Holly's Hollands Rabbitry
Raising Holland Lops exclusively with the mindset of quality over quantity.
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Toilet Paper Tube Toys - Fun for You and Her or Him!

4/28/2014

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What's more fun then watching your bunny having fun, enjoying herself, being happy? And how can you be a better pet owner than providing your rabbit with mind stimulants and healthy alternatives to store-bought treats?
The bunnies loved these toys that I made today, especially Lance and my house rabbit (they both crave treats more than anything). 
You need 4 toilet paper tubes for just 1 of these toys.
1. Take a normal cardboard toilet paper tube.
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2. Fold three toilet paper tubes and squeeze them inside the first tube. 
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3. Put a treat of some sort inside the gaps created. I used small chunks of celery for today's treat. For a young bunny, you can also use oats. 
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For my house rabbit I only put two toilet paper tubes inside the first, to make bigger gaps. If she isn't instantly gratified she freaks out and throws a tantrum. If you can't tell, she's pretty spoiled. 
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The bunnies declare them a hit!
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As Easy as 1-2-3

4/26/2014

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Clipping your rabbit's nails can seem daunting and even scary...for both you and your bunny. But don't worry, it sounds more scary than it really is!
1. Hold your rabbit upside down in your lap
2. Push the hair on the foot down and find a nail. If you have white rabbit or "broken" colored rabbit, it will be easier to see the "quick" (the blood supply in the nail). Clip just the tip of the nail. If you clip the nails regularly, this is all that will be required. In my 3 years of raising rabbits, I have never cut the quick. 
3. Sit your rabbit up and put him back in his cage. 
There! You're all done!
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The quick is the pink blood supply in the nail. These are Sir Lancelot's nails. Because he is a broken tort, all his nails are white.
SOME HELPFUL TIPS....
A week or so before you go to clip your rabbit's nails, hold him in your lap upside down daily. If he struggles, do it for longer. This will not only teach your rabbit that nail clipping is easy peasy, but it will also give you confidence and that's the most important thing when clipping your bunny's nails. If you seem scared or overwhelmed, your rabbit will sense that and nothing good will come of this experience.
Rabbits have 4 nails on each back foot and 5 nails on each front foot. Make sure you clip the dewclaw on the inside of each front foot (the back feet don't have dewclaws). It can curve and be hard to clip if it gets too long.

I recommend clipping your rabbit's nails every 2-4 weeks. 
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Litters on the Way

4/26/2014

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Hopefully Gracie and Cinnamon are pregnant and we have babies on the way! 
Sir Lancelot is the sire to both upcoming litters. I just wish I could be sure they both took or not before waiting a month to see. Ideally this means I have double the chance of a litter next month. But Cinnamon's babies will all be kept for a few months longer, and with all the people I have interested in Gracie's babies....I really need her to be pregnant! 
These are the most litters I have ever expected. I'm crazy excited but so nervous for Cinnamon. She's so small and getting older too. I love her so much that I want to keep her, but if she can only be shown (and does WELL), but can't produce for me, what's the point? I want a doe and buck that win at shows but that also produce winners. Oh, the life of raising rabbits....
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NEW Pages!

4/24/2014

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I've added some very extensive articles to the website that I'm super excited about! Check them out! 
~Breeding Holland Lop Rabbits (can also be applied to other breeds)
~Before you Breed Rabbits 
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Have a nice day!
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My Cage Cleaning Routine

4/21/2014

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A dumped tray waiting to be rinsed
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Rinsed, dried, and newspaper added
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The back corners get litter to soak up urine. Lance has litter in all corners and throughout his tray; he's messy, and the does are very neat. This is Cinnamon's tray. She always uses the bathroom in one of these corners and leaves the rest of the newspaper clean.
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All ready! Each tray takes about 5-7 minutes to clean.
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Smart Bunnies

4/20/2014

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How smart ARE bunnies?
Smart enough to get the morning paper and bring it to you?
Smart enough to learn its name?
Maybe not smart enough to do the first one, but definitely smart enough to do the second! 
My house rabbit, Elsie, is VERY smart. Almost too smart for her own good. She lives in my bedroom, and I let her run around it for a few hours a day. But when I leave the room and can't pay attention to her, she must go into her cage.
When I snap in her cage, she knows its time to go home. To teach her, each time I snapped, I would put oats or a treat in her bowl if she responded. Nothing if she didn't. 
She's smart enough that she knows when something is in her bowl or not, before going into her cage. She heard me rattle the oat bag, and drop the oats in her dish. She waits for my snap, and hops inside to munch her tasty treats.
When there's nothing in her bowl, she doesn't respond. I'll snap and snap and snap, and nothing. THEN, since I need to get her home, I give her treats. And she knows I do this too. She always gets her way. Elsie is very spoiled.

Elsie used to nip me when I wasn't paying attention to her. It was startling, though it didn't really hurt, and of course she'd get her way and I'd pet her. I've changed that now and she doesn't bite anymore. Whenever she wants to be held, pet or cuddled, she licks me and puts her paws up on my lap. 

Elsie also has a wild side. She's always wanted to be out of my room. We let her play in the living room sometimes, when it's clean, but with 7 humans in the house (usually more then that, I babysit in my home all the time), that's kind of rare. Whenever someone opens my bedroom door, she's right there, begging to go out. If you put your foot in the way of the door, to keep her from getting out, she'll scratch and claw at you to move her foot and create the opening to let her squeeze by. 

She knows where I am at all times. She's always right there, underfoot, begging for attention. She jumps on my bed and cuddles with me while I do my school or watch a show with my sister. 
She knows which bed is mine. My sister and I share a room, but she rarely jumps up on my sister's bed (she does sometimes). Whenever I'm in my room and not petting her, or not even in the room, she assumes I'm on my bed and hops up to look for me. 

I love her so much. As she gets older and older, somehow I keep loving her more and more. She was a little terror when she was a baby. She wouldn't let me clip her nails so they became claws she would always scratch everyone with. She would eat plastic and go on rampages to find everything she wasn't supposed to have, and eat it. She used to HATE to be held, cuddled, whatever. If her feet left the ground, she hated it. She loved running the length of my room more then anything.

Now, at 3 and a half years old, she's changed. She's getting older and slower. She'd rather be pet and held then run around my room now. She lets me clip her nails. She's much easier to deal with now, even though sometimes she'll still nip like she did as a baby and sometimes she'll eat whatever she finds under my sister's bed. 
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Elsie Amanda!
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"Where is my Mommy?"
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"I found you!"
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Why Grass/Hay is Good for Rabbits' Teeth

4/19/2014

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I found this awesome article on the The Rabbit House a couple days ago, and I'm so excited to share it with you all. 
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Look at those pointy bits! What do you think, a cactus, saw blade, sharks teeth… ?

Nope, that’s a blade of grass magnified a few hundred times and those pointy bits are the reason grass (or hay) is an essential part of a rabbit’s diet.

Rabbit’s teeth grow continually throughout their life. To stop the teeth growing too long and causing problems they need to be worn down at the same rate they grow. That sounds fairly logical. But what seems to puzzle a lot of owners is: why does it have to be hay? Surely pellets are harder so would create more wear or even some nice crunchy carrots – wouldn’t they work?

Whilst other foods may contribute some degree of wear, as you can see from the picture, there is something very special about grass and this makes the number one thing for maintaining rabbit’s dental health.

Most people think of grass as soft, like me, you have probably enjoyed sitting on it at some point. But grass is actually very similar to sand paper. Sandpaper isn’t hard, it’s flexible  and you can tear it easily, but if you rub it against something it will wear away the surface. Like the sandpaper, the reason grass is good for wearing teeth is how rough the surface is, not how hard it is. Here is another close up of your rabbit’s dinner, magnified 200 times. 
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The reason that grass is rough is it doesn’t really want to get eaten. So to protect itself, it sucks up silica from the soil and uses it to build rough spiky structures called phytoliths.

If you don’t have a microscope to hand, you can feel them with your fingers. Run your fingers down a piece of grass they will catch on the surface – you can see why from the picture above. This is the same reason hay is so great at catching on your clothing and spreading itself around the house. And why it is so good at wearing down rabbit’s teeth!

Pellets are hard and carrots are crunchy, but neither are rough enough to act like sandpaper on rabbits teeth. For the same reason, grass is just as good as hay for wear, even though hay seems harder because it’s dry and crunchy.

Hands up all those about to go fondle their hay to see how rough it is… :)
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Bred Cinnamon and Lance - Due May 17

4/18/2014

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I just bred Sir Lancelot to Cinnamon again. It went very well, so I'm hopeful for a better outcome this time. Lance really liked Cinnamon; I can tell she's his favorite doe! They were so cute together, cuddling and giving kisses. 
If she took, Cinnamon is due May 17, almost a full week after Gracie's May 12 due date. I'm hoping and praying for nests full of life, wriggling and noisy babies in May. Could next month be our month?
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Homemade Bunny Treats!

4/18/2014

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INGREDIENTS:

*for bunnies 6mos and up*

*adjust the flavor to your rabbit's taste.*

  • 1/4 cup of your rabbit's pellets
  • 1/4 cup uncooked, Old-fashioned plain rolled oats
  • 1 banana
  • 2 carrots
  • TBSP water to help with crushing the pellets and oats

DIRECTIONS:
  1. Preheat the oven to 325*
  2. In a large mixing bowl, crush the oats and pellets together. It helps to add water.
  3. Finely shred the carrots and add them to the oats and pellets.
  4. Add a banana
  5. Mash and stir the mixture together.
  6. Make medium-sized balls of the mixture, and flatten it out on an ungreased cookiesheet.
  7. Cook the treats for 30 minutes to dry them out. Cook longer for untra-dry cookies. 
  8. Remove from oven and let cool for another 30 minutes.
WARNING: These treats really stink...to humans anyway. They also look pretty disgusting. 

It passes the bunny test! They all went crazy over them! 

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Banana, carrots, oats and pellets.
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Ready to be baked
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The finished product!
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The finished product!
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Bunny Bath

4/18/2014

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I recently saw a video of a couple rabbit owners bathing their rabbit. They are obviously speaking a different language, but you can clearly see that they think their bathing technique was so cute and funny. Wrong. To see the video, click HERE.

Anyone that knew rabbits would know that the rabbit is frigid with fear. It's squeaks and whines? Do rabbits do that when they are happy? My rabbits grunt and "purr", when they are happy, but they have NEVER squeaked like that. And they never should! 
Rabbits don't need baths. They clean themselves like cats. 
It makes me sick just thinking of someone doing that to my babies! 
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    My name is Holly.

    I'm glad you're here! Don't be a ghost; leave a comment every once and a while! Let's talk ;) 
    A little about me - I love breeding and raising Holland Lop rabbits! I have been blessed the with the opportunity to raise rabbits in the city, and I am so grateful!
    Besides rabbit breeding, I have a babysitting business, and I am an author. I hope to have a novel published in the next couple years or so!
    In this blog I hope to post daily articles and updates on the rabbitry. Thank you for following and I hope you enjoy! Don't be shy; feel free to leave a comment once and a while! I would love to get to know you.

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