The Bunhalla Bunnies 2010

[Dragonrain]

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:bunnydance::bunnydance: Happy 2010!!:bunnydance::bunnydance:

It's hard to believe 2009 is over already! It was a good year for our little family. We (thankfully) had no major losses this year. The only pets to pass away this year were one of the Japanese trapdoor snails in our fish tanks, Buttons, and Mike the goldfish. Rest in peace Buttons and Mike.

Here is my 2009 blog, in case anyone wants to take a look back: The Bunhalla Buns 2009

The bunny inhabitants of Bunhalla are happy and healthy. I'll reintroduce them all again here.

Birthday: Nov.21st, 2006
Adoption day: Aug. 13th, 2007

Barnaby is a neutered male tort lionhead. He's currently my smallest rabbit at only 2.5lbs. I adopted Barnaby when he was 8 months old, and he's come such a long way from being the timid sickly guy he was when he first came here. Barnaby celebrated his 3rd birthday with us last Nov.!

Birthday (estimated): March 1st, 2007
Adoption Day: Jan. 18th, 2009

Berry is a 2 year old, spayed female, broken black holland lop. She's the only female rabbit I've ever owned so far! On Jan. 18th of this year Berry will have been living with us for a year. We adopted her with her "brother" Ziggy from a lady who posted them on this forum last year. Berry is such a sweetheart! I love her ears - because she has ear control she can hold them up when she wants too.

Birthday: April 1st, 2007
Adoption Day: Jan. 18th, 2009

Ziggy is a neutered male, 2 year old, broken blue holland lop. I got him with his 'sister' Berry. We named him Ziggy after he went crazy doing binkies when listening to the Ziggy Stardust song. His name is also, in a small way, a tribute to our first and my heart bunny Zeus. He is very curious and the most adventurous bunny of the group.

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My bridge bunnies, who I'm not going to post pictures of right now, include Nibbles, and Zeus. Nibbles was my childhood bunny. My parents got him when I was just 5 years old and he lived to be 15 and a half. I grew up with Nibbles and when he died, he passed away peacefully in my arms. I still think about and miss him a lot. Zeus was a blue netherland dwarf. He was an amazing little guy and was my heart bunny. Unfortunately he was only with us for a little over 2 years. He passed away in the summer of 2008 during a surgery to attempt to remove a tumor from his throat. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him.
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I looove animals and do have other pets other than the bunnies. I'm sure I'll mention them in my blog as well, so I'll introduce them all quickly (without pictures for now).

Kitsune is my 1 year old Papillon. He just turned 1 on Dec.26th, and we've had him since March 3rd of last year. He's very hyper and a lot of work, but my fiance and I are completely smitten with him.

I have two frogs - Pez and Starburst. They are 2, and will be 3 in March. I raised them from eggs while I was still in college.

Ike and Courage are fish. Ike is a 2 almost 3 year old goldfish that I took in when my brother didn't want him anymore. Courage is a betta fish that I got when I was in college.

Rolo is a Japanese trapdoor snail that lives in one of my fishtanks.

Haku and Aurora are both leopard geckos, and both just over a year old. Haku is a male snow blizzard het. diablo blanco and Aurora is a female tremper albino het diablo blanco. I hope to breed them in the future.

So that's my little family! We live in northern NJ, just outside of NYC, with my amazing fiance Chris. I have a bachelors degree in biology and have always been obsessed with animals. Other than animals I love plants and gardening. I hope to someday go back to school again and am most interested in zoology and animal behavior. Chris works for a cellphone game company as a game artist and art director, and hopes to someday open up his own video game company.

I think that's enough for now! I'm sure as the year progresses I'll be around to post updates and lots of pictures! Until then, I hope everyone has a happy, healthy 2010!

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[Dragonrain]

Ugh so it looks like 2010 wasn't off to the best of starts.

Not long after I posted my 2010 blog on here, our desktop computer crashed. I don't know much about computers, but my fiance says he needs to replace parts...what parts I don't think he is entirly sure of yet.

Luckily I still have my college laptop, so that's what I'm on now. It's pretty slow and out dated but at least the internet is working. The sad thing is that I'm most likly going to lose all of my pictures I had on the other computer, which turns out to be all of my 2009 pictures. :tears2:I'm pretty upset about it. I had tons of pictures of our puppy, from the day he was born until his first Christmas and birthday (which was the day after Christmas). I had a years worth of pictures of the bunnies and family events, and of the night Chris proposed to me.

So if I don't have any new pictures for awhile...you'll know why. I'm not sure if this computer can handle uploading pictures from my camra to post online. We have to wait till the 7th for my fiance to get paid before we can order parts for the other computer, and then we'll have to wait for them to be delivered too.

 

[Fancy77]

WOW What great pics u have I really like how u edited them. such a nice start to your blog

 

[Dragonrain]

Thank you! My fiance helped me with the pictures. He's great at that type of stuff, it took him literally like 5 minutes to do all that. I'm so bad with computers, but at least I have him to help me

Hopefully the way this year has been so far isn't a bad sign. Our desktop computer is still out, I'm sick, and our water pipes froze and bursted yesterday. We had messed up water yesterday from the frozen pipes and then no water early this morning. It's all fixed now, but the water is gross and rusty looking and the water pressure stinks.

The bunnies and the rest of the pets are fine though. I wanted to make posts with pictures of my other pets, but now I'll have to wait until the main computer is back in commission.

 

[Myia09]

I breed leopard geckos too, I mainly focus on Snow enigmas (My herd includes a Snow Enigma het Bell male, Tremper Enigma Male, Super Snow het Eclipse Female, Super Snow Blizzard Female, Sunglow Female, Tangelo Female)

Great photos, and I love your lops!
I can't wait to see more photos!

 

[hartleybun]

cute bunnies and great graphics! hope your water sorts itself out soon. touch wood but we havent had any problems with our supply - yet - normally get a problem every couple of months or so:X

 

[Dragonrain]

Thanks for the replies!

Very cool, another leo breeder! I'll have to visit your blog and see if there are any pictures. I've always loved reptiles. In the past I've had iguanas, ball phthons, corn snakes...most of them where rescues. After my last iguana passed away I went awhile without keeping any reptiles. When I got back into it I decided I wanted something smaller and easier to manage than an iguana, so leopard geckos it is!

Our water did get fixed :biggrin2:So that's all back to normal.

Our computer, however, is still broken. My fiance works so late he just really doesn't have the motivation to look at it when he gets home from work. Hopefully this weekend! Then I can get some new pictures posted.

 

[Dragonrain]

I wanted to add...Rolo my last trapdoor snail passed away. I found her empty shell yesterday when I was cleaning the fish tank. She passed away so soon after Buttons did, I'm think that they where both either old, or maybe something was off in the tank that didn't agree with them. Hopefully they where old, because I'd hate to think it was something I could have prevented.

RIP Rolo.

 

[Dragonrain]

Black & White

The other day I finally figured out how to take black and white photos directly from my camra. There not very good, but this was just my first day playing around with it. I really like black and white photography and hopefully I'll be able to get some nicer pictures with some practice.

Here are the bunnies...

And here are a few of Kitsune...

I just, as I was typing this, got my order of Sweet Meadow timothy hay delivered! For a few months now I've been using Kleenmamas, but the shipping is like double the price of the actual hay, and it takes over a week to get here. I decided to try Sweet Meadows since I can get more hay for cheaper. It got here so much faster than Kleenmama's does, it only took about 3 days. Hopefully the bunnies like it and it's not too dusty!

 

[Dragonrain]

[align=center]Kitsune[/align]
[align=left]Kitsune is my year old papillon. He was born on Dec.26th, 2008 - the day after Christmas! We just celebrated his first birthday last month! My fiance got him for me on March 3rd of last year, 3 days before my birthday, as a combination early birthday present and collegegraduation present. Papillons have always been my favorite breed of dog, ever since I was really young.[/align]
[align=left]Kitsune came from a show breeder who sold him on a pet contract. His grandfather and father are both show champions, but Kit is not show quality. He's too big, mismarked, and has a soft ear. I think he's perfect![/align]
[align=left]Kitsune means "fox" in Japanese. But more specifically, it usually refures to the magical foxes of Japanese folklore. We usuallycall him Kit, or Kitsu for short.[/align]
[align=left]Kit is very smartand also very very hyper. He drives me insane sometimes withthe amount of energy he has, but he's a lot of fun too andmy fiance and I absolutly adore him. Kit is amazing with the bunnies. He likes tosnuggle up next to them and is very gentle with them. Sometimes we swear that Kit is our old bunny, Zeus, reincarnated. [/align]
[align=left]I figured I wouldn't wait to long to fully introduce Kit, because I'm sure I'll be posting a lot about him here! [/align]
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[align=left]Sorry about the weird spaceing in this post. I tried to fix it a few times and it keeps going back to looking weird, with huge spaces between paragraphs. Maybe it's my computer, since I'm still on my old laptop. Hopefully Chris will look into what's wrong with the desktop today![/align]

 

[silvermoon]

I'm a biologist too and I love animals and plants and gardening too. I also have an aquarium and a dog. I love Kitsune (great name!), such a cute puppy!

I too like the graphics for your buns. I love the look of brokens, especially black ones like Berry. I have a feeling I'll be stopping in to read about your crew a lot!

 

[tonyshuman]

Your bunnies and dog are so adorable! How is Berry today?

 

[Dragonrain]

[align=center]Update on BerryMelon[/align]

[align=left]Last Sunday morning, at around 1 am, I went into the bunny room to give them fresh hay and say goodnight to them. They where all perfectly fine. I gave them each a treat and left them for the night. My fiance and I ended up staying up very late and I didn't wake up until around noon time on Sunday. The first thing I did was to go into the bunny room.[/align]

[align=left]At first I didn't see Berry. I found her in the litter box, on the top floor of their cage, and was sure she was dead. She was a normal laying down position, slightly scrunched up, but her head was flopped over face down in the hay. I very gently reached in and started petting her, and relized that she was still alive. I gently took her out of the cage and placed her on the floor. She could not control her neck or front legs at all. Her eyes where unfocused and off to the sides.[/align]

[align=left]So off to the vet we went. Honnestly, I didn't think she was going to make it. I wrapped her up in her favorite purple blanket and brought along her favorite toy, thinking that she was going to pass away or need to be put to sleep and I wanted to have those things cremated with her. I was absolutly devistated.[/align]

[align=left]It's been a very very long 5 days. After lots of tests the vet said that Berry had what pretty much amounts to a stroke.[/align]

[align=left]She stayed at the vets for the past 5 days. The whole time I was debating what to do. Berry pretty much made the decision for herself, when on tuesday, much to our suprise, she started regaining small amounts of control in her neck. She was lifting her head up for short amounts of time and was eating solid foods that where held next to her mouth.[/align]

[align=left]Yesterday morning when I went to go visit her, she was sitting up a bit, and much morealert. She was eating eagerlyon her own as long as the food was held for her.[/align]

[align=left]Today, Thursday, after spending 5 days at the vets,I was able to take her home. I have been caring for her here at home since this afternoon. She is pretty much taking it easy,but is eating and drinking and taking her meds with no problems. She can hold her head up more and sit up and has regained some control of her front legs, although she still has a ways to go. The vet showed me someexercies to dowith her front legs, kind of like bunny physical therapy. She isgood and lets me do it and it seems to help her, because for awhile afterwords she is able to use her legs more.[/align]

[align=left]I'm so proud of Berry and so happy to have her home again. I hope and pray that she will continue to make improvments. We don'tknow if she will recover 100%, but as long as she is happy and pain free that's all I care about.[/align]

 

[Dragonrain]

Oh, I forgot to add. I had to seperate Ziggy and Barnaby too. After Berry left, Ziggy started picking on Barnaby. Barnaby got stressed out and wasn't eating much. I was so stressed out already, and was afraid that Barnaby would start having GI problems again or that Ziggy would hurt him.

So all in 5 days, I've gone from having a very happy, healthy bunny trio, to having 3 single bunnies one of which is disabled now. :shock:

I don't know what I'm going to do with the three of them - if I'm going to attempt to get them all back together or not. I don't know how Berry would cope dealing with the boys now that she has limited mobility. I don't know if they would accept her. I don't know if the boys will go back to getting along again..all these questions.

I'd like to, if I can, try to rebond at least two of them back into a pair. But who knows! Really this is the least of my worries right now anyways.

 

[tonyshuman]

I'm so glad Berry made it through and is home with you! There are lots of things you can do to help her stay comfy even if she's not so mobile, so don't worry about that. Fleece bedding or Palace Pet bedding are very good for wicking away moisture.

It is not surprising that your trio broke up because of this. Dynamics like that are very fragile, it seems. I think that Berry would benefit from having a buddy, though, as many special-needs bunnies do, and it's possible that having her back might bring the boys back together. It may not happen that way, though, you just have to try and watch them closely. A buddy for Berry would help her clean the areas she can't reach, and keep her engaged and interested in life even if her scenery doesn't change as much. Just something to think about.

Healing thoughts sent your way!

 

[Dragonrain]

Thanks for the reply The cage I made up for Berry is lined with fleece. I don't know what Palace Pet bedding is but I'll look it up. She's trying so hard to keep herself clean, but can't really reach her back end very welland can't really get up and move around very wellto go to the bathroom in a diffrent spot. I have a feeling I'm going to by spending a lot more time in the laundromat now.

Any more tipes for caring for a disabled bun would definatly be appreciated! I've never had to deal with anything like this before.

Am I suppose to try to feed her her cecel poops? I assume that I am. Sorry I know I spelled that wrong. I don't think she can get to her bumto get them herself, and I am finding them on her bedding. I was going to move one to where she could reach it, but it was gross and had hay and stuff sticking to it so I wasn't sure if it was fresh or a little bit old and didn't know if she'd eat it with stuff stuck to it...Yuck...onder:

I do want to get Berry bonded to one of the boys again if I can. If I could get the three of them back together that would be awesome, but I would be happy with just a pair too. I'm not sure who to try to keep with Berry though.

 

[silvermoon]

Oh, I am so so sorry to hear about Berry! How awful And then the boys picking on each other. I don't know anything about caring for a disabled bun unfortunately and definitely not about bonding them back together. I wish you and the buns the best of luck with it all. What a rough start to the year

 

[Dragonrain]

Thank you. Yeah, I haven't been having a very good new year so far. Although it could have been much worse I'm sure.

Berry is doing okay today. This morning when I went in to see the bunnies she was begging for a treat the best that she could. Her appitite is definatly not effected! I don't think I mentioned this, but she's also blind in one eye now. Poor baby. I'm amazed she's still alive, let alone doing so well. I'm so thankful that she pulled through, I would have been devistated if I lost her. She hasen't even been living with us for a full year yet - it will be a year on the 18th.

 

[hln917]

Glad to hear that Berry is home. She's sounds like a fighter. I'm sure your love will help her recover nicely. Did the vet say perhaps she'll get her vision back one day?

 

[tonyshuman]

I wonder if the vet suspects EC at all? I know they think it was a stroke or something, but neurological issues (the tilt, eye problems) and leg issues can be signs of EC. However, I think her leg issues are in the front legs, right? EC effects the back legs more.

I honestly don't know about if you're supposed to give them their cecals. I am sure TreasuredFriend would know--she's my go-to person on caring for special needs bunnies.

How old is Berry?

Palace Pet bedding is the brand name for Vet Bed, which is a lot like artificial sheepskin--soft but wicks away moisture. I forget what the name is in which country...