4 Week Old Bunnies

Peanuts' babies are going to be 4 weeks old tomorrow!  They're all getting big and I believe 2 or maybe 3 of the brown bunnies will have a mane on them :)

 

I took a few photo's of each bunny to show you and I checked them and now know which ones are boys and which are girls.

 

The first one is blind in the left eye, but has vision in the right.  This bunny's a girl :)

 

I'm pretty sure she isn't going to have any type of a mane.

 

Then this next one has complete sight!  Not only that, but it's also a girl :)

 

(This one looks like she's going to have a mane!)

 

Then the third bunny also has it's sight, however this one's a boy :)

(He's definitely going to be without a mane)

 

Now for the fourth baby, we've got another girl!

 

 

She definitely appears like she'll end up with a mane :)

(it's really funny, because Peanuts' last 2 litters were practically ALL boys!)

 

And that's it for the brown bunnies.  Then we have the two orangish babies.

 

The first one is going to have no mane, and it's a little girl :)

 

Then last but not least, it the fully blind baby bunnies and it's a boy :)

 

 

So there you go!  I'm not sure if this last baby will have a mane or not...probably not, but I'll just have to wait and see.

 

 

He's so adorable, because he loves to sit in the outside section of his hutch and just hang out in the sunbeams.  I was really excited, because the other day he went out, found the water bowl and got a drink!  I had been really worried about that.  I wasn't sure if he'd be able to find it or not, but he did :)

 

So as you can see, they're all doing really well!

 

 

Now yesterday...I was out holding one of my new lop females, Luna.  Then I proceeded to feed the other bunnies.  I pet Pocahontas and she's normally extremely sweet and easy going.  But yesterday, when she smelt the scent of a strange rabbit, she lunged onto my hand and bit out a chuck of flesh.

 

With natural reflexes, I had my hand out of there as fast as possible.  But she still managed to get a nice strip off the top.  After I closed her cage door, I stared at her a moment to watch her proceed and eat my flesh.   

 

I looked down at my hand, which was dripping blood, and went inside.  Needless to say that completely and totally ruined my day yesterday.   And the spot she got is close to my thumb, so it's a spot that moves a lot.  Keeping bandages on it has been tricky, so currently I have a wrap over top of that, keeping them on.

 

Anyway, that's the latest with the bunnies.  I'm currently thinking about making a "Don't put your fingers in the cage, the bunnies may bite" sign. 

 

Cages and Bunnies!

I got some nicely sized, all wire cages off craigslist along with three new bunnies!

 

This new bunny is a Holland Lop female who's name was actually 'Mud-Bug'.  While it's catchy, I'm definitely going to give her a new name :)

 

Then this little cutie is another Holland Lop female, she's about 3 months old.  She didn't have a name, so I named her Luna :)

 

Then lastly, I got a double maned female Lion Head.  She's really pretty and has a quirky but sweet personality :)  I'm still trying to find the perfect name for her.

(the baby on the right has his blind eye facing the camera.  As you can see, it's all white)

 

Then I took some pictures of Peanuts and her babies :)

 

Peanuts is doing a great job keeping all the babies fed and warm :)

 

 

Then as far as the cages go, I actually got a total of six.  Four smaller ones, and two massive ones.  The two big cages are larger than even my current wire cages which were specially made to be so large!

 

I have Luna and the other new Holland Lop in two of the new cages, then the other two small ones are out there by the sink...I just need to find some space to put them.  The large ones are behind our garage.  They'll come in handy when all my females are having babies because there's plenty of space in these for the babies to run around and grow! :)

Blind Bunnies

Rabbits, especially baby rabbits can easily go blind.  How you ask? Well, around 10 days old, the babies begin opening their eyes up for the first time.  While this is a very good thing, you have to be careful that their eyes do not then close back up.

 

 

This baby bunny is one of Peanuts'.  The eye facing you is perfectly fine and nicely opened.  The other eye on this baby keeps sealing shut and the eyeball is now coated in a thick layer of white film.  This means it's left eye is permanently blind.

 

Every single day, my mother and I open the baby's eye up and warm water, and then apply a drop of medication which will keep the eyelids from swelling up and also hopefully kill off the infection. Yet every day, we go out to see the eye has sealed shut again.

 

The same thing happened with another one of Peanuts' babies.  Except for this baby, both its eyes keep sealing up, and we keep reopening them with warm water, then adding a drop of medication.

 

This baby's eyes do not look as bad as the other baby's eye does, however we believe this one will be completely blind in both eyes. 

 

You can see that the eyelids on this baby are swelled.  It's extremely sad that this happened.  However, it's not something that can be helped.  We're doing all we can for these two babies and hopefully we'll manage to be able to keep their eyes from sealing up permanently.  For now though, we just have to keep patient and help them as best we can.

 

Other than these two with their eyes, the babies are all doing very well.  I've never had an issue with babies and their eyes before, so when Peanuts' has another litter, I'm going to keep close watch and make sure they don't have the same issue also.

My First Rabbit

My first rabbit EVER was Simba, my single maned Lion Head. 

Well, she wasn't 'mine' mine, she was more a family pet.  Some friends of ours had been given Simba by their nephew who couldn't keep her anymore due to moving to college.  So they asked us if we wanted her.

My dad said if one of us could give a biblical answer as to why we should get her within the next 3 seconds, we could get her.  My sister immediately shouted "Love all creatures, big and small."

And THAT is exactly who we came to own a bunny :)  She was very pretty, but she had a nasty temperament.  She would bite you, grunt at you, chase you, etc.  But I really liked her.  I built a run for her which she dug under the fence and would run through the woods. 

One time she was loose in the woods for over 2 weeks!  I had trained her to come when she heard me shake her treat container.  So, that's normally how we could catch her when she escaped. 

 

These photo's of her were taken at least 6 years ago. 

 

We had her hutch sitting underneath a big tree, where she would get lots of shade.  When I built her that run, I fenced around the tree, so she could run around it and eat down all the weeds, which she did and seemed to really enjoy!

 

She lived outside for the last few years we had her.  Before that, she was actually an indoor bunny.  She only became an outdoor rabbit, because we found an old hutch on the side of the road for free and we took it home and fixed it up for her.  We put new wood, wire, and hinges on it.

 

When she was inside, she stayed in many different places.  For a while her cage was in my room, then the living room, then the hallway, then the basement, then my room again, etc.  

 

We would let her out of her cage quite often to run around the house.  Shortly afterwards, she began chewing all the molding.  We read somewhere to put hot-sauce on the wood to keep dissuade her from eating it.  However, she ended up really liking hot-sauce. 

 

Then we tried training her she couldn't eat the molding and/or cabinets.  Every time she would chew on something she wasn't supposed to, we would shoot her with a water gun.  She didn't care one bit. 

 

She knew how to climb upstairs, but not down then.  So we would often find her up in one of the bedrooms.  She soon had herself litter trained....using my bed as her place to 'go'.   To stop her from doing this, we tried putting her cage on my bed, so she would go inside her cage.  That didn't work.

 

We then put an old comforter on top of my current one so if she snuck upstairs, she wouldn't ruin my blankets.  This hardly ever worked as she always managed to sneak up and pee all over my bed, completely soaking it then leaving little pellets all over underneath my bed.  This is why she became a full-time outside rabbit.

After having her for many years, we ended up deciding we wanted to breed rabbits and got another female, who is actually my sweet LE.   They each had their own cage, but were next to each other and soon became friends that we could let out together and they would have fun, running around and digging. 

A few months after getting LE, I guess Simba was pretty old and ended up dying in her cage.  And even though she was really nasty, I really liked her.  After all, she was my first bunny :)  And there you go, that's what started this entire rabbit adventure!

Back Home

Well...this is going to be a fairly long post because I have plenty of photo's for you to see!

 

While in Tennessee, we were driving to this historical location and stopped along the way.

 

 

Before though, we stopped in Gatlinburg for some breakfast :)

 

Anyway, this place we stopped was right before this bridge with all these really cool rocks which we got to climb on.

 

It was really beautiful!

 

And of course, when near water, we all had to do a little rock skipping :)

 

And apparently, lots of people have died in that exact locations because of how strong the water is, they end up getting sucked in and drown.  We were very careful on the smooth rocks.  And when I say we went climbing on rocks...I mean boulders.   They were HUGE!  It was a really neat location.

 

Then as we continued on our way, we road through some really neat tunnels.  (They looked like something you'd see in the Lord of the Rings!)

 

My siblings and myself all had a great time taking different photo's of the scenery and all the historic places.

 

While walking back to our car from this neat old cabin, this deer walked literally 10 feet in front of us across the path, then stopped on the other side and just watched us. :)  It was really cool!

 

The mountains were beautiful!  We got TONS of photo's from all different angles :)

 

At another stop we made, this HUGE buck came running out from the woods and began eating in the nearby field.  It was really fun getting to see him and it was surprising as to how comfortable he was near humans.

 

My sister had fun taking lots of photo's of the icicles :)

 

And then one of the coolest places....Mel's Diner! :)

 

And of course while there my siblings and I ALL ordered the "Beach Boy Burger" :)  And I must say...it was really good!

 

The lastly...my bunnies who stayed here at home.

 

 

As you can see...this is Smokey and not only that, but it's the picture of her that I posted last time.  We actually left TN early, because this HUGE snow storm was coming in and so we got home 2 am Monday morning. 

 

Anyway, Sunday morning my sister (who was watching my bunnies) called to let me know that Smokey had died in the night.  She said she thought she died because it had gotten about 20 degrees below zero that night. 

 

Needless to say...I was very surprised.  But what can you do? Consequently...I'm on the search for another female lop.  I have 2 different lops I'm choosing from.  I should know definitely which one I'm going to get by tomorrow. 

 

So now you know what all's been up.  Tennessee was great.  It's just so sad that Smokey died.  She was a sweet bunny and would have made some cute babies.  Anyway, that's what has been going on and now I'm back home, very happy to see all my other bunnies faired the cold with flying colors.