The Happy Bunny Family

[SnowyShiloh]

Ali, some bunnies are just so pretty! When I was a kid everyone assumed my bunny was a girl, I think just because he was a rabbit and rabbits are considered feminine animals. Guess what guys, there has to be males as well for the species to continue

In other news, Nedder is such a silly boy. About twice a day I have to fish his baby keys out of his water bowl. Apparently that's where he thinks they belong. They're very long (and not actually keys, they're plastic ovals linked together and about 6 inches long) and he picks them up and tosses them, picks them up and tosses them, repeat as many times as necessary to get them over to his water bowl and drop them in. Silly (but adorable) bunny!

 

[SnowyShiloh]

My baby Kerensa just jumped out of my arms and fell 3 1/2 feet to the ground! Usually she's good about being held, but tends to get wiggly if we're near her cage. She did a bunny wiggle explosion and got away from me and fell Then she tried to run away and doesn't want to be near me. I felt her over and nothing is obviously damaged. She can walk around. I hope she's okay! I feel so bad I've dealt with many bunny wiggle explosions over the years and have only once had a bunny fall. A couple of years ago Ned suddenly jumped over my shoulder and fell to the floor, he busted his lip but was fine other than that. Please think good thoughts for my girl!

 

[JadeIcing]

It happens sometimes. I'm sure she'll be fine. *hugs*

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Ali, she seems to be okay thankfully! It's been 3 days now and she doesn't seem hurt, thank goodness. Wouldn't be able to live with myself if she'd been injured or worse. Does anyone else talk for their bunnies? Well, ever since she fell, Paul has been talking for Kerensa and asking me why I threw her and demanding extra treats and hugs. "Why did you throw me, Mommy? I love you!"

 

[JadeIcing]

Lol silly husband.

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Long time no update!

Not much has changed, we've all just been happily sailing along. The only big change is that we welcomed a bouncing baby boy into our family. Big little Padraig Theodore Pudgerton, or Podge for short! We adopted him from the animal shelter where he was left with the rest of his litter. He's utterly adorable and such a roly poly little fellow. No idea on the breed, but he's going to be a chunk! At 11 weeks, he weighs 3 1/2 lbs, which is just a smidge more than Rory and Phoebe Mae. He is officially our biggest bun. Can't wait to watch him grow up! So far he's still fairly shy, but very curious and I think he will come around soon. It is my hope that he becomes a snuggle lovin' bunny because his round little body was just made for snugglin', I can tell

A few pictures of the wee man from the day he came home:

I have more picture, including some of a romp he took outside, but will post those later. Gotta get people to come check my blog again, right? :wink Okay, that's not the real reason I'm not posting them now. The real reason is that they're on my camera card, which is in my camera, which is on the other side for the room and I'm feeling supremely lazy I also need to share pictures of Ned's, Kerensa's, Max's, and Macie's birthday bash!

In other news, Rory went out for a bounce in the yard and we just came in a few minutes ago. I love my boy to the moon and back. Can't believe he's 5 years old now. I refuse to think about him growing old. Anyway, the grass was wet, which meant he was all wet, so when I picked him up to carry him back inside, I held him on his back like a baby. As usual, he nestled in. I was standing there with him snuggled in my arms and the sun shining on his face was such a beautiful moment. Gave him a smooch on the nose. I will always remember it!

 

[ZRabbits]

So glad you updated. Been missing reading about the whole crew. Glad everything is sailing along.

Love your new bouncing baby boy. Absolutely adorable! Look forward to watching him grow in to that "Snuggle Bunny" you would love him to be. IF you update your blog. lol

Can't wait to see the pics. It's OK to be lazy. Just make sure you give Podge a scratch between the ears for me.

How is Rory doing? I read in another thread about a wet nose? Was it allergies? I guess it was nothing because he sounds like he had a fun time out with Mom.

And on another thread, regarding the bonding problem, most of the people do the "bathtub" date. I've been reading threads about bonding. Maybe try that?

K

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Hi Karen! Rory is still a little bit... off. I don't know what it is. Weight is fine, as is appetite, output, everything. No runny nose (that was very brief), nothing. He's a tiny bit less active in his cage but that's it. Also when he was outside, he got a little wobbly once when he stood up on his back legs. Those are VERY vague symptoms though and I'm sure the vet would find nothing wrong with him, so I'm just watching!

As for the bonding issues with Max and Macie, I guess I'll just keep trying Between those two, Phoebe Mae, and Kerensa, we have to have at least 1 compatible pair, right?! Phoebs is very dominant but I don't know about Kerensa. Podge is just a baby so he'd probably be fine with anyone, but I wouldn't want to have to separate when his hormones started kicking in. Then again, my first ever bad experience with two bunnies together was actually with Cinnabun. He was only 9 or 10 weeks old and flipped when we introduced him to a similarly aged baby bunny, so who knows! Why do I end up with the human loving, bunny hating bunnies?!

Oh yeah, we don't have a bath tub (shower stall only), washer, or dryer to put the carrier on top of, so no help there!

 

[ZRabbits]

Glad to hear about Rory. Really sounds like allergies. I know I get a bit wobbly when my allergies are in full bloom. My equalibrium (sp?) gets out of wack.

Yea I think it would be tough in the "shower only". lol. I have no clue with bonding. The one time with Dobby and Kreacher scared the you know what out of me. I am though going to utilize the bunny run. My husband has made a divider so I can cut the run in half. I plan on bringing Dobby and Kreacher out. See what happens. I'll never house bunnies together, but I would love to see them have "time out" together.

I know what you mean about bunnies loving humans, but can't stand another bunny. Something I had no clue until I stepped into the Bunny World. Wishing you luck with your Tribe.

K

 

[fuzz16]

Omg i love your buns..and i think your only crazybunlady when you hit double digits!!!!

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Ha, thanks for the vote of confidence, Brenda! We love our bunny family and I wouldn't want to be without any of my babies.

Speaking of babies, here are the pictures of Podgie that I promised earlier! I think he's such a handsome boy. Quite photogenic, but he looks way more grown up in some of these photos than he does in person. Some of the cutest ones didn't turn out sadly. Padraig definitely has a more babyish look about him in person.

Next to my foot to show his approximate size

Not too thrilled with having his adorable tummy showed off. This photo does not depict the true pudgosity he possesses. Tonight I'm going to have Paul help me get a photo of his roly poly belly!

I feel that I should back up a bit and share the story of how Padraig Theodore Pudgerton came to be with us. A couple of weeks ago, Petfinder showed that our local animal shelter had 9 bunnies. Our shelter usually has somewhere between 0 and 1 bunnies, so 9 is a huge deal! Then another came in. 10 bunnies. Yikes! The shelter is a kill shelter and when I called and asked, they said they would need to euthanize some of the buns if there were too many. Paul and I talked it over and decided we wanted to help. Yes, 7 buns is a lot, but we had 7 in the short time Nomi was here and we both miss her presence a lot I know I've said this before, but Padraig is our last bunny for a while! I call him our little caboose

Down to the shelter we went. I had my eye on an adult broken mini lop male I'd seen on Petfinder (sound familiar to anyone??), but he had been adopted before we got there! Yay! So had another very cute adult mixed breed bun. That left a litter of 8 approximately 10 week old babies. They told us that the owner lived out of town and had been going to deliver them to someone here in town (sounds ominous to me, I'm thinking meat bunnies), but the deal fell through at the last second and she brought them all to the shelter. Anyway, to the babies. They were separated into two pens, with boys in one and girls in the other. The shelter volunteer was super nice and let me handle each baby. The babies were pretty shy (not handled much) and all ran away. The bun who ended up being our little big Padraig was actually the first I picked up. He was SO CUTE! Super chubby, adorable face, beautiful fur, soft and fluffy... I was smitten. He was the biggest baby and also the calmest. Pretty sure my mind was made up right then, and I asked the volunteer to hold him while I handled all the other buns.

They were all very cute, but the tubbo definitely had my heart and the decision to go with him wasn't hard. I was briefly tempted by his brother Mike, who is a lovely all black bun. He reminded me of TinysMom's boy Tiny. But I wanted Padraig. No particular reason, I guess... He was one of 4 agoutis, I liked that he was big, I liked that he was the calmest, but none of those were deciding factors. Most bunnies are shy around strangers at first. Heck, Tallulah acted like she HATED me for the first week and she ended up being the loviest bunny ever! I just felt drawn to little Podgie though and had his name in my head right when I held him.

So, Padraig was chosen. We took him home and got him set up. I tossed around other names for a little while, but knew he'd be Padraig the whole time really. I actually came across the name a couple months ago on St. Patrick's Day when I read somewhere that Podge is a nickname for Padraig (which is pronounced PAW-drig) and it just seemed like a perfect bunny name! I saw my pudgy little man and the name just fit. The last name of Pudgerton followed soon after, and Theodore is his middle name because it seemed to fit... and he's like a teddy bear Something that's a little funny: I counted back to figure out his birthday, and guess what? It's St. Patrick's Day! Rory's birthday AND the day I came across his name. It was meant to be! Rory is short for Rhiordan, so now I have two handsome Irish agouti bunny boys

 

[fuzz16]

I looked on petfinder and the babies there didnt look nearly ss cute as him. New zealans babies are chunky, maybe that or some chinchilla be cute if he stayed pudgy! Podge is a perfect name lol, or lop mix..their pudgy! I rarely see bunnies in the animal control shelters but its always sad seeing them in teeny cages and their adopted out free unfixed -_-

Whose bonded with who btw?

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Brenda, it's interesting. In his litter, there were 4 agoutis, 3 red eyed whites, and 1 black bunny. Some had fluffier fur and some had silkier fur. There was some difference in size and overall look, too. 4 of Padraig's siblings are still at the shelter, here they are: http://www.petfinder.com/pet-search?animal_type=Rabbit&pet_breed=&location=99701&distance=0

You can see how different some of them look. Actually Carlos looks VERY similar to Padraig because, uh, I'm pretty sure that's him There were 2 agouti males. The other was named Orson. When we adopted Podge, they took Orson down off the website, but I'm pretty sure Podge is actually Carlos, if that makes sense.

Okay, I'm super sentimental and have to admit that I saved pictures of all of Podge's siblings. Here are a few of them, so you can see how he looks compared to them:

The bunny that I think is actually Padraig (named Carlos by the shelter):

Orson, the other agouti male that is the one we supposedly adopted:

Doesn't Padraig look more like Carlos? His ears do the hangy down thing sometimes, but not as much as in the picture of Orson. Also, Podge is chubbier than that bunny. I think he's Carlos.

Susan, one of the girl agoutis. She looks more petite than Podge and lighter colored:

Mike, the black male who I'm still feeling heart pangs over. His fur was very silky and rather long, his body was longer too, but overall he was smaller than Podge:

Lynette, one of the red eyed white girls. You can see how much smaller she is than Padraig:

Sorry this is so long, I'm just a sentimental person and fascinated by this sort of thing! I wonder of the babies may have been fathered by more than 1 rabbit.

As of this writing, 4 of Podgie's siblings are still at the shelter Mike, Carlos (or Orson or whoever it is!), Tom who is a red eyed white male, and Gabby who is a red eyed white female. I hope they get adopted SOON!!!

 

[fuzz16]

I love pictures. Love scrapbooking! Orsons ears are super cute but his face seens smaller and shorter than podges, but carloses ears look to zmall to be podge...its a mystery..dundundun

But orsons cutest out of all of them, just cause the ear tips but doubt theyll stay like that. Hes got a baby mewlap too!! Ha

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Excuse me, but PADRAIG is the cutest out of all of them!

 

[fuzz16]

Lol only cause hes chubby!

Is it podge or padraig lol didnt know if it was a phone typo

 

[SnowyShiloh]

His name is Padraig and his nickname is Podge Podge is apparently a common nickname for Padraig in Ireland. We call him by both.

 

[JadeIcing]

I would take Mike in a heart beat.

 

[SnowyShiloh]

Isn't he a cutie, Ali? If we had fewer buns, I would have scooped him up to take home, too. I feel guilty about it, but at least we got 1 bun, right?

 

[SnowyShiloh]

I took a nap and dreamed that we went back to the shelter and adopted Mike!

In other news, here are pictures of my babies enjoying birthday cupcakes last week

Mabel turns 1!

Maximus turns 1!

Kerensa turns 2!

Ned turns 4!

Oddly enough, Maximus, Mabel, Kerensa, and Ned all have birthdays within 3 days of each other. Ned's birthday was a complete shot in the dark. I gave him Tallulah's death anniversary as his birthday so I could do something happy that day instead of sad Then we got Kerensa whose birthday we know for sure, and Max and Macie whose birthday is an educated guess. It's kind of funny because Rory AND Podge both have the birthday of March 17th (both were educated guesses since they're shelter buns), my husband's is March 6, and mine is February 28. Talk about lots of cake in a short amount of time! Then Phoebe's birthday is August 1st, which happens to be our wedding anniversary. We got her BEFORE we got married so that just is a coincidence. We like doubling up on our holidays apparently

So, in honor of the birthday bash, I baked cupcakes completely from scratch: strawberry cake with lemon buttercream frosting. The recipe for the frosting is on my cooking blog here: http://cheesewithnoodles.blogspot.com/2012/05/luscious-lemon-buttercream-frosting.html

If I may toot my own horn, the cupcakes were completely delicious, and the bunners loved it too. They only got a little lick of the frosting for the pictures, then I scraped off the frosting and gave each bun a little piece of cake For an idea of how small, each bun got 1/12th of the cupcake without frosting! I don't usually give them stuff like that, but birthdays are special. They also all got salads (including the non-birthday buns of course) and they all got an awesome toy I call Love Bombs, which is when I take a paper lunch bag and fill it with a couple little treats, hay, and pellets, then twist the end shut and give it to the buns Really wish I'd got photos, you should have heard how loud it was in here with 6 bunnies shredding paper bags! Love Bombs keep them busy for a long time. A couple days later they were still playing with the paper bags.