Jumping moment!

Today's weight: 1.80



She can jump so high! It's hard to take picture of her jumping but I finally caught a moment.








Here is picture of her in a tissue box!

Fluffy

Today's weight: 1.77

Poochie's weight gain is slow but her fur is getting longer fast.
White undercoat is developing and she looks less black and more gray now.
I have to groom her so that she would not swallow too much hair. I use the cat groomer called "Zoom Groom" (rubber) and regular rabbit brush.
She is not shedding a lot so far. She does not like to be groomed and trying to run away all the time!

Happy one month anniversary!

Hey, I am hanging out!















I am eating Timothy hay!







It's been one month since we welcomed Poochie to our home.

We got a great news today. The result of fecal check comes back and she does not have Eimeria (Coccidia) anymore.

It is the result of our hard work: giving medicine every day, clean up feces, disinfect area with ammonia, and wash litter box with hot water every day.

Us and Poochie accomplished a lot this one month.

• Beat two diseases (lice and Eimeria)
• Trained litter box almost perfectly
• We become really good friends!

Snacks

Yummy!





























No, I am not Poodle!









Today's weight: 1.71


Poochie likes these snacks:
Banana
Cabbage
Quaker Oats
Dried Papaya

Poochie does not like:
Carrots
Cilantro stem

I don't have a chance to give other vegetables yet but I'll slowly find out.

Playful rabbit

Mmmm... feels good!













I love this tunnel!

















Munching hay in the tissue paper box


















Is there anything for me?


















Gimme!!!









Today's weight: 1.70

Her weight is not increasing for several days, and it worries me .
I got her local meadow hays (only 2.99 and very fresh!) the other day, but it seems like she likes timothy hay better.
It's good thing considering timothy hay is more ideal for rabbit.

Yesterday, the vet checked Poochie again and confirmed lice are gone!
But she is scratching herself often, so we keep watching her.

Today, she was very playful. When she saw me calling her, she jumped out from the cage and
climb up my knee and gave me kisses.

I have a tunnel made from IKEA plastic bag storage ($1). She enjoys it.
I took a lots of picture but it's hard to take good picture when Poochie is moving around.
Her eyes are really red in flash or even daylight. I have to Photoshop it using a red eye reduction tool but sometimes it does not work since her eyes are even yellow sometimes!

Toys

Today's weight: 1.69

Like human baby, rabbits likes and needs toys.
You can buy all kinds of toys at pet store or online, but it costs a lots and bunnies may not be interested no matter what it looks good to us.

So, I try to make healthy and affordable toy.
The first one is toilet paper core stuffed with hays. This is recommended by many rabbit owners.
Poochie likes to nibble hay from here when she is too lazy to eat from hay stack on wall.


I also gave this vine wreath bought at Dollar Tree. She likes this too at first, but she get bored quickly.

Since Poochie is not crazy about hay, I wanted try new and different hays.
So, I got new hay from a local store.
The store sells meadow hays from local farm in addition to Sweat Meadow brand hays and it smells good and very affordable.
Poochie seemed liking it at first but after while, but after 30 min, she was not really interested so much.
so, I wove hay to make something interesting, ended up wreath like the picture.
But Poochie liked it. I moved the wire hook near the litter box so that she can munch while she is in the box.





Glooming her feet.















She is trying to get out from cage!
As you can see, she is skinny when she is stretch out.

Hanging out

Today's weight: 1.7 lb

She likes to jump around in the playpen we setup outside the cage.


But sometimes she just wants to chill in her cage and never comes out.
This is a disposable bed I made from shoe box.
It's getting cold, so Poochie likes to hang out inside and chew it.

What she likes

Today's weight: 1.62

She like to be petted.
She sniffed my hand and then lower her head under my fingers.
It's very funny.
Although she does 30% of poohs outside the litter pan, she is getting very good at peeing in the litter box.
But sometimes, she is temperamental and pees outside the litter pan.
She did it about 4 times today. She is up to something...
I have to remove the soiled newspaper and wipe with vinegar.

Memory of Buddy

It's been 1 month since our late rabbit, Buddy died in neuter surgery.

He was just 5 month old.

We bought him from local pet store and he was the first real pet for me.
We did not know anything about house rabbit, we just thought it makes good pet for us living an apartment.

In the pet store we visited, among several kind of rabbits, there are this strange fur-ball looking, hairy small animals curled up in the cage. The sign reads "LIONHEAD RABBIT, $49"
However, since I wanted a rabbit with floppy ears , so we left the store to look other store.
After we visited other stores, we could not find exactly what we looking for so we decided to take a look at the fur ball again.
This time, there is only one lionhead rabbit left.
Someone bought it in 1 day.
The leftover lionhead was not curled up this time. He was moving around and it was cute.
So we asked store staff to show me the rabbit.

He was afraid, this picture is taken just a couple of days after we got him.

He was a little bit wet nose, but I did not know it's not good thing.
Also, I see his ear has a little scratch.
We asked them how old the rabbit is, and she said about 8 weeks.
They did not give us his birthday.

I really wanted to get a rabbit that day, so we took him home.






He was a timid bun!











But curious, he likes to stand a lot.












It took a couple of weeks for him to warm up to us.


His hair is very long and soft.
He was really special bun for us.










He was so cute!














About 5 months old. He loves climb up top of his tunnel.

Today's weight: 1.48

Pellets

Today's weight: 1.46

I have been giving her mixed pellets of what breeder gave us and the Sweet Meadows Blend because I already bough it for Buddy and had some left over.
Sweet Meadow was recommended by vet and the pet store where we got Buddy.
I use their timothy hay also.
So far, Poochie is eating mixed pellets fine, but I wanted to try different one.
After much research, I bought Oxbow Bunny Basics 15/23.

It has:Crude Protein min 15.00%Crude Fiber max 25.00%Calcium max 1.00%

Sweet Meadow Blend:Crude Protein min 15.00%Crude Fiber max 20.00%Calcium max 1.15%
The Sweet Meadow Blend is Timothy and Alfalfa mixed but Bunny Basics has Alfalfa only.
I prefer to go with Timothy mix since Alfalfa has usually more calcium and Poochie makes white clouded pee and that means too much calcium. But as far as I see the fact, the Bunny Basics 15/23 seems better because it has more fiber in it.
Now, I gave Poochie a little bit of Bunny Basic, and she was OK with it.

The problem is that I have to drive a bit to get Oxbow product. It is same for Sweet Meadow products, but I have to go different stores now. To my surprise, pricing of pellets and hay varies depends on the store.
I found a store sell it for 8 dollars and the other sells 4.99.

The closest store is Petco but everything is so expensive over there.
In adidtion, it does not carry Oxbow nor Sweet Meadow.

Jump

Today's weight: 1.45

She is just looking down from the table. She knows it's too high to jump.

When I left top door of the cage open, she jumped on the edge on top of the cage a couple of times. She stuck there one time.
I was afraid she might get hurt.






The cage is made by Marchioro and it's convenient that it has a large door on top.
But it's not so high so rabbits can jump up on top of it and get their leg caught. Also, the front door also opens top to down. It works like ladder but I put wire so that her leg don't get caught (it happen once).

Our late rabbit, Buddy, also get stuck his leg on top and struggled once. Fortunately, he did not break his leg but his leg looked like hurting a little while.

Lost weight?

Today's weight: 1.40

Poochie lost her weight slightly. I am worried because she should be gaining weight since she is a young rabbit and considering she has parasites.

She is eating fine but a little less hay.
I gave her a little bit of oats and tiny amount of banana. She likes them.
We don't have any good vegetables now, I tried to give her carrot but she did not like it at all.
She ate a little bit of Napa cabbage too and she was OK with it.

This morning, I brought her feces to vet but I was told that it can be done next week when we visit to checkup on her skin. They did not take the poops I collected... When I asked last time, they said that I can bring feces in 10 days..

Litter training

Today's weight: 1.42

We have been working hard to teach Poochie where to pee and poo.
I already have several kinds of litter boxes that we bought when we are training Buddy.

History of litter pans:
At first, We were using the regular Pet International Corner pan found at pet store.
Buddy is very good at litter training, but his butt is often stick out from the litter pan and we had to clean up his mistake all the time. It was just too shallow in front.
I bought the Marchioro 2c Nora Litter Pan online, since this has a plastic lid so that the rabbit can not stick his butt out.
The Nora litter pan has an attached roof enclosure, I thought he can not stick his butt out.
Unfortunately, the enclosure was too narrow and low that he could not even enter the litter pan.

But we did not want to give up. We cut out the plastic enclosure using Dremel to make the opening bigger. But it was still too small for Buddy and he did not want to go inside by himself, he was already 2lb 9oz.
So, we gave up and switched to a very large rectangular dish pan, which I found at Dollar Tree.
and, we created wire floor for litter pan using the green garden wire mesh.
It worked so well.

Now going back to Poochie,
When she come from the breeder, she pee and pooped everywhere. She liked corners, but it did not matter.
I found one corner she uses often and place a litter box.
We started with the the Marchioro 2c Nora Litter Pan without wire floor.
We put soiled newspaper in there and litter (Carefresh).
She likes to go inside and relax... and she peed the other corner.
We switched the corner couple of times, but she avoided the litter pan.
So, we put another small pan (found at dollar store) to the other corner, and finally she start using the small pan.


Two litter pans!



The bad news is, she uses both pans so we have two pans to clean up.
Also, the wall of the small pan is too low that it can not retain pee when Poochie goes against the wall
After a week, we replaced the small pan with a metal utensil holder which we used for putting frozen bottle.
Buddy used to lay by with this on hot days.

Now, Poochie does pee almost all time in the corner litter pan.
She is still leaving some poops outside but I think she can not help it.

Her favorite toy

Today's weight: 1.34
Somehow she lost weight..
It may fluctuate but hopefully she will eat more!

Toys can be very expensive since rabbits destroy or soil it soon. At worst, your rabbit never touch the toy or not interested in the toy after sniffed one time.

In addition to that for the sanitary reason to fight parasites, I create disposable toys.
In the pictures, she plays with shoe box that I cut out a entrance for her. She do digging while she is inside the box so that the cardbox moves as she move around.

I also give her a toilet paper/kitchen paper core stuffed with hays. She loves it too!

Lap bun

She likes to climb up and jump down from my lap when I was sitting in a pen. It's like my lap is her favorite toy to play! She does not forget to lick my arms or foot during this play.

We are still fighting with parasites. Today, she was not happy when I approached her cage, she knew it's time for medicine. She thumped and did not come out!


According to wikipedia,
"Eimeria is a genus of Apicomplexan parasites that includes various species responsible for the poultry disease coccidiosis."

There are not too much information about Eimeria in house rabbit websites, but we can find a lots about coccidia. To kill oocysts, ammonia is the best. So I bought ammonia (which is hard to find) at the Wal-mart, and toss the carpet rug in the play area and installed vinyl (from Home Depot) so that we can wipe the playarea and cage.
Poochie is having hard time to run around on the vinyl since it's very slippery for her.
We put newspapers for her until she get used to it.

Today's weight: 1.36

Mended fence

I did extensive search for a perfect playpen:

- Midwest Exercise pen 24" high - Opening space is too big, around 40 dollar + shipping or local store $64

- All Living Things® Small Animal Playpen, 24" high, $41 but shipping is too expensive

-Marshall Pet Small Animal Pen "29 high, it's too high.... $69 at local store or $40 + shipping.
So, I decided to add something to the current playpen to prevent Poochie from sticking her face out.
I made trip to the Dollar Tree, and bought 5 sets of wire cooling rack. Total: $5

Then, I made rings from #18 nickel wire using a jewelry plyer to attach them to the pen.

It was great success since it does not look bad and the pen can be still foldaway.

Today's weight: 1.29

Pedigreed rabbit

Today's weight 1 lb 2.6 oz

It seems like she started gaining wait more faster. She gained 1 oz today.
The parasite in her intestine may have been preventing her to gain weight fast.
I think she is too small for 2 month old.
She looks funny almost like poodle when she is laying down stretching out.
I can see she is still skinny but her hair getting fluffy.
She has a lots of hair on her head and hindquarter.
This is typical for a double mane lionhead rabbit.
She is a pedigreed rabbit anyways!
The paper that breeder gave us includes her father, mother, grandparents, grand-grand parents, and grand-grand-grand parents.

She look like poodle!

Wrapped rabbit

It seems that the lice medicine is finally working. She is less scathing her head and body with her feet and not shaking body too much.
She hated medicine though, but she is a good girl today.
I wrap Poochie with towel like this picture while holding her and she is more calm.

She started eating more hay and pellets also. I hope she will get bigger.
But I worry that her pee has a lots of white residue which is calcium. I am giving her only timothy hay and pellets, sometime a small piece of fruits and vegetable. The pellets contains some Alphalpha, which may contain more calcium. I am considering to switch to Timothy pellets, but she is still very young...

Today's' weight : 1lb 1.6 oz




She is such a good girl!