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bunnyofdoom posted:When should I get Harriet spayed? She's only 5 months old It depends on size and weight, so while 5-6 months is common, your vet will tell you specifically when he feels comfortable doing it.
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Jul 1, 2012 21:48
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My friend is having a bit of an issue, but I'm not sure what can be done about it. She lives in a small apartment with her sister. However, about a week ago her sister left for a 5-month visit to Argentina. Her sister owns three bunnies, which normally have free-roam of the apartment (but they typically just chill in the bedroom), and my friend is of course bunnysitting. They've never been destructive... but since the sister left, they have been chewing up the door frame. My friend really can't have them destroying the place because they rent it from their aunt (who is kinda batshit insane and has the neighbors spy on them), so she's been keeping them in their cages which she knows isn't ideal. Is there anything my friend can do about this without having to keep them caged most of the time?
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Jul 2, 2012 02:52
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Get some wire grids and fence off whatever they're destroying. Also give them something else to destroy, like a phone book.
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Jul 2, 2012 14:34
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I'll suggest those to her, thanks!
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Jul 2, 2012 15:36
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My bunny has a name now! It's Kahlua. Yes, I let my boyfriend decide.  Also, I notice she has some pee stains on her back feet, what can I use to clean those? I know rabbits tend to hate water and she doesn't need a full bath, would unscented baby wipes be okay to use?e: Awesome, the vet clinic I take my piggies to quoted me $160 on spaying Kahlua, exam, and nail clipping. Not bad! Hardwood Floor fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jul 2, 2012 |
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Jul 2, 2012 15:42
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Bear Rape posted:My bunny has a name now! It's Kahlua. Yes, I let my boyfriend decide. Thats a really good price! Awesome job rescuing a rabbit too. 
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Jul 2, 2012 21:34
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Bear Rape posted:My bunny has a name now! It's Kahlua. Yes, I let my boyfriend decide. That is a really good price. Our current vet cost $200 to spay Cilantro, exams are $35 per visit and nail clippings (pedi-pedi!) are about $13 each. And she's worth every penny!
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Jul 2, 2012 23:20
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Rabbits tend to clean themselves pretty well so just make sure her litterbox is cleaned regularly and her feet will get less yellowy over time. Even regular water can irritate their skin so baths and washings are more of an emergency type of thing. And even then corn starch is better for getting all the nasty stuff out of the fur.
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Jul 2, 2012 23:32
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Hello! In about six months, I'm looking at taking my pets on a 3900 mile road trip. (We're moving. To goddamned Alaska.) This will be during the winter, so I'm going to have to bung them both inside a dog-crate sized enclosure for the trip (about a foot and a half wide and tall, about two feet long). Yes I know this will suck for them but the only places they could possibly have more room would be in the cargo bay of the truck (NO) or in the unheated car in the trailer (good lord they'd freeze). The upshot of the dog-crate type enclosure will mean that they will have enough room in there to have food and water dishes (the cats will just have to suck it up and eat/drink when we stop for lunch and at morning/night), and I can put down a few towels to keep the pee situation handled. About halfway in here, I will have to present them to a Canadian customs agent for inspection to make sure they're not obviously tuberculosis-ridden or secretly goblins or something. I am wondering if I should basically assume they are going to be so freaked out for the entire trip that I should keep them dosed with reglan or other gut motility medication as a preventative. Has anyone else taken their buns on a very long road trip? Ideas?
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Jul 3, 2012 02:44
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Do NOT dose them preventatively. That may cause more problems than it would prevent. Just keep the drugs on hand if you need them. Critical care and pedialyte would probably be more necessary, make sure you have them on hand too. I moved my guys from NC to WI during the snowstorm of March '07. Should have been a 2 day trip, they ended up spending 4 days in crates. They all lived through it fine. 1. Know where your e-vets (find both regular rabbit vets and 24 hour any-species vets) are along the route. Write down locations and numbers and maybe even directions, and put them in the glove box, don't rely on your phone to be able to google it for you under pressure. 2. Take tons of extra towels, both to line the crates, and to pack around the crate if you need to insulate them. Go to goodwill and stock up on 50c towels if you don't have enough. Take a few spare garbage bags to hold soiled towels. 3. Take two or three separate caches of hay. My friend making a cross-country trip carried her 50lb box of hay in the back of her pickup - and it blew out on the highway. Her phone died too, so she had to find a payphone to have ME call around to find Oxbow suppliers in the middle of Bumfuck, Ohio. 4. Don't leave water bowls/bottles in the crate full time. Just offer water at stops and at night. Use damp veggies instead for daily hydration, but don't overfeed veggies if they aren't used to it. Make sure you can find grocery stores if the veggies you pack go bad/don't last. 5. Don't play the radio too loud. That's about it. My guys didn't seem that freaked out, they mostly slept the whole time.
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Jul 3, 2012 03:37
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So I went and spent my raise on getting a much bigger cage for Harriet (at least 4 times as big as the old one), and it came wtih a water bottle instead of a water dish, that I had been using previously. She doesn't seem to use the bottle at all. Is there anyway to convince her to use it? Like rub a berry on it or something so she licks it?
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Jul 3, 2012 09:58
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Most rabbits seem to prefer bowls; I've always been able to transition them to bowls but never the other way around. Maybe try placing a bowl directly under the bottle. You can let the bowl sit empty for a few hours a day to see if she generalizes that watering location to the bottle, but you need to be careful that she doesn't dehydrate and go into stasis while she's learning.
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Jul 3, 2012 14:07
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We used to have a water bottle for Cilantro, but her jaw issues at the beginning apparently made drinking from it painful so she would only drink once or twice a day from 5 minutes straight, usually during the middle of LOST. We switched to bowls and never looked back. We use Pyrex finger bowls that are heavy enough that she can't really turn them over. Same with her pellet bowl, we use ceramic ramekins that are too heavy for her to toss around.
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Jul 3, 2012 14:20
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Bitsy's headtilt is so much better that it almost isn't an issue. I have transitioned her from bottle to bowl, no longer make them mushed food, don't give her Gravol anymore, put their real litterbox back into their cage and took all the towels out. She's still on the Panacur and her sweet little eyedrops (that she hates with the fire of 1000 suns)
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Jul 3, 2012 15:47
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Kahlua is doing great settling in, I feel kind of bad that I can't just constantly let her out just yet though. I'm thinking of penning off a small area for her to run around in temporarily until we can move her to the big pen. She seems to be mostly litter trained and hasn't peed or pooped on the carpet yet, despite accepting treats out of the cage and being out 30ish minutes at a time. also, she won't  stop  moving 
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Jul 3, 2012 16:21
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She's the spitting image of my Billy!! 
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Jul 3, 2012 17:13
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Yeah I've learned that if your rabbit will sit still long enough for you to take a picture of them, they are probably deciding whether they are about to cost you several hundred dollars at the vet's office in a couple days, or a thousand.
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Jul 3, 2012 18:13
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On my suggestion a group of Redditors from r/rabbits started a House Rabbit Wiki. There's currently people adding articles but it needs a lot of contributions. The URL is http://www.wabbitwiki.com
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Jul 3, 2012 20:12
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PopeCrunch posted:Yeah I've learned that if your rabbit will sit still long enough for you to take a picture of them, they are probably deciding whether they are about to cost you several hundred dollars at the vet's office in a couple days, or a thousand. I've learned that it could be that, or that they're just pooping on your rug
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Jul 3, 2012 20:24
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just FYI: Bitsy's bloodtest for EC came back "strongly positive". I'm glad that I got myself some Panacur because if I had waited for those results she would probably be dead right now. This whole thing has really bittered me to vets - especially in non-metropolitan areas.
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Jul 3, 2012 20:40
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So, a couple months ago I adopted a ~7 year-old bunny from a friend of mine who could no longer keep him due to allergy issues etc. I always thought bunnies were a bit tricky to keep, what with pee everywhere and chewing wires / furniture where possible, but Hermanni is actually very tidy (he keeps doing his business in just one corner of his cage where it's easy to clean) and never chews on stuff he shouldn't. Is this common, or is he some kind of a gentleman among bunnies? I always heard it's nigh impossible to train them not to pee everywhere, but he sure doesn't. I also always thought almost all bunnies were fans of carrots and the like; Hermanni used to just scoff at them, but somehow I managed to make him taste a carrot once and now he can't get enough of 'em. I am a bit worried about his teeth; rabbits do need a lot to chew to keep their teeth in check, right? I've got a bunch of twigs and such for him to chew, but he doesn't seem to care to. Are carrots / the occasional branch he does decide to taste a bit enough? He doesn't have any issues with his teeth now, but I'd just like to be sure he doesn't get them either. He seems to absolutely adore cats. When we're visiting my parents he just won't leave their cats alone unless they climb out of his reach. The fluffy one's expressions describes how they feel about that pretty well, but usually they get along just fine - some of the cats even keep licking and cleaning him quite a bit:  He also likes watching the telly quite a bit.  All in all, he's a damned adorable little beast! 
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Jul 3, 2012 21:11
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So if a rabbit is pissed at you, does it thump its feet? I want to make sure I'm not getting mixed messages here, but when I had to take Kahlua away from diving underneath the dresser, she thumped her back legs against the floor a bunch. She looked pretty indignant. Here's the most in-focus pic I have of her so far, also. 
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Jul 4, 2012 22:38
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Bear Rape posted:So if a rabbit is pissed at you, does it thump its feet? I want to make sure I'm not getting mixed messages here, but when I had to take Kahlua away from diving underneath the dresser, she thumped her back legs against the floor a bunch. She looked pretty indignant. Rabbits thump to show displeasure or to warn you of a potential threat. I'll give you three guesses as to which one you got and the first two don't count. 
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Jul 4, 2012 22:58
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Bunnies are so bratty sometimes I talk about B&P being bratty or looking indignant or Paterson being offended by the waterbottle and people are just like "huh". If only they knew what a butthurt rabbit looked like.....
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Jul 4, 2012 23:04
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I came home and found Paterson sitting randomly on top of a thing of puppy pee pads just hanging out. I realized atf that he was there to get the air from the fan. He's such a nutter.
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Jul 5, 2012 07:26
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Harriet is the same. I have a chair covering a hole in my carpet and it's placed in such a way that the AC blows on it perfectly. So of course she climbs it and sits in there, mane flapping in the breeze like a lagomorph Edmund Hilary. Then again she also scales the back of the couch and sits down next to my head when I'm watching tv. Maybe she just.likes heights. Or Archer.
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Jul 5, 2012 07:38
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PopeCrunch posted:Hello! I'd suggest lining the crate with puppy pee pads instead of towels, they do the trick and they're disposable.
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Jul 5, 2012 09:31
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bunnyofdoom posted:Harriet is the same. I have a chair covering a hole in my carpet and it's placed in such a way that the AC blows on it perfectly. So of course she climbs it and sits in there, mane flapping in the breeze like a lagomorph Edmund Hilary. Welp, I think she saw me making this post of the laptop, because she found a new way to the top of the couch. That was being me. Stupid bunny ran up my leg, chest and neck to the couch back. Thank god I trimmed her claws yesterday.
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Jul 5, 2012 10:17
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Bitsy and Paterson don't have claws. They have talons. Paterson especially.... Bitsy lets me hold / clip hers but being held / picked up is the worst torture ever as far as Paterson is concerned. He bucks and freaks out and scratches... I think that he must work out because he's 5 pounds of pure muscle. Bitsy is 3.5 pounds of pure evil which is apparently not as strong.
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Jul 5, 2012 18:34
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....Things I have learned. If your bunny is determined enough, any and all manufactures claims are nothing but lies. Untippable water bowl? They'll flip the bitch! Chewproof toys? Destroyed! Clip to secured the literbox to the cage side? I don't even know how she broke it, but somehow, I woke up this morning to find a broken clip, and the literbox in the middle of the cage
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Jul 5, 2012 21:27
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Dropbear posted:So, a couple months ago I adopted a ~7 year-old bunny from a friend of mine who could no longer keep him due to allergy issues etc. I always thought bunnies were a bit tricky to keep, what with pee everywhere and chewing wires / furniture where possible, but Hermanni is actually very tidy (he keeps doing his business in just one corner of his cage where it's easy to clean) and never chews on stuff he shouldn't. Is this common, or is he some kind of a gentleman among bunnies? I always heard it's nigh impossible to train them not to pee everywhere, but he sure doesn't. quote:I also always thought almost all bunnies were fans of carrots and the like; Hermanni used to just scoff at them, but somehow I managed to make him taste a carrot once and now he can't get enough of 'em. For teeth as long as he has access to unlimited fresh hay his teeth should be fine. If he doesn't care about the twigs, try making a pile in a different place or "building" something out of it. They love wrecking stuff and it will make him take notice of the twigs. Then again you have a weird rabbit who doesn't gnaw on everything... Best thing I can think of is get fresh willow. My rabbits LOVE those. quote:He seems to absolutely adore cats. When we're visiting my parents he just won't leave their cats alone unless they climb out of his reach. The fluffy one's expressions describes how they feel about that pretty well, but usually they get along just fine - some of the cats even keep licking and cleaning him quite a bit: Letting rabbits around predatory animals is not good. Even if they don't seem afraid of them. It only takes a small moment to go terribly wrong and it doesn't even have to be something the cat does intentionally. Even if the rabbit seems the dominant one. They can and have been known to drop dead of a sudden fright. Or one swipe and the rabbit could lose an eye. What he wants is, I'm guessing, another rabbit to cuddle up to. Which might be a tall order considering this one's fairly new to your place but it's something to consider when he's all settled in after a while. By the way I'm surprised to hear you take your rabbit with you when you go to visit people and that he seems to like this. My rabbits would be either cowering in a corner the whole time or pooping all over the place if I did this. You have a weird rabbit.
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Jul 5, 2012 23:26
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DS at Night posted:I should ask, have you read up on rabbit.org about the care of a rabbit? It kind of sounds like you haven't. It's not good to give rabbits a lot of carrots. It's just one of those things people assume you do but it really isn't that good for them. I haven't, but cheers - I'll check it out! So far I've mostly taken care of him with the info the friend of mine I got him from gave me; she's had a lot of rabbits, guinea pigs and the like and seems to know her rabbits pretty well. I've been giving him the carrots as treats (a piece every ~3 days, maybe) so far. I'll try building something from the twigs, see if he gets his wrecking on - thanks! DS at Night posted:Letting rabbits around predatory animals is not good. Even if they don't seem afraid of them. It only takes a small moment to go terribly wrong and it doesn't even have to be something the cat does intentionally. Even if the rabbit seems the dominant one. They can and have been known to drop dead of a sudden fright. Or one swipe and the rabbit could lose an eye. We never let him out with the cats without us looking over the lot, of course; at least so far it doesn't seem like they get any kind of prey response from him, which might be because the rabbit is actually larger than some of the cats. The cats act rougher with each other than with Hermanni. There's also a lot of high places (chairs, tables etc.) Hermanni can't get to all around for the cats to hop onto if the rabbit gets on their nerves - they've never shown any agression. I'll keep an eye on them, still. DS at Night posted:By the way I'm surprised to hear you take your rabbit with you when you go to visit people and that he seems to like this. My rabbits would be either cowering in a corner the whole time or pooping all over the place if I did this. You have a weird rabbit. Oh, he really, really seems to like travelling - the friend of mine mentioned this too. He seems to get a big jolt of energy when we go visit my parents, exploring the house and poking around everywhere. The cats might be a part of the reason, though.
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Jul 6, 2012 15:57
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Oh yeah bits of carrot as a treat is lovely, I'd gotten the idea that you were giving him loads of carrots every day or something, but this is just fine. The thing with rabbits is that very few people actually know how to properly care for them. People are used to meat rabbits or lab rabbits who are not expected to live to a very ripe old age. There's a lot of incorrect assumptions out there. A lot of things sold in pet stores are in fact very bad for them. Make sure to get yourself a vet who actually knows how to treat rabbits and not some dog/cat vet who SAYS they can. My rabbits actually don't even want to leave their room. Sometimes I'll let them into the hallway to explore but they quickly get super shy and run back to their room.
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Jul 6, 2012 17:42
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This is kind of a long shot, but does anyone know of an actual rabbit vet in Juneau, Alaska? I've found a number that do 'exotics' which, in my experience, means I will have to argue with a vet tech about whether or not I should take away their food the night before an appointment. Rabbit.org spat out a couple in Fairbanks, but Juneau is basically the moon - you can't drive in to or out of the area, the roads just plain DON'T EXIST. Only way in or out is boat or plane.
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Jul 6, 2012 18:07
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PopeCrunch posted:This is kind of a long shot, but does anyone know of an actual rabbit vet in Juneau, Alaska? I've found a number that do 'exotics' which, in my experience, means I will have to argue with a vet tech about whether or not I should take away their food the night before an appointment. Rabbit.org spat out a couple in Fairbanks, but Juneau is basically the moon - you can't drive in to or out of the area, the roads just plain DON'T EXIST. Only way in or out is boat or plane. Maybe poke around the RabbitsOnline webforum? I spent some time finding people where I live and asking them if they knew a good vet.
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Jul 6, 2012 19:19
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Maybe call the local zoo?
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Jul 8, 2012 17:18
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Question, would getting a leash/harness for Harriet so I can let her run around in a park be a good or bbad idea?
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Jul 8, 2012 23:07
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You ever see that bit in the LOTR movie where Gollum is tied up with that elf rope?
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Jul 9, 2012 01:03
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There is a very nice park that we take Conrad and Clover to perhaps once a month depending on schedules/weather. Mostly they're just happy to sit around and eat grass, poop and be petted by passing strangers who are interested in them. Conrad will generally go and sit back in his carrier when he's had enough, which is usually about an hour or so.
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Jul 10, 2012 00:28
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Kahlua's spay is scheduled for next Wednesday!  She's also been upgraded to a bigger pen but still runs around the room twice a day until she gets tired and goes back in her pen. She seems a lot happier with the way it's set up now.
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Jul 10, 2012 03:03
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