Tag: ears

Meet Timmy

So we weren’t sure if we were going to get another rabbit after losing Banacek – surely it’d have to be a pretty special new bunny.

Two weeks ago I had to go to Pets At Home to get Poppy a corner litter tray because she’s destroying her hutch by insisting on using it as a toilet (all our other outdoor buns do it in their rabbit runs). That’s when I first saw Timmy.  Soft, snuggly, adorable, special Timmy.

He was a beautiful orange colour with Banacek’s eyes and ears, and cute white patches on his front paws that made him look like he was wearing socks. I thought nothing of it – Cleo was still listless and mostly sitting around the house at this point. She was in no way ready for a new friend and neither were we – it was only about a week after Banacek had died. I took a good look at Timmy and noticed he had done some of those yellow gloopy poos that Banacek had done just before he died. I informed the staff and they said they’d keep an eye on him. I went home disappointed because we really shouldn’t get another rabbit right now, especially one with potential digestive problems.

Because of Poppy’s little “problem” I had to do a full cleanout of her hutch on Monday, and I used up all the hay and most of the sawdust, but I still needed more hay to make her upstairs sleeping area warm and cosy (and edible), so at 6pm I found myself driving over to Pets at Home again to get a bag of hay.

Timmy was still there, in all his beautiful snuggly orangeness, looking very interested in his hay. I had to collect my husband from work immediately after getting the hay, and I told him that the cute bunny was still there who I’d seen before.

The next morning, I tried to put him out of my mind, but when I came back from dropping my Dearest off at work, I then had to put up with Cleo acting very out of sorts – she was running laps around the living room and leaping in the air and pulling my blankie off me (I was cold) and trying to climb on the sofa. These are things she doesn’t usually do. She was trying to get me to play with her more than normal. So I tried, but I couldn’t follow her through the tunnels and hiding places we’ve made for the rabbits to play in. I scooped her up and carted her off to Pets At Home to see if there was an appropriately adorable bunny up for adoption.

I was surprised to see that Timmy, with his one up ear and one down ear, was still there.
We introduced them and he really liked her but she was scared and running away, so I decided to bring her back later in the afternoon. This time, Timmy went straight to her, and he snuggled up with her in her pet carrier.

They didn’t separate the whole time they were around each other.
When I took Cleo back to the car (so I could come back and complete the adoption paperwork and buy the sawdust I forgot to get earlier in the week), Timmy looked heartbroken and started attacking the door to his enclosure to get back out again. I came back from the car, and another person was there trying to adopt Timmy. I was all like “oh hell no he’s mine bitch.”  Actually, I just said “I’m sorry, but he’s coming home with us, he’s just been introduced to my other rabbit and they loved each other.” but she acted like I’d slapped her with the rabbit.  If she’d got there first I would have just been happy for Timmy that he was finally getting adopted – that’s not an empty promise, it’s happened before with 2 different bunnies that I intended to adopt.  Sometimes it’s not meant to be, but this time, it was.

We brought him home and they’d told us to just put him in his hutch the first night, but he looked so lonely and vulnerable that I put Cleo in with him. She disagreed with being in a hutch (she hasn’t been in a hutch in over 2 years) so they both ended up hanging out in the living room until bedtime.

At night we put him back to bed in his hutch and in the morning, I put him and Cleo into the rabbit carrier and took him to the vets for his check up and vaccinations. Apart from when we’re in bed (when we have to put him back in his hutch until we’re sure he won’t fight Cleo) they’ve been inseparable ever since.

Here’s some photos:

timmy bunny 1

timmy cleo ball

timmy runs fast.png

Timmy flopsy

Timmy Cleo snuggle

So far, his interests seem to include running around REALLY FAST, pooing everywhere (they’re the size of freaking marbles WTF?!?!) and humping Cleo.  So I put this bunny romper suit on him so he definitely couldn’t get Cleo pregnant, because he can’t be neutered for a couple more months (he’s 4 months old and the romper suit is to stop them chewing at stitches but it covers the right places):

Timmy in romper suit

He doesn’t like the romper suit, and he runs around less while he’s wearing it.

I’m in the middle of editing some videos of him and I’ll upload them all to Youtube as soon as they’re ready.

Cleo is very happy and the house doesn’t feel empty any more.  Now he’s just got to learn to take the stairs – the first couple of times he tumbled back down them again, but I was there to catch him, and I’ll always be there to catch him, until he learns to go up and down the stairs on his own.

welcome Timmy

 

Keep Your Rabbit Cool In A Heatwave

Keeping rabbits cool in summer can be daunting.  This has been the hottest week of the year in the UK, and with temperatures pretty much soaring worldwide in the Northern Hemisphere (sorry, Oz), it’s important to keep bunnies safe from sun and heatstroke too!

rabbits die in hot hutches keep bunny cool

We all know that dogs die in hot cars, but rabbits regularly die in hot hutches as well, especially young rabbits (less than a year old). Lack of ventilation, hutches placed in direct sunlight, and the ammonia from a hutch that hasn’t been cleaned in a while all take their toll on rabbits. I’m not being OTT here, these are all things I’ve learned from having tons of buns for years. Here’s how to keep bunnies cool and safe and happy and snuggled in all this hot weather we’ve been having:

Don’t:
Leave rabbits in a hutch on hot days. They need to be able to move around and find shade (or a cool breeze) and additionally, they panic if they feel trapped, which will only make them hotter.

Assume their water bottles are sufficient. Rabbits have been not drowning in puddles for thousands of years, and a bowl of water that they can put their face in to cool down will really help them out. Be aware that they might knock it over, and refill as needed.

Put sunblock or other human sun protection products on rabbits:  It sounds good in theory, but please never do this.  Rabbits will lick it off and ingest it, and sunscreen’s not good for them, and it won’t reach their skin in any case.

Leave hutches in direct sunlight. Even when the rabbits aren’t in them, they will get hot and cause the ammonia from their urine to degrade. This can cause a potentially toxic vapour that can suffocate rabbits when you put them to bed.

Forget to clean the hutches out at least once a week in summer. The temperature and the amount of insects around means that it’s easy for a hutch to acquire maggots, which will lead to bunny fly strike, a deadly disease.

Ignore warning signs: If your bunny is visibly too hot, not really moving much, breathing heavily, and clearly uncomfortable, you need to take action (see how below).

Never, ever, ever touch a nest with newborns (younger than 8 weeks) baby rabbit kittens in it:  Even to move them somewhere cooler.  If the mother smells the babies have been interfered with by anyone who isn’t herself, she will reject them and they will die (yes, you can try to hand rear them, no, it often doesn’t work).  The mother will move them if she thinks they’ll have a better chance of survival, and she comes from a long line of rabbits who didn’t fail to care for their young (or she wouldn’t be alive herself), trust her to know what’s best for her babies, unless she’s got brain damage.  Rabbits have very good mothering instincts that are better than those of most human mothers.  Additionally, if you go near the nest while she’s around, she will attack you very viciously.  Put an ice block or a frozen bottle of water next to the nest, but not in it, and let the mother move it herself.  The only exception to this is if one of the babies needs a vet.

Do:
Get them a good sized enclosed rabbit run and put them out all day in hot weather (check they can’t dig out, or make sure your garden fence/wall will stop escapes if they do, if you’re at work all day). Leave the run in the shade and remember the shade changes direction as the sun changes position in the sky. An old doormat or cardboard box over one corner of the run will provide shade.  Don’t forget to give them water in the rabbit run!

Freeze some ice blocks for them and put these in the rabbit run so they have something cold to lie next to if they need it.

You could also put bricks in the freezer (if you remember from my article on keeping bunnies warm I mentioned putting a brick in the oven then put it in the rabbit hutch at night) and put these out in the hutch to cool the air in the hutch.

Get them a water bowl as well as their bottle (or a second water bowl) so that they always have some water, and check it every few hours if it’s a really hot day. Water is the most important thing for keeping bunnies alive in hot weather. If you do nothing else from my article, do this.

Keep topping their water up.  Water water water water water.  That’s what rabbits need in hot weather.

If bunny gets too hot: Emergency bunny first aid for heatstroke:
If your bunny is visibly uncomfortable from the heat, get a jug or bucket of water and get the bunny wet. Avoid the face and ears, you just want to get their body wet to increase heat loss. If the bunny doesn’t jump up and try to run away (they really don’t like getting wet), check the temperature of their ears.

If the bunny’s ears are hot and the bunny is not moving much, breathing heavily (or not breathing), and generally unresponsive, they probably have heat stroke. It is preceded by heat exhaustion, which stops them raising the alarm about their state (this is true of humans too, although in people, the face tends to go red and they can even stop sweating).  This is more deadly to small animals than it is to humans (and it’s pretty dangerous to humans). At this point, you need to make an emergency appointment with the vet and get your bunny the care he needs to survive.

Personally, I wouldn’t waste any time, and I’d get a sick bunny to the vet (any vet) as soon as possible because they are stuck with a fur coat and feel the temperature a lot more than we do, they don’t have a very good cooling system and they’re not designed to be above ground trapped in a hot environment in summer weather, usually they’d be in their underground burrow at this time of day in the summer, chilling out with their friends.  We have, over centuries, forced them to live in our environment for our own entertainment, the least we can do is try to make it comfortable for them.

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