I was about five or six years old when I had my first pet rabbit. There are a lot of myths about rabbits and I thought I’d include a few below.
Myths about rabbits
Rabbits love carrots and should eat them daily. All the rabbits I had did love carrots, but this should only be given as an occasional treat. Carrots are high in sugar.
Rabbits should be kept outside. Excessive heat or cold could harm or kill a rabbit that is not properly housed. If you keep your rabbit as a pet, please keep them inside.
Rabbits can be kept in basement or garage. If either is an area where you rarely frequent why in the world would you keep your rabbit there? Rabbits are social animals and should be considered part of the family. We keep our rabbits inside the house. Place them in areas where you frequent. Gracie is in my room, Oreo is in my daughter’s room. If you can’t do that, why in the world do you want a rabbit?
Rabbits only have to be fed pellets. Wrong, the bulk of the rabbits diet should be hay, greens, and have pellets available for snacking. I’d say about 90% of the food our rabbits eat is hay. We give our bunnies a variety of greens daily.
Rabbits can be fed Iceburg lettuce. Iceburg lettuce has zero nutritional value. Better choices would be collard greens, dandelion greens, mustard greens, kale, celery, swiss chard, radish tops, etc.,
Rabbits have poor eyesight. Rabbits are much better at seeing things far away, not so good at seeing things directly in front of them due to their eye placement. However their ears and nose are extremely helpful in alerting them to what they’re having trouble seeing.
Rabbits don’t make any noises. Rabbits can make a variety of noises. Our rabbits hum when they’re around us. That’s a sign of affection. Rabbits can also give a grunt/growl when they’re annoyed, and they also can scream. Gracie screamed when Oreo nicked her through the cage. In all my years of having rabbits, that was the first time I’ve ever heard a rabbit scream and I hope I never hear that sound again.
Rabbits aren’t that affectionate. Rabbits can be extremely affectionate animals. Oreo and Gracie love to be petted and always come up to us to say hello. Sometimes they flop down beside us when they’re relaxing. Oreo, our lionhead rabbit, loves to lick. Sometimes she does this if I stop petting her it’s her way of telling me please don’t stop. Other times she licks because I think she’s ‘grooming’ me. 🙂 Gracie regularly grooms Angel, our teddy bear guinea pig. Angel grooms her too.
Gracie, our lionhead rabbit, is recovering nicely from her laceration surgery. Many thanks to the amazing work done by her veterinary surgeon (and the rest of the wonderful staff) at Chadwell’s Animal Hospital. I’ve been going to them for years.
While there are animal hospitals that are much closer, I prefer Chadwell’s Animal Hospital because of their knowledge about common household pets and exotic animals. They also do a lot of work with rescue animals. I’m huge fan of those who work with animals that some people heartlessly throw away.
Gracie still isn’t thrilled by the medication she has to take. There are four different medications in all. Three have to be taken daily and the fourth, is a penicillin needle injection, that has to be given (under the skin) twice weekly. It’s been a while since I’ve given an animal a needle, so I did a search until I found a tutorial on how to give needle injections to rabbits. It’s time that I brush up on my needle injection skills.
Early this morning, I’d emailed ‘A’ (the wonderful angel that rescued Gracie), and mentioned that Gracie dislikes her medication. It’s kind of cute to watch her reaction. After receiving the meds, she does a tail flick, and kicks her back legs quite forcefully off the floor. She then speeds madly about the room. Upon her return she either licks my hand or bumps her nose on a part of my body. It’s a cute bunny nudge. Perhaps she’s saying, I’m not thrilled by the meds, but I love you anyway? 😉
Gracie checking me out as I take her picture
The stitches, and the meds, are the only indication that something has happened to her. We’ve only had her for four days, but we love this little girl!
It’s so nice to see her being her normal sweet self. Doing normal bunny things, such as…
Gracie inspecting the cover and showing her cute bunny lips
checking out everything…
I caught Gracie getting ready to run around the room. She’s fast!
Exploring, as you can see she had lots of fun checking out the room.
And she kept a close eye on me during the process, stopping by regularly to give me soft bunny kisses and waiting for pats and hugs.
Adorable bunny grooming
I captured her grooming herself, I think rabbit grooming is so adorable.
Oreo, our one year old rescue bunny, is our shy sweet girl. The good news is, she’s gradually losing her fear and actually lets me hold her for long periods of time before wanting to get down and explore! I consider that progress.
I added one boneless chicken breast to the pressure cooker with three garlic cloves and about one inch of ginger. My daughter prepared her ramen noodles. After the noodles were done I showed her how to rinse them off thoroughly and I told her to toss the included flavoring packet.
Daughter: “Really mom, why?”
Me: “Oh we can make much better seasonings then the pre-packaged junk that accompanies those noodles. Let me show you…”
Into my 3 cup granite mortar and pestle, I added a few grains of sea salt, whole cumin, peppercorns, and cardamom I proceeded to grind them all together. I must admit, I really love the simple pleasure of manually grinding things together.
The mortar and pestle have been around for thousands of years. My daughter got caught up with my obvious enjoyment of the process and asked if she could try grinding manually. I her try it out, she’s hooked too. In no time, everything was ground to a fine powder. Which worked our nicely since the ramen noodles and chicken breast were finished cooking.
The boneless chicken breast was extremely tender and took about ten minutes to prepare in the pressure cooker.
Chicken noodle soup
Since my daughter just wanted chicken, noodles and spice blend I didn’t add any vegetables. She eats plenty of vegetables and fruit throughout the day, so one meal without isn’t an issue. My daughter added the chicken breast with the noodles and spices, mixed and promptly ate everything. It was a one bowl meal, made specifically for her and there were no leftovers. She did tell me that our season blend tasted much better than the packet that was included with the noodles.
I really enjoy preparing meals for those I love. I’m sure my daughter will have many fond memories of her mom taking time to make meals extra special.
Earlier today, I stumbled upon a great video on rabbit bonding. I included it as a ‘resource’ with my last post about Gracie and Oreo’s bunny bonding gone bad. Because I think it’s so good, I thought it deserved its own post.
This post, is mainly a placeholder for myself, but it’s such a great reference that I hope if someone stumbles upon my site (while searching for information on the correct way to bond bunnies) they will benefit from it also.
In addition to the above video, I noticed that the Binky Bunny website had an excellent forum on bonding bunnies. Over the past few weeks, I’ve casually browsed that website but today was the first time I noticed a forum about rabbit bonding. Searching the bonding forum was refreshing since I found a lot of great posts from rabbit owners who were attempting to bond their rabbits. While some didn’t have too much issue, others ran into similar issues like I experienced. Seeing successful friendships develop between rabbits that were initially fighting ‘tooth and nail’ was extremely encouraging.
For those of you that don’t know, they are 6-7 month old sisters that we adopted in November and they were fine with each other’s company for about a week until one big scrap whioch forced us to separate them. They are currently living in “X-Pens” next door to each other.
I really don’t know what happened next one minute they were about a metre apart and the next they were lunging at each other! Luckily I got in the way pretty quickly and I bore the brunt of it. Ariel got my hand quite badly (its only just stopped bleeding). I picked Ariel up to seperate the two and calm the situation (Ariels usually the easier one to pick up and responds better to it than Miranda, who just seems to get more wound up if shes picked up), tried to put them back together after a few minutes to try to end on a positive note but they weren’t having any of it so it was separation straight away again. I think Miranda may have been quite upset by it as she did a wee straight over the side of the litter tray almost straight away after the fight and i’ve never seen her do that before, they are pretty much perfectly litter trained. They looked pretty upset when I put them back in their pens too.
To this…
Hello all!
Well its been nearly 2 weeks since we moved the buns in together in our bedroom and they seem ‘cemented’! We have cleaned the lounge with vinegar and have set up a new home for them, complete with logs for them to climb on!
From reading that post, it took several weeks before the two female rabbits were bonded.
Yesterday, Gracie (our lionhead rabbit) had her Health & Wellness exam. As you can see there are a few things different about her. A shaved mouth and stitches!
Sweet Gracie grooming herself
Rabbit Bonding
I’ve been keeping Oreo and Gracie separate until they bond. Females rabbits can be a bit challenging but it’s doable if you have patience. I have plenty of that. In the past, I’ve successfully bonded females. It’s not advised to put them in the room unsupervised. It could be like WWE in bunny land! What with the potential of kicking bunny feet, boxing front paws, fur flying, and who knows what else. You don’t want that!
With Oreo and Gracie, the initial introductions were done in a area neutral to both of them. Both were in small cages a few inches apart from each other. It gave them a chance to sniff each other. That was successful so I then moved the cages close together. They were in touching distance. They sniffed and seemed fine. Since that worked well, I moved on to the next phase.
Monday night when Gracie hopped up to Oreo’s cage to say hi, instead of sniffing her Oreo nicked her through the cage. Which left me wondering. How in the world did she manage to do that? The cage bars are small, so I’m guessing her nails on her front paws or her hind legs might have swiped her? The bleeding was minimal and Gracie was hopping around like normal (sporting a cut) after a bit of consolation from my daughter, Angel and me. Even though she looked fine. I still felt like such a bad fur mom!
Sighs…
I immediately called the vet and relayed what happened. I told them that although she was cut, she was still her inquisitive self, hopping around and eating. Since I had already scheduled an appointment for the following day, they told me they’d check her out then.
The black stitches really stand out on Gracie’s white fur. Trust me, it’s not as bad as it looks.
Upon arrival at the animal hospital Gracie’s vet (same as Oreo’s) had a chance to thoroughly check her. She recommended laceration surgery. I was expecting this, based on the lengthy research I’d done on Monday night. Gracie’s vet also said that I didn’t have to get the procedure; however, she strongly recommended it since it would ensure that it didn’t get infected and the stitches would help it heal correctly. Of course I chose surgery!
We left Gracie at the vet. We returned home and waited for the call. Those time drug by… I was extremely worried, but tried not to show it since my daughter blamed herself. Of course I told her this wasn’t her fault. We both were concerned about Gracie and were hoping she was fine. Three hours later, we received the call that her surgery was successful! I must say we both were relieved to get that call.
Upon returning to the animal hospital, her vet gave me a lot of meds to give her during the recovery process. We also noticed that Gracie was now sporting a new look; fur shaved close near her mouth and she now had black stitches to help the cut heal properly. Even with the new appearance, we were thrilled to see that Gracie was fine. I must say, it was great to see our furbaby again. My daughter and I both gave her gentle hugs.
Gracie had just received her medication when I took this picture. As you can see, she really loves celery!
How much was the procedure? The surgery, with medication (and other services administered) totaled $236. Several years ago, I created a savings account just for my pets. You know, in case, an unexpected surgery happened. Besides yesterday, I’ve only had to use it one time. That was with Hanuman, my silver mitt ferret. He loved rubber and swallowed part of a rubber ball. I’m still trying to figure out how he managed to do that! That surgery was $168.
Gracie is back to normal
Despite the unexpected events, Gracie is doing fine. She still likes to be held, loves to lick us and loves hopping beside me while I read. My Hiya Hiya knitting needles fascinate her and she likes to nose them while I knit. It’s so cute!
This sweet bunny loves being around others. I have to thank “A” again for being such an awesome fur mom to this delightful bunny. Our biggest challenge will be slowing her down a bit so she can heal.
Oreo is fine
Oreo is doing fine also and I don’t blame her for this unexpected event. I blame myself. Oreo is our timid girl, but over the past few weeks she’s been coming out her shell. I do wonder what type of life she had before she came to live with us. She was one year and eight days old when we adopted her from the Humane Society of Harford County.
Oreo now lets me hold her. She does interact with Mr. Bentley and Angel (without feeling threatened.)
The challenge will be bonding the two female rabbits; Oreo and Gracie. We’ll pick up bonding after Gracie has been spayed. I’m not planning on scheduling Gracie’s surgery until October. Hormones, can be a factor in how well the bonding sessions go and once she’s spayed that should help tremendously!
What I would have done differently
Although they seemed to get along, I should have taken more time before allowing Gracie in Oreo’s room. Yes, Oreo was confined to her home/cage, but she’s marked that entire room! In her bunny mind, that room is hers!
I will say, even if they never like each other, they both still have a furever home with us. We love both of them and can’t think of our home without them.
To satisfy my daughter’s bruschetta cravings I made her mushroom brushetta…
Mushroom Bruschetta w/pesto sauce
It was a evening snack. I made two of them. Yes the bread was homemade also. She ate one this evening and is saving the remaining one for tomorrow. She seemed to really enjoy it a lot. I told her, it would taste even better the next day since the freshly made pesto would have a chance to marinate. But she wasn’t hearing that and promptly ate one. The good news is she loves it and wants to make more this weekend.
I love a good bean dish. My favorites bean dishes come together very quickly since they don’t normally require a lot of ingredients.
About thirty minutes ago I made the above dish. If you’d walked into our house, you’d have been greeted with the aroma of freshly ground herbs and spices (cumin, fennel, ginger and garlic) that went into this dish. Yes I used my new granite mortar and pestle.
While the beans were cooking I toasted two tablespoon of cumin seeds in my stainless steel skillet. I don’t purchase pre-ground herbs/spices simply because their flavor doesn’t compare to freshly ground herbs/spices.
Freshly ground cumin
I removed the toasted cumin seeds from the skillet and ground them in my mortar and pestle.
Mortar and pestle: Ground garlic and ginger
I also ground up about four cloves of garlic with about 2″ of ginger root.
Fifteen minutes later, I released the pressure from the pressure cooker. I took the beans out and rinsed off the beans. The beans were black and pink beans. They normally take over an hour to make on the stovetop.
I let the onions cook for a few moments and then I added the beans and the garlic ginger paste. I let that cook for a few minutes and then added tomatoes (fresh from our garden.) I love seeing color within the foods I prepare. I let everything cook for a few minutes more, and set aside. The results? It tastes delicious. This dish can be eaten alone, added to a wrap, used as a dip, or pureed and made into bean burgers.
