Ten Ways to a Happier Bunny

Here are some great ways to make your rabbits life a lot happier! To get the best, safest and most accurate information on any of these ways of how to make your rabbit happier, check out the House Rabbit Society website at www.rabbit.org .


1) Neuter your Rabbit: Neutering your rabbit will help eliminate behaviors that stress you and the bunny out.


2) Interact with your Bunny: Bunnies are quite social, but just be patient with him or her. Remember they are prey animals and take time to trust you, as opposed to a dog or cat, which are predatory animals.


3) Give your Bunny Toys: Bunnies are intelligent and like to exercise their bodies and minds. Toys can be simple things such as a corrugated cardboard box or an inner roll tube from toilet paper.



4) Rotate your Bunny's Toys: Just like us, rabbits get bored with doing the same thing all the time. If you remove toys and put out different ones regularly, they are likely to look at their old toys with a new burst of enthusiasm when placed out again. Keeping a bunny stocked up with toys and rotating them will also help eliminate negative behaviors such as chewing.


5) Bond your Bunny with a Friend: Just as much as you can be social with your rabbit, it is great to be able to bond them with another bunny, especially if you are not home often. Bonding is something that should take place slowly and be monitored. Check out the House Rabbit Society website link at the top of this article.


6) Keep Your Bunny's Environment as Stress Free as Possible: Bunnies can stress easier than many other animals, so keeping the environment more low key, less noise and quick paced young children, for example, will help your bunny feel his or her best! Reduced stress in the environment probably would help you too!


7) Give your Bunny Play Time: Rabbits love to play, are very social and quite entertaining to themselves and to us! Along with the toys and other interesting things in their environment, it is very healthy for them to give them time out of their cages (if not totally free range in the house) for play and exercise in a safe environment.


8) Give Your Bunny Play Space: Healthy exercise and play for rabbits includes having space to run, explore and hop around. Those legs are made for hopping. This will also help your bunny maintain a healthy weight and help prevent issues that come with being sedentary.


9) Learn your Bunny's Language: Bunnies, like other animals including humans, have their own noises and body language. Learning what these are can go a long way in helping you understand them and for you to communicate with them. They are intelligent, have good memories and are very social! Getting to know some of the basics and learning my own bunnies methods of communicating certain things has greatly enriched my relationships with them!


10) Keep your Bunny As Healthy As Possible: Getting regular vet checks, feeding bunnies the right stuff (such as hay being number one), getting exercise and watching your bunny for signs of sickness or different behaviors (actually anything different) can go a long way in keeping your bunny healthy. (Bunnies are prey animals and won't show being ill or in pain, but will hide it as an instinctual form of defense against predators). Healthy bunnies are happy bunnies and will make our lives fuller and happier too!

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Have you seen a Jackalope?

Editor's note: This is for fun, but as for fair warning: taxidermy and slight innuendo are in this post, if this might offend you.  Otherwise, I hope you enjoy.

Have you ever seen a Jackalope? I've seen lots of them-kind of like the Unicorn horns I saw in the Cloister's Museum in New York City, the Jackalope is more common here in the USA!  Usually, I've seen them on t-shirts and bar signs, but then when I was on vacation in the woodsy northern New England states last year, I saw a real one! That's right.
Well maybe I better back up a bit and tell you what a Jackalope is supposed to be!  According to the latest entry on Wikipedia, it is:  "a mythical animal of North American folklore (a so-called "fearsome critter") described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns or deer antlers and sometimes a pheasant's tail (and often hind legs). The word "jackalope" is a portmanteau of "jackrabbit" and "antalope", an archaic spelling of "antelope". It is also known as Lepus temperamentalus.". (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope ).

Another website describes them as: "an aggressive species, willing to use its antlers to fight. Thus, the jackalope is also sometimes called the 'warrior rabbit.'

The jackalope is the product of a male jackrabbit and a female antelope. Jackalopes possess an uncanny ability to mimic human sounds. In the Old West, when cowboys would gather by their campfires to sing at night, jackalopes would frequently be heard singing back, mimicking the voices of the cowboys. Jackalopes become especially vocal before thunderstorms, perhaps because they mate only when lightning flashes—or so it is theorized—which explains the rarity of this species." (source: http://www.jackalope.com/legend-of-jackalope/ )

Traits that are supposed to be common to Jackalopes (source: http://www.jackalope.com/legend-of-jackalope/ ) :

• Size: Males to 24″, Females to 20″
• Weight: Avg. 6 to 8 lbs. Binge up to 12 lbs.
• Horns: Up to 12 inches across; 2 to 3 points common
• Coat: Tawny-brown, lighter on chest and underside
• Disposition: Secretive, easily agitated
• Habitat: Grasslands and KOA Campgrounds
• Range: Western North America into Canada
• Diet: Grasses, beenie weenies, smores

• Mating Ritual: Only during intense lightning strikes
• Population: Less than 10,000 (2000 Census)
• Predators: Taxidermists and tourists
• Status: Endangered to threatened
• Traits: Sure footed and agile; nocturnal; opportunistic; crude ability to mimic campground chatter; fondness for whiskey and Harley Davidson oil lines; will attack if cornered or provoked. 

Now it seems many of the sources on Jackalopes call it folklore, hoax or legend.  This surprises me. But then again, people don't think Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster are real.  Or the unicorns either. Unicorns are probably just extinct.  I have found a website that examines the conspiracy of the Jackalope. It looks interesting. They have sightings, photos, video, everything to prove the majestic and very rare Jackalope really exists! I suggest you check it out for yourself and decide!  Click here for Jackalope Conspiracy website.

Now early on, I told you that I saw a Jackalope on my vacation in the woods of  northern New England. I have a photo that I want to show you that I took of it!  We got lost in the Green Mountains in the car and stopped at campground for directions. We asking for directions and there it was!  He must have been a young one because the antlers were a bit smaller than you see on some.

Okay, so it wasn't alive, but look, it's real! The store was in the woods at the Crawford Notch Campground. It all exists! Someday, I know, now really...I will...seriously see a live Jackalope. I will respect him, but I have this 6th sense for finding and befriending rabbits (he's part rabbit!)...who's to say that I won't find one and befriend him or her.  They found unicorns hundreds of years ago. I just hope the jackalope is more able to elude the humans who seek out his magic powers (his milk is said to be a great aphrodisiac, because he has antlers-sometimes called the "horny rabbit".) and not become extinct, like I believe has happened to the unicorn.


Seriously, just by googling "jackalope" you can find all kinds of fun stuff on him. Hope you enjoyed this.

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Bale Me Out! All About Hay

 Hay and Rabbits

Hay is a necessity for rabbits. It is necessary for their digestion in many ways. Rabbit's teeth grow continuously and eating hay helps wear them down in the right way, compared to eating just pellets. Hay also provides fiber that is necessary for a rabbit's digestive system and also helps prevent blockages which can cause G.I. Stasis, which can be deadly. Alfalfa hay is commonly and best used because of it's higher protein and calcium content  for young growing bunnies until about 6-9 months old. They then should switch over to Timothy Hay because it is lower in the calcium and protein. Timothy Hay is also lower in calories which will help your rabbit maintain an ideal weight or lose it if too heavy. Below you will find select quotes on different aspects of  hay from some places on the web that are more expert than me. Alternatively, you can also check out online universities to find animal care degree programs that can teach you about rabbit food and diet information.


"Adult rabbits need a quality grass hay always available. Grass hays include timothy, orchard grass, bermuda grass, and others. You can find grass hays in pet stores, from horse farms or feed stores, at vet offices who specialize in bunnies, or online from pet hay suppliers. The trick is to find a good hay. Look for a green, fragrant hay. Most rabbits like soft kinds best, but having a mix of stalks and soft parts is great for providing the different kinds of bulk fiber that are good for teeth and digestive systems. Don’t buy hay that is all brown, dusty, has visible mold, or smells moldy. Dusty/moldy hay is dangerous for a bunny!
The most important part of a good hay is one that your bunny will eat. If you find a huge bale of timothy for $4 and bunny loves it, great! But if bunny won’t eat it, it just won’t do her any good. Picky bunnies often love Oxbow Hay brand, which can be found in some pet and feed stores, online pet suppliers, and at www.oxbowhay.com. If you can’t find it locally, ask your pet supply store to order it for you or to start carrying it!"
from  http://www.indianahrs.org/rabbit-care/food-pellets-hay.aspx



Hay (definition from wikipedia) "is grass, legumes or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing livestock such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to pets such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs may be fed hay, but they do not digest it as efficiently as more fully herbivorous animals."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay


Cuts of Hay

"Horsemen are very opinionated on which cutting is the best to buy. Although there are some differences in the cuttings, the quality of the hay is much more important than the cutting. From a nutritional standpoint, all cuttings can result in prime horse hay. With alfalfa, there will be some variation in protein content between cuttings. First cut alfalfa hay has the reputation of having large tough stems, but this is only true if the hay was too mature when cut. If first cut hay is mowed at the pre-bloom stage, the stems will not be coarse and the nutritive value will be high. Weeds do tend to appear in first-cut hay.

Second cut alfalfa hay is usually the fastest growing because it is developing during the hottest part of the season, and it usually has more stem in relation to leaf. Of all cuttings, second cut tends to be the lowest in crude protein, but its 16 percent average is adequate for all classes of horses.

Third (and later) cut alfalfa, develops a higher leaf to stem ratio because of the slower growth during the cool part of the season. Therefore, third cut hay will usually have the highest nutritive value. Horses which are not accustomed to a good, leafy hay may experience flatulent (gaseous) colic or a loose stool.

Mixed hays from all cuttings will have similar nutritional values except that with a grass/alfalfa mix, the first cutting will contain a larger proportion of grasses than the other cuttings."
 from www.horsegroomingsupplies.com


Other Links On Hay
The article at this link is probably the best on everything a rabbit owner should know about hay in relationship to bunnies! Maybe even more than you ever wanted to know!  http://www.rabbit.org/journal/4-7/hay.html
http://bunniez.hubpages.com/hub/Bunny-Care-Guide-The-Importance-Of-Feeding-Hay-To-Rabbits

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Watership Down Land is Threatened by Development

Many of us have been enchanted by the book Watership Down by Richard Adams. The rabbits in it have helped give us a more kindred feeling with those of us who have rabbit companions in our lives, or with mother nature and the threats she faces. Perhaps you or your children have seen the animated versions. The basic idea is the same,  the beautiful land that the rabbits live on is threatened by development. The story takes place in England, which I, being from the USA, picture as being the prisitine land that it is portrayed as being in the book, animations and many other movies there as well.  Perhaps, it's a romanticized version.  The land, Watership Down, is based on a real place that is supposed to be very faithful to the Berkshire Countryside of England. This land is now under a great and serious threat of development.

It seems unbelievable that of all land that is potentially under threat of development is one that helped influence protection of land and the environment in the 1970s. Here is a website where you can take action to help protect the land.
Click here: www.sayNOtoSandleford.org.uk

Here is a link to some pictures of the beautiful countryside:
Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360239@N02/sets/72157628025040309/with/6461287567/

I am doing more research into this, will update you and let you know what else we can do to help stop the destruction of this beautiful and inspirational land!

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Share Your Rabbit Resource Links

Do you know where to get great rabbit health info? Where can someone learn about rabbit health conditions in the middle of the night? Where can I go to know if my rabbit can eat a certain veggie? My rabbit is biting me and no one else, what am I doing wrong? Seems like my bunny is trying to communicate with me, what is he saying? Dogs have body language, like the tails between their legs, what about rabbits?  What's the best hay? What is a good bunny toy? Where can I buy great bunny items online? Why adopt, not use a pet store?

You will sooner or later have a need to know something in reference to bunnies, be it behavior, food, medical and a whole host of other topics.  Do you have a place you always refer to something to answer one of these types of questions? Do you know something or some place that would really help out other bunny lovers?

Please share them with Rabbit Slippers Blog so we can share them on our resource pages we are putting together for others! I have places I've been going to for over ten years now and have even been able to help others by sharing info. It can do a world of good, might help someone get a night's sleep, save a life or put even more of a spring in a rabbit's hop!

Please share your links with us via email at: rabbitslippersblog@gmail.com

Thanks for hopping by and please share! Thanks.

Rabbit Slippers has a new e-mail address rabbitslippersblog@gmail.com if you want to e-mail any ideas, suggestions, comments, concerns or share anything. 

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Rabbit Rescues/Shelters: Share Your Links

Rabbit Rescues and Shelters, Would you like to share links to your links with us? We are working on Resource Pages for people who may want to adopt or learn about it, or looking for a shelter in their area. I know some rescues like to remain low key and don't have a large presence to be able to control from rabbits being dropped off on their door step.

We would like to make you more accessible without but let you control what information you would like out there.  We will post links and info on our Rescue/Shelter page for you. Please let us know your name, websites, twitter, Facebook page links and physical addresses if you do want them posted. Please also let us know what town, state, region and country you are from so local people will be able to contact you and know they aren't thousands of miles away from you.

Please send us that information at rabbitslippersblog@gmail.com . 

Rabbit Slippers has a new e-mail address rabbitslippersblog@gmail.com if you want to e-mail any ideas, suggestions, comments, concerns or share anything. 

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Buzzing Butterscotch Bunny (with video)

Not too many bunnies make a buzzing noise, but I had heard of them. Last year one had come into our lives. He didn't start making the noise until he was sexually mature at a few months old (the buzz seems to be hormonal from research I did).  He would buzz at the sight of us or other bunnies, especially females of course.  Most male rabbits do make a sort of grunting noise when "in the mood", but not Butterscotch, he buzzes.

Butterscotch was affectionate from the start, showering us with bunny kisses and responding to any movement we made. When he became "mature", he started buzzing when responding to us. He had become very territorial.and would start chewing on the bars of his cage, the wire barrier in his out of cage area. He also started thumping repeatedly at any perceived sleight from us.  He would become easily insulted if he saw us or heard us giving attention to other bunnies in the house. Thump, Thump, Thump...repeatedly...until we came...and more thumps if we came but weren't petting him, coddling him or whatever he wanted fast enough. The only time he wouldn't thump is if I was carrying a female bunny, which he seemed to think was for him. Then he would start thumping when he realized I wasn't bestowing him with a concubine. He would thump even if we got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night in the dark. He was way too high strung, cute as the buzz was. He didn't even sleep too much or too well. The hormones were stressing this poor little guy to no end.

His buzzing normally makes him seem very cute and appealing.  He was going in for a neuter the day after I shot this short video. This shows the ugly side. I shot the video because some people, including a vet, said the buzz might go away after his neuter. So far it hasn't, but he's a lot more pleasant than he appears in this video.

This is a good reason to neuter a rabbit. The bunny will be easier to get along with for us and other bunnies, but most importantly he won't feel so stressed out due to hormones either. Butterscotch is still affectionate and is calmer. For the record, he was in this confined space only so I could record the sound close up. He was came out and was given lots of attention after!

Rabbit Slippers has a new e-mail address rabbitslippersblog@gmail.com if you want to e-mail any ideas, suggestions, comments, concerns or share anything. 

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