Monthly Archives: September 2008

Firstly, I am feeling a little too lazy this weekend to write or even do anything bunny. LOL. Yes, I am taking a little rest from all day bunny talk. It was a nice weekend with the family.

Secondly, I seriously have run out of things to write at the moment because all I am doing is just waiting for Charl & Mo to grow up. I am not expecting any litter until December.

I guess that I will just write some random stuff for today.

The first topic that I would like write is pertaining to having gatherings with fellow rabbit enthusiasts. I normally avoid gatherings because my pets come first for me and people secondary. LOL. Yes, I hate politics. When people get together, most of the time hell will break loose. Therefore, I prefer having a small number of bunny friends and we do not really meet that often. Mostly in chatrooms. And did I mention my pets come first? Yes, I believe that people come from all walks of life and not many would keep their pets the way others do. Some emphasize a lot on cleanliness and others just couldn’t be bothered. I shudder to the thought of getting my rabbits infected with disease and in a big group of rabbits, you wouldn’t know what sort of bacteria/parasites you might get. So I usually avoid gatherings and if need be, I will go without my rabbits. And that is the reason why I have taken down my “SERVICES” page. I am afraid of introducing parasite/bacteria to my “stabilized” herd.

The second thing I would like to talk about since I just came to know that someone is experiencing buck spraying. Well, kinda dissappointed because this topic had been discussed and I thought that person should have known better. Spraying is a territorial behaviour inspired by sexual hormones. Buck sprays to mark things he is fond of. If a person gets sprayed, it would mean the buck is claiming him/her as his own possession. And why does the buck spray its owner after the owner spent time being with a doe? Simple, that’s because the owner has got the doe’s scent all over him/herself and the buck sprays to claim the “doe” as his own. These are all very basic bunny behavior and they are written all over the internet.

There you go, another point lost for TLR for being bluntly straight forward. I really need to cheer myself up, I believe my herd is feeling the heat coming from me sometimes when I post a new topic and that wouldn’t be too good on their lifespan.

And by the way, I have swapped cages between BlueBerry & Holly Hope. Since BlueBerry’s cage is better equipped for kindling, I made the switch to get Holly Hope ready for a litter. So she’s on top of Skor’s at the moment. Hope they get each other excited through scent. LOL…

*NOTE: From today onwards, I shall not use the word FORUM (ever!), because this word brings a lot of sensitivity along with it. And please note that I go through over 10 rabbit forums on a daily basis and what I write here may or may not be referring to any topics raised there.

Can a rabbit he “genetically engineered” to die within a certain timeframe? I was told of such thing and since it is the first time I am hearing it, I am about to embark on a research on this subject.

Maybe it wasn’t a deliberate or planned purpose. It may be accidentally introduced into certain breeding stocks. But can you imagine rabbits being like light bulbs? In the olden days, light bulbs are known to last longer but these days you need to get them replaced quite frequently. This is done for recurring/repeat businesses I believe.

What happen is that these rabbits and their offspring goes through premature deaths. Meaning to say, these rabbits cannot live past a year or cannot produce viable kits.

What has become of our world I wonder. It is just too sad. I have no concrete conclusion at the moment. Shall do some read up on this and post my conclusion.

But my early guesses would be that in order to produce quality rabbits consistently, many breeders practice line-breeding and sometimes, inevitably in-breeding. Breeding of closely related specimens that is to boost or increase the good traits. Since mother nature works in her mysterious ways, I could only guess that through these line-breeding/in-breeding, beside from increasing the good genes in the offspring, they have also resulted in the increase of bad genes. Therefore, when the balance is tipped, we may get many undesired traits in the herd.

My early conclusion also includes the reason that certain parts of the rabbits’ system that produces antibodies to protect them from less deadly bacteria may be stunted or deterioted in a compounded manner when line-breeding/in-breeding occurs.

The internet has been the greatest place for me because I am able to get so much information out of it. If it was not for the Internet, I would not know about this wonderful breed.

Most of the websites that I visit are either Holland Lop blogs or rabbitry websites. And after so long, you would guess that I have visited tons of them. And today I realized that I ought to write a post about my favorite Holland Lops on cyberspace and why I fell in love with them. I have NOT asked permission to feature the rabbits on this blog so if you happen to find your rabbit photo link here and not please about it, please let me know and I will remove it/them with an apology.

1. GC The Nature Trail’s Rio

Rio was in fact the first rabbit that caught my attention. I started this hobby because of this handsome buck. I was very attracted to its “bulldoggish” face.

2. GC The Nature Trail’s Myrddin

Definitely the short ears!

3. GC Camelot’s Merlin

Again, it was the head and of course the cute stumpy body

4. THF Saynora’s Qwade

One-word, MASSIVE!

5. ELS’s Royce

Cuteness unlimited! I was really sadden by the fact this little cute buck has since passed. I used to see rabbits from ELS on their website and I love most of their rabbits because of the varieties and soundness of type.

6. GC Sarah’s Miriam

I love the coat on this one.

7. FRR Bravado

Muscles all over? LOL

8. Holland Haven’s Merlot

I love the Lilac color on this one.

9. Rabbit Hill’s Jasmine

Christina is famous for breeding colored Holland Lops and this is one of the finest I have seen her posting on her website.

10. Rabbit Hill’s Marina

Another unique color in Christina’s lineup.

Please note that the order of the rabbits mentioned does not in away way project their ranking in my opinion. They just happen to be my favorites that’s all. The conclusion that I can achieve out of seeing all these rabbits from different rabbitries is that, every breeder have an objective to work on and by looking at their rabbits, there are distinctive “trademarks” on them. For example, Laurie of The Nature Trail as we all know love to have short ears in her lines coupled with very typey body and THF Saynora in my opinion breeds a lot of massiveness into their herd. As we can also see, the TORT variety has more type compared to Rabbit Hill’s colored varieties.

I guess at the end of the day it is like life, you will never get a perfect 10 in this world. If you emphasize on colors, you may lose out in body type and if you’re preferences are the body type, you may lose some on the color. Ultimately, I am sure when these 2 collides, we shall get great Holland Lops in both body type and colors!

As for Tru-Luv Rabbitry, I have got a lot of work to do! Even Skor in my opinion is only half way there. Slowly but surely, I shall achieve my dream…

I am very envious of many people that I have came across keeping bunnies in the living room. Free ranged bunnies that is.

You might be wondering why I am complaining not being able to have free ranged bunnies in my home. The main reason is because, all my rabbits are not neutered or spayed. Why not spay or neuter them?

You must have also noticed that I always encourage people to spay and neuter their rabbits except for myself? Am I being hypocritic here?

Let me first explain why my rabbits are not neutered/spayed first. The reason is simply because they are rabbits for breeding. What has neutering & spaying got to do with free range rabbit?

There are many issues as regards to neutering/spaying that can be attributed to hormones. Common issues such as spraying of a buck and stronger odour is part and parcel of keeping unaltered rabbits. But both doe and buck share the same problem. They mark their territory with their poops!

Therefore, the main reason I cannot free range most of my rabbits is because of the effectiveness of toilet training. Although Skor uses his litter tray, he still marks with his poo all over the place and worst still, if there is even a drop of pee (of another rabbit) in the area where he is, that area will be filled with poop pellets and pee.

As for why I do not get them neutered/spayed, I must first explain about my passion for these rabbits. Let’s just put it as I caught the “show” bug although there is no show in Malaysia. I am sure most of you as a young child, has come across these vending machines that dispense some sort of toys in an egg-like container. I do not think the toys really matter but it was the suspense and curiosity that is addictive. Yes, breeding for quality is very exciting. It is like Forrest Gump saying “Life is like a box of chocolates, you will never know what you gonna get” or something like that.

I am a little addicted as to how well a litter of kits would turn out but of course and glad that it has not turn into an obsession. And working within a space constrained situation also helps because I can only afford to make the best decisions. It is similar as to the analogy that I so often use in the past, the earth has got a threshold as to how many people/living things it can hold and if the amount exceeds the threshold, earth will react.

I noticed that in a big rabbitry with 100 or more holes, things may get out of hand because since there is so much space to accomodate so many rabbits, not all decisions are made with careful planning. If given a choice to own a 100 holes rabbitry, I believe that it would be hard for me to cull as well. I will probably convince myself that all rabbits are up to standard and end up keeping every single one. I felt that most people with big rabbitry ends up having a rabbit “burnout” which is, after sometime of excitement they just blow up by selling out. It is like eating chocolates every single day of your life and it would come a point when you will just get so sick and tired of eating, it just backfires.

So what do I plan to do when my does are over producing age? Coming back to what I feel envious about, I hope to get them spayed and keep them as house rabbits to live out their retirement.

I do not mean that I am tired of keeping so many rabbits but it is very true when some people say that they prefer to enjoy just one pet at a time. I do spend time with each and everyone of the buns but it is very different having just one or two compared to having an entire herd.

Maybe the notion of having that only one passing on makes us feel that it is always better to have another just in case?

Well, I hope that’s not the case because that has got no difference with wanting to breed our pets just to keep its offspring (hoping for similarities). We must always know that like humans, every individual pet is unique unless if you are talking about clones. And by the way, I am totally against cloning simply because every individual is intended to be different and God wants it that way. Differences are in fact a GIFT.

Sitting here on a rainy Sunday evening trying to figure out what else I could do to increase the entertainment value of my rabbit blog. LOL.

I am very happy to say that the HIT was all time high on Friday due to the newspaper feature. I hope more people drop by and the number of hits remain constant.

Realized that most people are not that keen of reading older posts. It is normal for the general public to read the most recent posts. Honestly, I miss reading Laurie Stroupe’s blog. So many things has happened the past few months especially devastated to have read about so many sell outs.

Wonder how it really feels being a rabbit sometimes. Does the word finance means anything to them? Will they know if they are in a economic downturn besides through getting cheaper hay or pellets? LOL…

I really do hope there are Holland Lops in Heaven. Maybe in hell too in case I go there.

At this line that I am typing, I have yet to figure out the title for this post. LOL.

By the way, I have got a feeling that Mo and Charl’s ears are growing longer. I may see hideously long ears next week. I have since turn on the fan full blast 24/7 hoping that their ears do not grow any longer. If not, I might get another repeatition of BlueBerry’s litter. Hope that doesn’t happen but if it does, then it would be very apparent and obvious that heat does contribute to the ear length.

Ms. D has informed that Tridus has 8.5 cm long ears while 10 weeks old Tinga’s ears are at 9 cm already. It is not likely that Tridus’ ears will grow any longer while I hope that Tinga’s ears will stop growing all together.

I hope the fast ear growth has nothing to do with heat and solely controlled by genetics. The logic SB gave me was she thinks that heat does cause the speed of ear growth but the length should be govern by genetics. This means that there will always be a threshold and limit to the final ear length just that they get to the limit faster under warmer environment.

I just heard from Lindsey and she is in distressed over her JW Follie which is having diarrhea and apparently a bloody one as well. Hurricane Ike has just hit her area and power has just got back on. All of her rabbits are fine except for Follie.

Please pray for all rabbits and owners affected.

I hope Follie bounces back!

For those having the same problem, please follow this link for an emergency diarrhea treatment http://www.thenaturetrail.com/Holland-Lops-and-Diarrhea.htm.