Sunday, December 30, 2012

The Bunnies are here!

The girls got their new bunnies on Christmas Eve. We drove down to meet a nice lady I'd contacted through a homesteading forum I frequent and she had three Holland Lops we could look at for the girls. We arrived early and I made the huge mistake of going inside the store with them. Of course the store had..You guessed it. Bunnies. The girls wanted to hold the bunnies and pet the bunnies and kept telling me that one day they wanted some bunnies! The hubby and I were able to get them away from the bunnies and looking at other things (I even found a nice wood stove I'd love for the house). I left the kids with the hubby and ran outside to meet up with the new bunnies. Hubby walked out with the girls and we introduced them to the bunnies and I told them that basically we were wanting to know which of the three they wanted to take home with us. Kailtyn said "REALLY? We get to take one home?!" and of course they picked the ones they wanted in just seconds! Arianna sung songs about rabbits all the way home! We talked about some possible names, but I suggested we wait until we got home and let them out to play and learn about their personalities before naming them. In the long run we ended up with "Captain Nibbles", who loves to nibble on EVERYTHING (including the girls toes!) and "Prince Cookie" who lucked out and wasn't named a girly name like Purple sparkling rose unicorn (and it was pretty darn close!).

This is Captain Nibbles

And this....
Is Prince Cookie
We got the first cage put up that night and put up the play area for them for a little bit, then it was off to bed and the next day we started getting everything put together. Finally, after a couple of days we ended up with this...
They have two large cages attached in the middle to make one extra large Condo, then hubby built them a "hide-away" cave, which they like on occasion, but actually prefer to sleep in the open. Hubby also built them a little ramp to go over the cage door bars and they seem to appreciate it! We've also found they don't like parsley, mint and well, carrots aren't a favorite either. They do however LOVE celery! They will do anything for celery (including climbing up part way into our laps). They REALLY enjoy Banana's but we only do the smallest amount on occasion (it's like candy to them!) and they love apples so far! Will work on the list of "likes" as time goes on.





The girls first thing in the morning Open up the play area, open the cages, check the water, hay and food levels, give them fresh everything and then put down the ramp and let the bunnies play for a bit.
Our first 4H "show" (not competition, because the girls aren't old enough for that aspect yet, They have to be in 4th grade I think for that) will be in March, so they have lots of time to get to know the bunnies and get comfortable handling them.
The girls are looking forward to taking the playpen outside once the weather warms up!





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