new holland lop mommy <33

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yokairis

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hii i am a new holland lop owner and i would love advises from all of you on how to care for them what to feed them and what not and just useful stuff and tips. i would really appreciate it <3:D:biggrin2::biggrin::D
 
No food with seeds/nuts/other stuff. Only straight up pellets. Constant hay(alfalfa is only for babies). Lots of out of cage play time, and toys provided in cage and you should have happy rabbits.
Welcome.
 
Welcome and congratulations on your new bunnies!

You want to make sure to feed the same kind of pellets that they were getting before. This is to minimize any digestive problems. It's not good to suddenly switch a rabbits food. If you want to change their pellets to something different than what they were getting before, then you gradually transition from their old food to the new food over about 2 weeks. Starting with adding a little of the new food to the old food and gradually increasing the amount until at the end of two weeks you are only feeding the new food. You want to give a plain alfalfa based pellet until 6 mo. old, then some people will switch their rabbits to a timothy based pellet. Some people will feed alfalfa hay to bunnies, and some will feed timothy or another grass hay. Or you can do both, that's what I do for my bunnies. It's recommended to feed unlimited pellets and hay to bunnies until 6 mo. old. I've had to limit pellets with some of my bunnies because they were getting poopy bums with unlimited pellets. After 6 mo. you limit pellets based on body weight and the rabbits individual metabolism, but you will still feed unlimited hay, but only a grass hay. You'll want to wait until at least 12 weeks old before you start introducing veggies and fruits, and then fruits should only be done on a very limited basis and only if your rabbit doesn't have any digestive problems. Here are some good veggie lists for when the time comes.

http://www.rabbit.org/care/veggies.html
http://www.3bunnies.org/feeding.htm#greens

You'll want to keep an eye out these first few days of having your bunnies, and make sure that they are having normal poops and don't stop eating at all. Sometimes being in a new place can be stressful for rabbits, but it's good that you have two to keep each other company. That should help.

Around 2-3 months, if your boy rabbit starts humping the female at all, you will need to start housing them separately to prevent the female from getting pregnant, which can be fatal at that young age. After that they will need to be kept separate unless you plan on spaying/neutering, and that can usually be done sometimes as early as 4 mo. old. Also, when the bunnies are a little older, you may want to double check on their sexes just to be sure.

If you let them run around your house, make sure you supervise and do some rabbit proofing. Rabbits are chewers and seem to be especially drawn to power cords.

Cardboard toilet paper rolls make good toys, apple wood and willow are good for chewing on, cardboard boxes with holes cut in are good hidey holes. Hard dried pine cones are a good chew toy. Wiffle balls, grass mats, Hard plastic baby keys, can all be fun toys. Whatever you use, your bunnies will chew on, so make sure it is rabbit safe.

Also make sure to use a rabbit safe litter if you have litter in their cage.

Good luck with your new buns and feel free to post pictures. Would love to see your babies :)
 
here are some of my favorite rabbit sites, lots of great info:
http://www.rabbit.org/index.html
http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/diet.html#babies
http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/spay-neuter.html
http://www.3bunnies.org/feeding.htm
http://binkybunny.com/BUNNYINFO/tabid/53/Default.aspx
http://language.rabbitspeak.com/
http://rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=75235&forum_id=48 - first aid kit info
http://rabbitsonline.net/view_forum.php?id=9 - rabbit savvy vet listings
http://rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=53690&forum_id=93 - great litter box system; I highly recommend the grid even if you don't want to build the whole thing (check 1/3 of the way down the first page)

they eat an awful lot of hay and pet-store bags are a total rip-off... a great way to cut costs is to buy hay by the bale from a feed store (it's usually around $9-15 per bale (which are like 50 or 80 lbs) compared to $4-5 for a 24 oz bag of alfalfa or about $14-15 for 6 lbs of timothy at pet stores).

your rabbits will probably go through the majority of a bale of alfalfa before they need to be weaned to grass hays at 6-7 mos, and even if you don't use it all you still come out WAY ahead buying it in bulk. as long as you keep it somewhere dry where bugs and stuff won't get in it, it'll last you for as long as it takes them to eat the whole bale.

once they're adults, ANY type of grass hay works (timothy, orchard grass, meadow, bermuda, coastal, oat, wheat, etc... though with "cereal" type hays like oat and wheat you want to pick out any bunches of oats or w/e as the extra carbs are no good for bunnies).

if you're interested in buying a hay bale bag, this site sells them - http://www.tackwholesale.com/bale-bags-c-11.html
orders go out the same day they're placed and shipping is insanely fast, I got mine in 2-3 days.
 
Welcome! You have gotten lots of great info. If you have any questions, ask away.
 

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