Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Most Humane Post

First and foremost, I would like to wish all Muslim readers a blessed Eid and safe travels for all.

I reckon that this will be the least animal related post I have written in almost 8 years of blogging. The only part of this post that is closest to be related to animals would be to share this article that was shared by a fellow bunny friend this morning entitled “The Rescue Religion“. I must also mention that I received a distress call about a bunny going off feed while I was out of town yesterday and it troubled me not being able to help. The good news is, another bunny friend rendered help and I last heard the bunny is now doing fine.

And then throughout today I was bombarded with many articles, videos and discussion about various issues – slavery, war, apostasy and martyrdom. I can safely conclude that humanity is in dire need of help and rescue.

We prefer to turn a blind eye on issues nearest to home most of the time. We have grown to be very self-centered and selfish. We have lost hope in humans is what we tend to tell ourselves. Humans are distrustful and manipulative, I rather spend my entire life dedicated to animals. A dog will love me unconditionally and will always obey my commands. It will always greet me with happiness whenever I come home from work. For companionship, I can never find fault with a dog (except for those in the show ring for non-conformance of “breed standards”).

The reality is, we tend to shift our focus from issues and we “run” away.

We run away from the homeless….

And we are unaware of what we do not see on the surface….

So often we ask ourselves – Why am I not born into riches?

You see, there is more to it than material things that satisfy our ever hungry pleasures. Over time we have exploited our wants rather than needs to become very selfish beings. The root of all these traces back to nothing but greed and for greed we are willing to sacrifice lives. We are so engrossed into pouring our every ounce of energy to arrive at our wayward goals so much so that the steps taken become religion-like. It becomes an obsession.

Like everything else in this world be it war, slavery, fanaticism and bigotry, all these can be avoided if only we can put together a pinch of acceptance with a fair amount of moderation. Perhaps, our purpose in life is not to say or do what is politically correct but say, do and stand by what is right. How does all these affect me? Seeing and reading about all the unfortunately lives, I cannot help but to feel grateful that I am not born into anything less than what I have at this point in time.

And how does it relate to rabbits?

Let’s bring ourselves back to the past when the only rabbits we see and know of are those white ones with ruby (or red) coloured eyes. We did not have much choices when it comes to raising a pet rabbit. Let’s relive the moment we first set eyes on the Holland Lop rabbit. It was new, it was fresh and most importantly it was cute!

Likewise, if all a child have been exposed to is only the sound of war, violence, cruelty, abuse and ridicule, how would he or she know the taste and meaning of peace? Is peace even a choice? Truly, what we are unaware of, might be the life we might have lost.

We are called to be childlike – always trusting and comforted but not childish to always want everything we desire. To be grateful is knowing that it could have been worse and if you are able to read this, most probably in the comfort of your desk, consider yourself lucky and blessed!

IMG_2231 (Small)

Advertisement

1 Comment

Filed under Random Topics, Thoughts

Premium Hamster Food

AmberStand

For those of you who keep hamsters or gerbils as pets, you might be interested in this new premium quality food. Priced at only RM 12.80 for 400g, it definitely pack a punch.

GPHam400_1

 

In case you are wondering, that’s Amber – my daughter’s pet hamster and she was the sweetest little Sapphire hammie. She was made beautiful by this wonderful product.

You can now purchase here.

Leave a comment

Filed under Announcement, For Sale, Recommendations

God Bless Your Souls

I would like to convey my deepest condolences to all affected by the MH17 tragedy. We mourn and words cannot express how devastated this has caused all of us.

It all boils down to the judgment and decision of one person. I hope by now the person who pressed the button to launch that missile will at least have a sense of remorse in his/her heart that we have lost over 200 talents from around the world. They are sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends, grandparents and most of all, individuals with lives and souls. Why can’t we all take responsibility and say NO when it is wrong. It all boils down to us as individuals to choose RIGHT and do the RIGHT thing!

When the people of the world no longer appreciates the beauty life has to offer, heaven is filled with more goodness and beautiful people.

image

I pray that God will bless the souls of all who have perished in this tragedy and may comfort bestowed unto their fakily and friends.

To Malaysia Airlines and its staff, you are the symbol of Malaysian Hospitality and Malaysians will always be proud of you. You have my unwavering support. Stay strong!

Leave a comment

Filed under Obituary, Rainbow Bridge

Temperament

Breeding for sound temperament should always be one of the objectives any breeder should strive for. Temperament is not only imprinted genetically but can also be achieved through proper handling and interaction with your pet rabbits.

So here’s joining the bandwagon for this week’s hottest/trending incident. I dedicate this one to Uncle Sim – kudos for keeping your cool!

SoundQuality

2 Comments

Filed under Ramblings, Random Topics, Thoughts

The Dwarf Problem

If you have done enough research about dwarf rabbits, you will understand that it is all about the combination of a normal gene and a dwarf gene. If you are a breeder of dwarf rabbits, you might have produced “peanuts” throughout the years. I stumbled across a video about Stress Management tonight and for those of you who might be interested, you can watch it here:

I thought it was a very interesting talk and what made it more interesting is when she spoke about the stress hormone called Oxytocin. There was this invisible light bulb that suddenly brightened up on top of my head and went DING!

It made perfect sense when you put the pieces together. Just let me explain the pieces and you should be able to put the puzzle together after my explanation. Throughout the years I understood that breeding a true dwarf (half normal and half dwarf) to a true dwarf (half normal and half dwarf) will often produce a FULL dwarf (half dwarf and half dwarf). Some call the the deadly double dwarf genes a.k.a. peanut. Peanuts usually suckle but their growth are extremely stunted and to a point they just fade/waste away.

The reason that peanuts are extremely stunted is because of damaged or abnormal pituitary gland. You may want to read up on pituitary dwarfism and its effect on the affected organism.

The speaker Kelly mentioned that Oxytocin is produced by the pituitary gland. Over the years I have also seen does with retained kits and other breeding problems. Today, I have reasons to believe that the dwarf gene could be the cause of these problems. Perhaps the pituitary gland is not efficient enough to produce enough Oxytocin for the doe to go into labor thus causing retained kits?

I hope by now you should be able to understand the relation between the desire for dwarfism and the effect of the gene that may cause damage to the most crucial organ that produces a very important stress hormone. And the difficult challenge for dwarf rabbit breeders is to ensure rabbits used for breeding have healthy pituitary gland and I believe some are already successful since they have no problem breeding a true dwarf to a true dwarf while keeping a healthy birth rate. Another way to increase the chances would be to breed a true dwarf buck to a normal doe which has been the desired breeding practice.

I found it amazing that the video has nothing to do with rabbits but still I am able to come to the conclusion in terms of rabbit breeding. That shows how much of my brain is made up of rabbits…

Leave a comment

Filed under Thoughts

Make Your Own Bunny Mansion

Something came to mind this afternoon but I cannot seemed to recall what it was. I guess memory is failing me at the moment. I thought it was quite interesting to share.

Had an exhausting day building a few bunny mansions for the spoilt “BunBrats” and thought it will be good to share with those who are interested in building one. The problem with most pet cages in the market is that they are not built specifically for rabbits. Perhaps I should say that the problem lies in the rabbits – they like to relief themselves at a certain corner of the cage. The cages in the market do not offer protection against spills when bunnies lift their rear end towards the edge of the cages and “shooting” pee outwards. In order to solve this problem, most people use pee guards to be fixed around the internal edges of the cages but that further reduce the space in the cages. Instead, I prefer to build a “giant” pee guard that surrounds the cage itself. I have tried this method before and found that it is effective. Not sure why but today I was inspired to revamp the “bunny space” and wanted to give the bunnies larger roaming space. I found a large play pen with a bottom tray and realize that it will fit the vision I have on mind.

Here is a list of materials that you will need to build a bunny mansion:

1) General Clear Sealant

20140705_161125

2) Chloroplast boards

3) Duct Tape

4) Large Cage

5) Soft Litter Bedding

6) Toys & Wooden House

20140705_161118

7) Tools – Scissors/Measuring Tape/Long Ruler

8) Cable ties

Firstly, I had to combine two large chloroplast boards to be able to accommodate the cage dimension. In order to combine two or more boards together, I have to ensure that there will not be any leakage and this is why we need general sealant to be applied in between the two boards. I started off combining the two boards by sticking them together with the duct tape on one side, turn the boards around, applied the sealant and continue covering the gap with the duct tape. I left the sealant to dry while I clean cages.

After the sealant is dry, I placed the cage tray to measure the excessed board that I can fold to make a larger “tray”.

20140705_175159

Once I have done that, I cut and fold the excessive board and bind together with cable ties.

I place the cage on top of the chloroplast tray, added bedding, place the feeding bowls and water bottles in before releasing the bunnies into their new mansion.

20140705_172159

I believe I made a few bunnies really happy today.

20140705_173619Actually, now I remember what I wanted to share. It is pertaining to the word “motion”. Not passing motion as in “pooping” but when things seemed impossible, the most important is to take action. By taking action it will get things started. The reason why I had this thought was because, often times, we tend to put things on hold and procrastinate. And it feels harder to start the engine again when we finally find the time. No matter how small the effort, we should just take small steps.

I started off this morning with a little idea and I ended up spending 5 hours working for the bunnies. The first step was getting the cage and the rest as they say, is history – LOL!

 

3 Comments

Filed under Bunny DIY