Weight For It...

Texas went back to the Rescue on Tuesday night, where I am pretty confident she will find a new home very quickly.  Unfortunately one of her babies seems to have digestive issues, so she was packed off to the Rescue too with one of her sisters for company. She has some odd shaped poo and extra caecal mucus, so she saw the vet and is now being treated and monitored at the Rescue. I was very sad to have to split them up and have those three leave me, but on the other hand, it was very difficult trying to distinguish and monitor 7 very similar looking babies! The remaining 5 are likely to now get better monitoring and even more attention!

Their new excitement for this week was being weighed for the first time (by me anyway).

Now I cannot stress enough how valuable the regular weighing of bunnies can be.  Weight loss is so often one of the first indicators of sickness, which means that knowing your bunnies' healthy weights and regularly monitoring it can literally be a life-saver.  Oh - it also tells you when you might be over-doing the treats!  Tubby bunnies come with their own health problems too.

It is very quick and simple to do. I use baby scales for adults, kitchen scales for the tiny ones, and add a non-slip mat to reduce their stress. If you can't stretch to those (baby scales seem particularly expensive for what they are), luggage scales and a canvas shopping bag are another option. With vulnerable bunnies I try to weigh them weekly, sick bunnies daily, with healthy bunnies I tend to do it every 3-6 weeks.  Once it becomes part of the health check routine, bunnies become used to it and as long as you handle them confidently and calmly they soon accept it. A small treat after to reward their good behaviour (and buy their forgiveness) helps too!

Initially though, bunnies reactions to health-check-and-weight day can be a little...intense...

"Don't.  Even.  Think-about-it."

Or not.

"Hey, what's happenin', dude? Did I get a good score?"

Sweet Joseph

More sadness yesterday as we had to say goodbye to one of our super-special long term residents, Joseph.

After his partner Athena died, Joseph moved in with what became Caroline's bedroom super-group.  He was a very friendly and easy going rabbit, bonding easily with the elderly, frail and special needs rabbits that passed through the group over the last few years.  He suffered a number of health problems, one of the most serious of which being severe head tilt in his last year or so, but it rarely slowed him down and he always loved life (and carrot/pellet puree!).  But this week, at 9 years old, he lost the use of his legs and it was finally time to say goodbye.

I don't have many recent photo's of him because he lived away from the Rescue, but here below is one I did manage to capture during a magazine photoshoot of Mary and her babies last year, plus some of the joyful ones from his younger days lounging around the Rescue.

And then there were four

Hi All. Gary and Whisky's intehweb connection is down this evening so I have been hurriedly trying to see what furry faces I can find for you to enjoy tomorrow morning. Given that Clarence and Cora are likely to soon become permanent members of my furry family, it seems appropriate to mark the occasion with a pic of them doing one of their favourite things. Sitting.

"So we're staying here forever? Might as well get comfy then."

Unusually Scully

Owing to a slight technical fault, in that I planned to do something last night and then knocked a large glass of water all over my desk and gave up and went to bed instead, there was no post ready for this morning.  Sorry about that - if you are anything like me then I know some of you will like to start your day catching up with the bunnies of the blog-o-verse, it can be quite disappointing when those adorable little faces aren't there to stare back at you over your cereal/newspaper/first-drink-of-the-day when you fire up the morning intehwebs.

It turns out I am not inspired enough to be able to interpret bunny hilarity at 8am, but that's OK, because instead I can share this with you.

Mulder and Scully are quite nervous bunnies when it comes to people.  Consequently, the best pictures I can usually get of them are during breakfast and even then they usually look grumpy about having the camera pointed at them.  So Saturday I was pleasantly surprised (i.e. lucky) to capture this great natural looking pic of Scully, momentarily distracted by what Mulder was doing off camera.

From now on: MUGS of water (harder to knock over) only...

Archi-Type Nap

Caroline has been having another go at trying to convince Archimedes that having a girlfriend might be something he'd enjoy.  I am looking forward to the latest update on how that's going - while I was there he showed little interest in his date (well, he did chase her off a couple of times) and was far more concerned about bugging the volunteers for attention.  This was, of course, when he wasn't engaged in his other favourite pursuit - taking naps anywhere he happens to be when he feels a yawn coming on.

The Helicopter Nap

The "I am a piece of wood" Nap

The "I heard you coming, just don't block my rays" Nap

Left On The Shelf

Back in the days when I had a pair of outdoor bunnies, one (Santa/Elvis) regular and one (Jemima) with a mouth like a vacuum cleaner, I trained them to eat separately. One would stay in their house and wait for their food to be put in while the other would jump out and race over to where their food had been placed outside. This meant they could have different diets and the regular bunny wouldn't have to go hungry when, one mouthful in, piggy-bun had eaten everything.

Training them this way and maintaining the separation was always straight forward. If the door was open, say because I was changing a litter tray or water bowl, and one of them finished their food, you only need to worry about that one big target. If they tried to make a move towards the other, often a quick hand in front of the face to stop them in their tracks followed by making a bit of a fuss of them was all it needed to distract them until the other was done.

As you can imagine, trying to do the same with seven baby bunnies and their mum is not so simple. It's like trying to hold back water by standing in front of it with your hand raised - "No!" you exclaim, while most of it flows around you and does as it pleases behind your back.

So faced with trying to give Texas a tasty veggie breakfast while the kids get their healthy-digestion-encouraging pellet mix, I had to get just a little more creative. My solution? I have now trained Texas to jump out and run round to the shelves where I store the hay then jump up to her awaiting bowl, while I place the other bowl with the babies' food in their house. Sure, a couple invariably leap out with mum for a lap of the shed before returning for their snacks, but so far none has noticed the tasty delights located a foot above their little heads!

Not only has this been a success in keeping their diets separate, but Texas really seems to enjoy getting a break from her little ones. Snuggly as they all still are together, she definitely seems ready to let them go and I think she is looking forward to returning to the Rescue next week to start looking for a husbun.

I quite enjoy solving these extra challenges that come with living with fluffy family members, the only downside is that once you've established a funny little routine like this with foster bunnies it makes you miss them all the more when they move on.

[..chompchompchomp..]

"Finally! I can eat my snacks in peace! Now if you could just sort me a private bedroom with a free mini-bar I'll be sorted."

Binky Day 2013

Does anyone know what happened to Binky Day this year?  It was 1st June last year and I thought it was intended to be an annual thing but I've not seen much about it.

As you may remember, Whisky was one of the Official Binky Bunnies for the event last year and his picture was used in the RWAF press release.  The picture I took for them was produced on demand as he was predictably crazy in the garden last summer and it was easy to capture.  Not so this year as these days with the longer grass he's too busy nomming it to leap about!

Well anyway, since we intend to celebrate Binky Day every year, we knocked up this effort from one of the other pictures from last time that we didn't use.

Happy Binky Day!