Don't Judge Me, I'm Crepuscular

The Rescue is open to visitors, by appointment, on Saturday afternoons. In the hot summer months particularly this can pose a unique challenge.

We want our visitors to meet our residents and get to know their personalities - you don't want to choose new additions to your family based solely on looks. (Unless you are the strange visitor from yesterday who I can only presume was just looking for rabbits that went well with her curtains.) You want to see if they react well to your children, that you can cope with their level of energy and inquisitiveness, that they are the right rabbits for the accommodation you have planned for them etc etc. Where this all falls apart is that mid-afternoon, for the majority of bunnies, means one thing - naptime.

"And in this warren we have Hettie and Errol, who as you can see love to run around causing chaos and...oh."

"Zzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Shutter Bun

After 18 months of owning my current camera, I thought it was about time I tried to figure out how to use it. So this week in the garden I've been playing around with adjusting, amount other things, the shutter speed. By putting the camera down on a stable surface and setting a slow shutter speed, it is possible to achieve a sense of motion as moving objects become blurred while stationary ones are in focus.

At some point I might one day become good enough to consider my photographs 'art' and give them fancy titles. For example, this one might be called "Jemima is a fat bunny because..."

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary in Time

Pea, Pod, Cosmos or Goofy enjoying an extra treat

Did you know that one of the things bunnies like to eat the most is fresh herbs? Oh you did? Well, erm, that's OK then. If you didn't, you might want to check out the RWAF list of veggie snacks safe for bunnies.

Herbs are great for bunnies but they have a very strong aroma and taste so consequently some take a while to get used to them. And here's why that's important.

A few weeks ago Jemima had a 'bad day'. I still don't know what triggered it, but she spent the day avoiding me, wouldn't eat her breakfast or any treats/pellets I offered her. This was not like her at all, usually even when she is sick she still eats in horse-like portions. She was lively enough, shot off like a rocket if I went near her (probably knew she was at risk of being carted off to the vets), but clearly something was up and she wanted to be left alone.

As you will most likely know, if a rabbit stops eating it is something to be concerned about. Their guts are in almost continuous motion with their unstoppable mission to turn all grass and hay into very large piles of poo. If the gut stops moving, if they go into GI stasis, there is a chance you won't get it going again and that's the end of that. If you hit 24 hours of no eating/pooing you are definitely in proper emergency territory.

Well whatever caused Jemima's illness, the one thing I could get her to eat during that day was parsley. She'd only pick at it at first, but it was just enough to keep me from going into stress-overdrive until, thankfully, she started to bounce back. By the next day was eating normally again.

My experience is not unique it turned out, as discussing the incident with fellow volunteers we found that a number of our bunnies had found herbs to be the only food they could face in times of sickness.

So here's my point. Those of us that have had bunnies for years have had at least one close call with stasis, where the vet has sent you home with gut-motility medicines and liquid food to syringe feed, where you are desperate for them to eat something. If you take the time to gradually introduce your bunnies to different fresh herbs and find out which ones they really like now, it may give you just the head-start you need when you find yourself in this situation in the future.

Plus of course, your bunnies will love you more for giving them such tasty food!

Take Two

I promised myself I was going to blog more this year about the goings on at the Rescue, but it has not turned out that way. This is largely because the last month or so has been littered with bad days and some sad losses of long time residents, which kind of puts me out of a blogging mood. This weeks stress was poor Dexter - we finally found a perfect home for him and his terribly shy friend Mars, only to discover on his final vet check that he has developed a heart condition and started dropping weight.

Dexter and Mars

We couldn't rehome him of course and his future health is uncertain, but we won't give up on him. We now have him medicated and are trying to get his weight back up. He does appear to be eating reasonably well and didn't say no to a post-breakfast treat of extra tasty herbs this morning!

Which brings me to my next topic. Today was quite chaotic at the Rescue with lots of new volunteers, which gave me the chance to catch up on some photo's for Rabbit Rehome. For anyone who is interested in taking good pictures of bunnies, my usual method is:

• Sit on the ground away from the bunnies, legs straight out in front
• Hold out some tasty fresh herbs or veg
• Let bunnies come to me in their own time.
• Once they have taken food a couple of times, introduce the camera.
• Let them get used to the sounds of the camera before trying to take proper pictures. They will probably want to sniff (and sometimes taste) the camera at this point to see what it is.
• Finally, after all my efforts I usually discover there is really no chance of getting a good picture because I have bunnies clambering all over me looking for snacks and they are far too close and active to get a single shot in focus.

So there you go, that's how I do it (or not). This also explains why the two things that appear most commonly in my library of bunny photo's are my green waterproof trousers and my wellies! Here to demonstrate from today's efforts are Rose and Chablis:

Thanks girls. Now, please, if you could just go and stand looking cute over there! [sigh]

You Are What You Wear

I have a coat and hat next to the back door that I always wear in the winter when I go outside to do anything with my garden bunnies. But then the weather suddenly changes and I nip out for the first time in months without said coat and hat...

"Argh! Something in the matrix has changed!" exclaims Jemima and refuses to come out of the shed for breakfast. ("Is that his going to the vets outfit? I can't remember, it's been a while...")

Or maybe it's just me and my bunnies. All of them. Last year after he went through a patch of being regularly rushed to emergency appointments at the vets with breathing problems, Whisky decided that any time he saw me talking on the phone and looking at him intently he had better go hide somewhere. Similarly he assumes something is amiss if he sees me upstairs with my outdoor shoes on.

I love bunnies. I especially love them after running round the house for 20 minutes in a blind panic because they've disappeared, eventually finding them curled up hiding in a closed drawer that you only looked in out of desperation, before realising they've found a sneaky way into it from the back. Love 'em.

Well anyway, I don't have any pictures for any of that. So here's one of Sushi landing a super-fast, mad binky in the garden on Saturday (complete with a bit of extra Photoshopped background blur to make it look even faster!).

Snow Bound

"This white stuff? Again??"

"Oh well, if we MUST play in it.."

"Weeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"

Hello 2012

Last year was a busy one for the Rescue and 2012 is looking like being no less crazy. So here's a quick look at what's going on and what we have coming up.

Last year Vicki and Colin started the process of turning the Rescue into a fully blown registered charity. The last few months have involved lots of researching and form filling but it looks like their hard work has paid off and we have finally reached the application submission stage. If we are granted full charitable status it will be a big boost for the Rescue as it will open up opportunities to apply for grants, as well as receiving more money from donations through additional tax relief. All in all it should be a good thing for the Rescue, we just have the anxious stage waiting to hear if our application was successful.

Next on the agenda for 2012 is re-applying for our planning permission to be extended so we can remain on our current site. More hard work and form-filling for Colin! Our last application in 2010 was granted for two years and since then our relationship with the local neighbourhood has been mostly positive, so fingers crossed we will be granted at least another two years before we need to re-apply.

It has taken some time, but we are nearing the point where all our rabbit warrens have predator-proof enclosures so our residents can have lots of space to run around in even when there are no volunteers on site to keep an eye on them. This month we used some of the extra money we received in seasonal donations to purchase three more walk-in aviaries. A big thank you to all the generous friends of the Rescue that made this possible and to Paul and his team at Aviary World for all their hard work making and assembling them!

We still have a bit of work to do to make them "dig resistant", but it is all looking good. Our next phase is to re-start the work to move the other warren spaces over to the opposite side creating a path down the centre of the Rescue, thus making cleaning and bunny-viewing more practical. So if anyone out there is good at DIY and/or moving fences and would like to offer their time let us know!

We are always at capacity on site at the Rescue, so to cover emergencies we sometimes utilise space in the houses of the senior team. To put that another way, if you are an experienced rabbit person who volunteers at the rescue every week, there is a good chance that at some point Caroline will call you to ask if some extra bunnies could live in your spare room for a while. Since September we have had an unusually high number of pregnant does and unwanted litters handed in so many of these have gone to live off site until they are ready to be re-homed. As they become more mature, the young ones start to show aggressive or amorous behaviours and need to be separated. Practically this often means they are returned to the Rescue or switched with a younger litter, but this means they are taking up more space. The knock-on effect is that the waiting list for rabbits coming in is now moving slower. It also means more neutering costs which means the Rescue is under more pressure than ever - we are really going to appreciate that extra donation money when the charity status is confirmed!

New young bun Champ

Another positive change for the new year is that we have had a sudden surge of new volunteers. We now have a sizeable Saturday cleaning team of young and enthusiastic people, eager to be put to work. This is a big, big help, especially since us oldies are starting to creak when we have to bend down to clean those bunny bungalows! Thanks team! :-)

As for our existing residents, they are all doing well and I think enjoying the (so far) mild winter! As I wrote in my previous post, some of the elderly and vulnerable buns went to volunteers for the colder winter months to live as house rabbits, where they are all having fun causing all sorts of chaos. One of those pairs was Ragdoll and Timmy, who went to stay with Nicola and Gareth, as Timmy's health has been going downhill for some time. Very sadly, Timmy passed away on Thursday morning. He was another very precious bun and we will all miss him terribly.

I have no idea what has prompted it, but I swear our wilder residents are braver in 2012. Whereas previously some would exercise a degree of caution around me when at breakfast time, the quieter ones now take food out of my hand and the bolder ones will happily barge me out the way to help themselves from the food bucket before I have a chance to put anything in their bowls!

Pea. Or Pod. Or maybe Cosmos. Possibly Goofy

So here we go, another new year of exciting possibilities at the Rescue. I would just like to end this by saying thank you to everyone for your support in 2011 and we look forward to seeing you all in 2012!