually afraid of them! xD

Such cute bunny pictures!


FuzzyThePunkCat: Is she spayed? Was she hungry? lol Maybe she was just frustrated for some reason. Rabbits are odd creatures.

She isn't spayed yet, she is 7 months and will be within this month. She had hay and pellets in her cage. She's usually EXTREMELY shy, so maybe I scared her.

Or hormones. lol She's at that age now. That's why I asked if she was spayed. lol Some does get "grumpy" around that age.

[DaniVik]

Hello everybody )
I just wanted to show you my new rabbit video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO0XnQDrpss

@ FuzzyThePunkCat
Then you may have scared her, my bunny Monty bites when I move to fast... he reacts aggressiv, when he is scared...
I think Monty has a bad past, he is a shelter rabbit. I had worked on this, and it is much better now )
I own him for 3,5 years now

[ImmyWimmy1]

Hello everyone, I'm ImmyWimmy1! Just thought I'd introduce myself on here, since I am a proud rabbit owner! I've had a pretty rocky history with rabbits, but I'd thought I share it with you.

~~~


I got my first rabbit several years ago (can't remember the exact date) from a local garden centre. He was a lovely English Spot buck with light brown markings, earning him the name Hazel (a name I also chose from Watership Down). My little sister got his younger brother, a gorgeous English Spot with black markings. We soon picked up on their personalities- Hazel was the confident, friendly boy whilst Spot was slightly timid, needing his brother to encourage him. But we soon noticed something was wrong. When we first got them, we kept them in the house to adjust to our scents and keep them comfortable, as they were in the garden centre. We let them has a supervised run around our dining room and I would often read a magazine whilst keeping an eye one them (said magazine was often nibbled by Hazel). We soon began to pick up that Spot was behaving... oddly. He'd sit in the corner of the room and stare out with a slightly glazed over look in his eyes. My sister tried to approach him once and he bit her, which he'd never done before. My mother had bred rabbits as a child and realised that something was wrong, so one day when we were at school she took him to the vets. The vet couldn't identify what was wrong, but gave her antibiotics to feed him. However, no sooner had mum got home, Spot took a turn for the worse. He was lying on his side, breathing heavily and eyes closed. Mum rushed him back to the vet, but by the time she had arrived in the waiting room it was too late- he had gone.

My sister was devastated when mum picked us up from school and told us the news. We'd only had him and his brother for a few days, only to lose them so quickly. A few days later, Hazel began to go the same way. Just like Spot, he sat in the corner of the room, eyes glazed. We knew it was only a matter of time. I'll never forget the time we let him out onto our lawn to experience a bit of freedom before he suffered the same as his brother. I sat out on the swing at the back of our garden, crying as I knew what was to come, when Hazel hopped over and nudged my leg affectionately. I bent down and stroked him in between the ears for a bit- my last strong memory of him. It wasn't long after that he passed away too. We had already had to rehome the family cats before we got the rabbits, so to lose them too... It was a lot for a couple of kids who'd not truly experienced loss before...

Then came the fiasco with Millie and Maramalade... *sigh*

Not long after Hazel and Spot died, we went back to the garden centre to talk to them about what had happened. Because we hadn't had Spot and Hazel for very long, they said we could have another one for free. Of course, this wouldn't bring our boys back, but we felt ready to fill the hole in our hearts. So we found Millie, who originally had a companion called Molly, but she was sold to someone separately. Feeling sorry for Millie, we decided to take her in. She was a gorgeous black Mini Rex, but boy did she have an attitude on her. When we let her run around the house, she often came upstairs to check things out, almost ending up in the bath with me once! But it soon became apparent that Millie was not a very happy bunny. She really did not like it in the house, so we got her a hutch of her own, just in case it was the smell of Spot and Hazel upsetting her. When her behavior didn't improve, we decided to get her a companion.

After spending some time doing some research, we followed up an advert in the local newspaper for a rabbit breeder selling Rex rabbits. That's when we met Marmalade. He was a highly affectionate Red Rex bunny with a monster appetite. Or at least we were told he was a Rex (more to follow below). Anyway, after a long and rocky introduction process he and Millie got along well (both rabbits were neutered I will point out). But two things started to go wrong. One was Millie was still not happy, often escaping into the neighbour's garden. The other... Marmalade was huge! At full growth he weighed a whopping 5kg! He practically bulldozed everything in sight, including our buddleias for feeding the local butterflies. We were at a loss on what to do.

But then we started visiting another garden centre in the local area, where we came across a litter of Castor Rex kittens. Little did we know, but one of the little does would become an important part of our life with rabbits. We took her home and named her Honey. She did not get along well with Millie or Marmalade, which is when we realised we had to make difficult decision: who goes? After several more incidents, we rehomed Millie and Marmalade through RSPCA Rabbit Specialists. It was sad, watching them pulling away with our little ones, but we knew that they'd be happier away from our home.

And then we spent four wonderful years with our beautiful little Honey! She was a joy to watch roaming the garden during the day, watching her kick her back legs out in mid air with glee, and then locking her up safe and sound at night. She would follow us everywhere in that one space, whether hanging the washing out or raking up leaves in the autumn. But sadly it wasn't to last. One day, after leaving her outside to get some exercise, we came home to find that she had jumped back into her hutch of her own accord. Mum and dad went outside to check on her when they found blood in her built-in run. Upon finding Honey, they found that she had managed to stab herself in the rear-end with a stick. To this day we will never know how it happened. Of course, mum and dad rushed her off to the 24/7 vet in one of the nearby towns (this happened out of hours on a Sunday), leaving my sister and myself worried out of our minds. She was operated on immediately, but the vets kept her overnight to make sure everything with the anesthetic was going Ok. We did get her back the next day, a little quiet and shaken, but alive and... 'well'...

We brought her indoors and got her a brand new indoor cage to keep a close eye on her. She was in and out of the vets for check ups, living on a diet of softened pellet food and Baytril. The vets= was very good, even going to the point of letting Honey stay in an empty stable stall of hers when we went on holiday! It seemed like Honey was on the mend. But then came the day I'll never forget. I went downstairs one morning and being the first down I went to go and check on Honey. When I looked into her cage, she was in a twisted position, eyes dark and blank. I felt a shiver run down my spine, but I wanted to be sure. I tried speaking to her to get a response from her- nothing. Then I opened the top of her cage and placed my hand on her chest- stone cold. After sitting beside her cage sobbing, I immediately ran upstairs and informed my parents. Even my dad was reduced to tears as he lifted her out of the cage. It broke everyone in the family.

After everything that had happened, we spent years without rabbits- we just didn't want to risk the heartbreak all over again. So we focused on the cats and the stick insects. It wasn't until I got my weekend job in the garden centre where we bought Honey that I began to think about rabbits again. One day we got a Dwarf Lop cross litter in, one of which contained a rabbit later known as Bramble. He was huge in comparison to the other rabbits in his litter (we called him the 'mutant'), and more affectionate to boot. One night he got into the female rabbit pen, but we thought nothing of it since he had one testicle and the vet had deemed him infertile. However, both of the girls had litters later on. I fell in love with Bramble's kittens, so several weeks later we ended up with Raven, my sister's Silver Fox bunny (with her mother's slight Lionhead mane), and Ivy, my little Agouti lop-eared bunny.

I am very pleased to say that Raven and Ivy are both very much alive and well, living it out in a big hutch and having a supervised run of the garden. Being just over a year old now, we hope to have them for a long time! <3

[FlynnEugene]

I will get some pictures up of my bunnies soon

[_breezy_star_]

Hello everybody )
I just wanted to show you my new rabbit video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO0XnQDrpss

Great video!! Such cute rabbits.

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ImmyWimmy1: Sorry to hear about your bad luck with bunnies! I hope you have many good years with the current ones!

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Also, I feel like sharing my new website banner. lol It took me forever to decide what to do with it. I changed my website a little and now everything matches rather nicely. :3



Link if image won't load: http://i62.tinypic.com/ruuz38.png

[DaniVik]

Thanks

I love your banner ♥
Which programm do you use for editing?

[_breezy_star_]

Thanks

I love your banner ♥
Which programm do you use for editing?

Thank you!

A free one! lol It's called Paint.NET

[ImmyWimmy1]

ImmyWimmy1: Sorry to hear about your bad luck with bunnies! I hope you have many good years with the current ones!

Thank you for your kind words! ^u^

~~~


I'll try and post some pictures of Raven and Ivy in the future (possibly some of the others guys too)! <3

[King of Crows]

Does anyone know what I can do for my older rabbit? She's a blue dutch doe, not fixed (surgery would be too much for her stress wise), and she's 5 years old now.

I have had the hardest time keeping weight on her. Our other two buns- a 2 year old meat breed and a 4 year old dwarf- are fine. However, my poor little River is just terribly thin, her spine and hip bones and ribs all sticking out more than what is healthy. She is always ravenous when I feed her, and now she's having her bowl refilled three times daily with timothy pellets, giving extra handfuls of grass, and extra hay. She feels great; bright eyes and clean fur, always her happy, snuggly, proud self, it's just the weight I'm having trouble with.

Should I switch her to a different feed with more fat? I plan on getting a different food bowl that won't have to be refilled as often, so that she just has more to eat, and I've been adding more and more fresh veggies and fruit in, but it's doing little good.

Ideas?