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!

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.

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.

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!

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

In search of playpen

We use our handmade playpen made from wire shelf system.
We connected the wire panels of 14" (which was on sale at Walmart like $15) with book binder coils ($.15 each from school supply store).
We even painted the wire panels with bamboo color so that it looks nice!

Our late rabbit liked it except he moved it with his mouth and escaped.
We had to tie the ends to the cage so that it will not move open.

Anyways, to our surprise, this baby rabbit also do the same thing.
She tries to move the panel by her mouse exactly the same way!

But there is a more serious problem.
Since she has such a small head she can stick her head through the wire opening completely!
It freaks me out since she may be stuck in there, and panic and choke someday.

We started to look for a better playpen with smaller openings. I found a couple of them they all not in desirable size (or color).


I found this one, which is 29 inch tall and it was too tall. I want to touch her while sitting down outside of the cage.

The ideal size is around 18" high and there is one in the Petco but it has still wide openings and too heavy to move it around.




"I want to get out!!"