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yeah sure that looks accurate

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I mentioned Sirius' habit of sucking on my fingers lmao. He goes between sucking on them and chewing on them 🤣

Sirius being the least serious rabbit of all time, as usual.

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(coyotevvitch) in my experience, that comes from them not getting enough nutrition and/or they’re passed where they needed to be weaned. If I’m seeing your posts correctly, they’re ten weeks old, yeah? They definitely need to be weaned. You can separate them into pairs and individuals too at this point. Also! From what I’ve seen with other people, the feet come first sometimes and it I’m sure it was even out as they get older and go into their junior coat.

Oh they definitely were getting plenty of nutrition, they're on a high protein feed and they had three (at one point four, then three once their mom got moved) feeders, two of which are big j-feeders that I kept full at all times and the other two were smaller crocks that had extra just in case the j-feeders ran out for some reason, plus Timothy pellets and occasional loose hay on the side. Pleeeenty of good food lol.

They started chewing on their mom's face while they were still in the nest box and Electra would peek her head over to check on them, and she just let them do it. So I think it just became habit suuuuper early on when they were still 100% milk-fed (and we all know Electra was producing plenty of milk lmao). And then once mom was gone they were like. "Well who else's fur are we supposed to pull out??" And just started turning toward each other lol.

Initially I tried separating out the two that I thought were making the most trouble, leaving just four in the massive cage, but they still just kept at it so. At that point I figured I might as well just split them all up since making more space was going to mean putting the divider back into the big cage. Pairs would've been nice but I worry that with each of them having spots of fur pulled out, they'll just kind of compulsively gravitate toward those spots and keep at it even as pairs (they seemed to be hyper-focussing on those spots while grooming each other as it is which. Makes sense lol).

Two of them are gonna have to be ok with chilling in carriers for a bit while I wait for the new cage to get here, but they should be alright, it should only be a few days and I'll make sure to get them out for exercise a little bit each day.

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Continuing the journey of raising Electra's litter, I have discovered the importance of a doe who is willing to kick her kits asses on occasion.

You see, poor Electra's face is practically bald thanks to her kits overgrooming her face and pulling her fur out (though finally regrowing fur now that she's been separated). One would think she would react to this - perhaps she might toss her head or give them a nip or grunt of warning. One would think that, and one would be Very Wrong.

Electra likes to bully me because that's just who she is as a rabbit. But when it came to her kits?? They could do no wrong. They could probably slit her throat and she'd just lay there like "aww silly kiddos :)" as she lays there bleeding out and dying. Seriously. There came a point where they just starting ripping out the fur on her head for fun and she would just lay there fully accepting it.

Well. The problem with this is that the kits have not learned that fun little thing called impulse control. Which means they have started overgrooming each other instead. This is a very big problem because if I wanted any chance of showing them in the near future, I can't be showing kits with whole patches of fur ripped out.

It's definitely not a matter of aggression or the usual 'fighting for dominance' that eventually will happen in a litter - I spend quite a bit of time with the kits daily and have never once seen even an inkling of aggression or serious scrabbles for dominance. They spent their time snuggling each other, grooming each other, happily bouncing around the cage, playing with the plastic balls I have in there for them to toss around, etc. As tight knit as kits can possibly be. And, none of their injuries appear to be from any kind of fighting. So. Literally just a matter of them overgrooming each other.

This is to say, it is possible for a doe to be too good with her kits, I think. While I'm glad that she was so patient and attentive to them, I am not so thrilled about the effects of her being such a pushover with them. A growing litter of kits generally should be able to be kept in same-sex groups for at least a few weeks to a month after weaning (depending on cage size and individual temperaments), but unfortunately Electra's ruined that for me, so they've all had to be individually separated already. Which would be fine... if I had the cage space for it 🙄 I've managed to make it work for now, but I'll be counting the days until my new split stacking cage gets here 🙃

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Oh yeah. So. Fun fact about Electra (that's the doe who had the most recent litter of kits).

Context: She started having this issue of what seemed like producing way too many cecotropes that she couldn't eat them, and it was starting to make a mess of the cage. I thought maybe she was eating too many of the high protein pellets so I separated her out and started her on a primarily hay diet, but she kept producing all of these cecotropes that she wasn't eating. Was confused, but eventually I discovered the cause:

As it turns out, she was producing so much milk, her breasts literally got so big that she physically couldn't reach her anus to eat her cecotropes.

So what I thought was a diet imbalance was actually just a case of Breasting Too Boobily.

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motherhood, amirite

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If anyone finds his ears can u mail them back to me thanks

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His name may be Sirius but he's actually the Silliest

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Sir I'm gonna need you to calm down with the silvering on these back toes. Goddamn.

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Mad and angry that he's not allowed to jump off the combined height of the cage and grooming box and break a leg on the floor.

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Yo put those grippers away‼️‼️

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POV you are gay

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Good news bunny breeders and owners!

Lop eared rabbits and short faced dwarf bunnies are not inherently unhealthy as some veterinarians were starting to believe. Instead, these issues are more likely linked to genetics, and the fact that domestic rabbits tend to live longer lives than nature may have intended them to. It’s interesting that they are finding other potential problems that we don’t know the implications of too, highlighting that more research is needed, especially considering the increasing popularity of small animals as pets.

This study was done all on purebred pedigreed UK rabbits. While there were no breed specific differences, there are still a lot of dental issues in all types of rabbits. With more research and guidance, breeders may be able to further lower incidence of dental issues in rabbits (cheek teeth especially are quite difficult to observe without an x-ray).

“-Many rabbits had no obvious dental issues with 68.28% of rabbits having no incisor abnormalities and 55.40% having no issues with their cheek teeth.

-Lop-eared rabbits were not more likely to have dental problems but were 4.03 times more likely to have watery eyes – a symptom that could be linked to other health issues.

-Flat-faced (brachycephalic) rabbits did not show more dental abnormalities than those with longer faces.

-Longer-faced rabbits (dolichocephalic) were slightly more likely (1.39 times) to have a specific dental issue known as “step or wave mouth”, where the premolars and molars have a step-like pattern and don’t align normally.

-Older age and sex were more consistently linked to dental abnormalities. Male rabbits were 2.06 times more likely to have an incisor abnormality and 2.23 times more likely to have slanted or curved incisor occlusal surfaces. While females were 2.18 times more likely to have long first cheek teeth, although the clinical significance of some of these findings isn’t clear.”

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Shit man, this bunny war is fucked. I just saw a bunny clap his paws together and say "the ten hays" or some similar shit, and every one around him was surrounded in hay, loafed on the ground, and then started eating. The camera didn't even go onto him, that's how common shit like this is. My ass is casting flop and level 2 binky. I think I just heard "power word:thumper" two groups over. I gotta get the fuck outta here.

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In this profile, we love lagomorphs in all their forms and species.

They are the best bois

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Actually the truth is that they're super sweet

I say as Number 2 actively tries to eat my finger

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They would sell my soul for one (1) oat if given the chance.

They would sell your soul for free though.