Ren's WILDlife 2011

[RandomWiktor]

It isn't just grumpy old men who will tell you this: no good deed goes unpunished. Ok, my husband says that I *am* a grumpy old man, but that's beside the point.

Things with the rescued dog, Hotch, have been going great. He's sweet, he's friendly, he's pretty mannerly for an unsocialized dog, and I'm really enjoying caring for and working with him. The catch? The other dogs are not loving an un-neutered male in the house. We are keeping the dogs seperated, but yesterday our little devil dog Toki managed to jump a 6ft fence to attack Hotch while I walked him out front. The poor guy didn't know what hit him; he was instantly reduced to a spinning, cowering, screaming heap of pathetic. Thankfully, he was unhurt and didn't fight back so Toki wasn't either.

I'm impressed that a tiny dog like her can jump that high but d@mnit! Now that she knows she can get over the fence, she is making it a point to do so because she gets some kind of bizzare joy out of jumping over things. Which means we need to, at the very least, put an extra foot or so of something along the top of the fence. My vote is razor wire at this point; she drives me NUTS! Ok, frustrated Ren speaking, but seriously... this stinks. It is not going to be cheap to "enhance" an entire acre worth of fencing. Training would be cheaper, but if her other training is any indication: she will behave while you're standing there and misbehave the moment you turn your back. We can't risk her getting out when we're not home to supervise.

The joys of having pets, huh?

Speaking of which... it is presently 6am. I have been up since 4:30. Why, you ask? Well, now that he's on de-wormer, Hotch is passing a lot of gross wormy poop. And that is making him need to go out more often. So at 4:30 this morning I heard a very eerie howling, which is apparently the sound of a hound who is about to let loose all over his cage. Of course, him howling set off the other three dogs in the house in a frenzy of territorial barking. Goody!


My life isn't all a series of canine conundrums, however. Today is "muck-out" day in Lucy's outdoor digs. Lucy, being a flemmie, is a big bunny who makes a lot of BIG POOP. This is somewhat to our advantage. Her outdoor playspace is an old Tegu pen, and like most old Tegu pens, it is void of any vegetation from the burrowing proclivities of the species. I am trying to get grass growing in there, and one thing that is helping? Well, once or twice a week I go out and simply till under all of Lucy's feces. It's starting to make for really rich, nice looking soil. I'm encouraged!

I will post more small critter updates later. Right now I might hazard sneaking back into bed. This is one of my few days off, and dangit, I shouldn't have to get up at my typical 4am workday time!

 

[Myia09]

Wow! Crap I think I would consider the barbed wire too lol!
Can you make it slant? Or do you think she would just use it to slide off? There are those noise "Fences" too that let out the high pitch sound as well? Those might be costly though.

At least he is barking to be let out right?! Haha.

 

[RandomWiktor]

I got the 'ol camera out today and took a few photos of the critters So this is going to be an unsubstantial but hopefully cute post.

First, this is Stargazer, the special needs crag lizard baby I mentioned earlier. I'm happy to say that with coaxing he can be hand fed, which is great for his prospects. He's also learning to navigate his enclosure, albiet with some spinning and getting stuck in corners. I'm planning to tile it soon so it holds heat better for him.

Wartortle (sigh, why do I let Steve name things??) is settling in well. The first two days he mostly hid and didn't want to eat so we were worried, but I put some mango and strawberry in his meal one afternoon and he's been VERY happy to come out since then!

Our Iguana zule is getting very big and we've modified one of the enclosures on the property for him. It's HUGE. He's going to love it

Hotch out on a walk today. He is being a very good boy so far, though he seems to have some seperation anxiety about me according to Steve; every time I went out back to work on things today, he apparently got very antsy and started whining.

Bad photo but, this is my knight anole's enclosure. I got him a couple of months ago; a really REALLY bad local exotics place was going out of business and was trying to sell off the animals. Though I loathed to give them any money at all, I got him and a schneider's skink for $10 - I figure they're out of business and the money won't be going towards buying more animals at least. The skink sadly was SO badly parasitized that he didn't survive. The anole was equally emaciated and parasitized, but responded well to treatment and is thriving in his new digs.

Another bad photo. This is Mrs. Weebles, a rescued mouse with a neurological disorder. She was cleared for any infection or inner ear causes of her persistent head wobble and occasional spinning; vet suspects an injury or congenital defect.

Finally... silly dog photo time!

You'll have to forgive Sophie's coat - she is blowing her winter coat right now. Being part chow means that she sheds enough fur to make a new dog twice a year, and no matter how much I brush it, there's always more odd tufts and loose hair five minutes later.

 

[JadeIcing]

Aww I want to steal half your critters.

 

[Myia09]

Haha Sophie's picture cracked me up!!!

 

[RandomWiktor]

Number one thing I'm liking about Alabama right now: for the past two weeks, it hasn't been less than 70 degrees out. Yeah, in February! There's flowers blooming all over our property, birds singing, and yesterday I saw the first frog of the season! It's also a little daunting/terrifying though, because it means we soon need to go about uncovering all of our brumating business animals. I'm totally panicked that something horrible will have happened and they all died over the winter, even though it's totally irrational to think so with Bert having raised them this way for the past 30 years.

I'm just hoping it doesn't hit 85 degrees too soon, as we're still not 100% restored, feeder-colony wise. I'm ordering more roaches today. We HAD a huge colony going but freaking mice got into it and ate most of them. SO frustrating. We've moved the colonies out of the barn and into the basement where we can monitor better, but I'm totally tearing my hair out about this. Last year we ran out of feeders because the people previously running the place were planning to sell off all stock seperate from the business, so they hadn't been keeping up their colonies. It was SO EXPENSIVE to buy food for this many lizards, even ordering bulk, so I don't want another year like that. As it is, we're going through about 8,000 crickets and 1,000 superworms a month for the few business animals that aren't brumating.

Having an animal related business when you love animals is truly a double edged sword. And I'm not even anything official in the company as I do not really like being involved in the selling of animals. However, I am in charge of the healthcare and nutrition, and those are probably two of the hardest parts; I need to fret over feeding everyone, and take care of the ones that are sickly. It is emotionally taxing and anxiety producing on an astronomical scale.

On the brighter side of things, the warmer weather means our local grocery has more produce available, which means more FREE produce for us. For a while all we were really getting was cabbage leaves, so I had to do a lot of buying for our own animals. Lately, however, there have been plenty of nice collared greens, mustard greens, peaches, plums, etc. and even the occasional canteloupe. Also, tomatoes, which the monkey tailed skinks love. So at the very least my produce bill is steadily declining, and that's always good.

The bunnies benefit from all of this free produce, for certain. Before I had to somewhat limit their leafy greens because it was just so expensive. Now, I can divy up a whole bunch of greens between the three of them, and they LOVE it. The occasional nibble of peach isn't turned down either. And soon, there will be tons of dandelion greens outside for the picking. If only bunnies could eat Daffodils; our yard is COVERED in them.

I think I'll be going on a toy making spree soon. We need to clean out our back room, where all the toy making materials are presently stored, because we need to move out the old washing machine and get Steve's up and running (no offense, rickety old barely functional washer that came with the house). Doing so will require moving a lot of heavy stacking bins full of toy supplies, so I plan to lighten the load and celebrate the good weather by making a bunch of fun things for the bunnies, birds, and rodents. I'm sure you'll see pictures.

If I remember later, I'll post some of the nice flowers growing all over our property.

 

[JadeIcing]

GAH! I wish I was closer would so love to go help out.

 

[RandomWiktor]

Wow, it's been a busy few weeks. I feel like I haven't updated in ages!

I have some big news to start with: Steve's sister Courtney had her babies! This is kindof a huge deal, because a few months ago we didn't think EITHER baby was going to survive - and instead we have two beautiful, healthy nieces!

Courtney, for those who didn't see my other posts on this matter, got pregnant with twins via in vitro fertilization after months of hormone shots and egg harvesting and failures at AI. She has very few eggs and the expenses of successfully getting pregnant quickly became astronomical, so we all knew that if these two didn't survive, she probably wouldn't be able to try again. So we were obviously devastated when early in the pregnancy, one baby's amniotic sac ruptured. The majority of the time, you lose the baby and in the case of twins possibly both. However, Courtney was the rare case where the sac healed enough that the baby's lung development was not hindered. Despite this, there was still a huge risk of infection and miscarriage. She had to see a doctor every few days to monitor her and the babies.

If that wasn't bad enough, she developed a dangerous and potentially damaging liver condition as the scheduled c-section date (they wanted to remove them early, but as late as possible - kindof a balance between their development and the safety of the pregnancy) that can cause miscarriage and hemmorage. And just ten days before the c-section date, her bloodpressure shot up and couldn't be controlled - emergency c-section time!

The girls are tiny, one a scootch over 4lbs and one a scootch under. However, they are doing AWESOME so far and one might even be able to go home at the end of the week. Allow me to introduce Caroline and Lilly, my nieces!

Caroline @ 3 days old

Lilly @ 3 days old

I didn't post newborn pics because they were all covered with IVs and breathing tubes and such.

And here's the proud moms!

Courtney with Lilly

Marie with Caroline.


In addition to babies entering our family, Hotch's (the stray) ability to have babies is now gone. He had the big snip on the 8th and is recovering beautifully. Once he gets his stitches out on the 18th, I'm going to start taking him out among the public as well as getting him used to our dogs. He is going to need a lot of work; he's a VERY skittish dog, and the tiniest thing can throw him into a wild panic. But, he is pretty happy in the house with us:

... I have a lot of other updates but I want to wait until I have some photos for the rest of it

 

[JadeIcing]

Pure perfection with those girls.

 

[RandomWiktor]

Sorry that it's been a while since my last update, folks. Things have been very busy as always here, and frankly I've been a touch depressed over some family issues that I'm not going to sully the otherwise upbeat nature of this entry with.

First, bunny updates! I am happy to report that I have found a simple solution to Wendy's absolutel refusal to eat hay. I'll preface this by reminding everyone that Wendy has cancer and it has been very hard to keep weight on her. So hard that I had to feed her about a cup of pellets a day, which with her refusal to eat hay was causing her to have potty problems. Not to mention it was racking up an unreasonable food bill for yours truly - what I feed isn't cheap! Hoping to find a more reasonable solution, I stumbled upon 100% compressed timothy pellets intended for feeding horses. Timothy hay is the ONLY ingredient, and they're just like the little compressed timothy pellets you can buy as bunny treats but they're 40# for $10 instead of a little 2.5# bag for about $5. I tried them out and - hooray! - Wendy LOVES them. This has improved her feces AND allowed me to cut back her feed to a healthier level for a bunny of her size, and she's not only keeping weight on but gained a tiny bit! And Lucy & Thanator like them as well for a treat, though they're both great little hay eaters.

Part of her improved body condition may also be that the spring weather here has resulted in a massive abundance of weeds and edible flowers, and since our lawnmower is presently broken, our property overfloweth. I've been giving the bunnies a ton of fresh grasses and greens from outside, and they are just on cloud 9 about it. In fact, everyone is benefitting; the tortoises, uromastyx, and other herbivorous pets are loving the nutrient rich fresh greens as well. I wish it was this weedy year 'round!

I also took a leap of faith and completely changed the downstairs set-up for Wendy and Thanator. I have traditionally always bedded by bunnies on feed hay. Hay isn't cheap to buy week by week and in the very damp south, I've been having trouble storing it in a way that it doesn't go moldy. What's more, when my schedule being pretty much ridiculous, it is hard to find the time for the time and labor intensive weekly major cleaning of the bunnies, which resulted in either waking up at unreasonable hours of the morning to get the job done, or it having to be put off a day or two until a day off from work which I HATED. So... my bunnies are now on fleece with litter boxes and I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner! It's SO much easier and both of them took to the litter boxes like champs right away. I just do a quick sweep for stray poos, empty the litter box every other day, and wash the fleece as needed. Awesome!

Sorry for the crappy picture, my basement's lighting is less than spectacular.

I need to get them new hide boxes though, hopefully today. They both decided to have pee pee parties on them at some point, so when I did my big overhaul I chucked them. Hopefully they don't take to going potty in their houses though - maybe I'll put the houses in the center of the cage so they are less tempted.

In non-bunny news, my stray pup Hotchner is neutered, up to date on his shots, a good weight... and still waiting for a chance to be put up for adoption via the rescue in my area. They are very overloaded so it's taking longer than anticipated. He's currently enjoying the company of our other dogs, who took to him immediately. I need to do more training work with him though, as he's got a jumping and mouthiness issue (often simultaneously, haha)that needs to be corrected. But overall he's a great dog.

I wound up taking in two chicks from Tractor Supply Co recently. I went in to buyhardware cloth to build a new chicken coop for my birds (long story), and one of the first things I saw upon entering a store was a chick flipped on her back totally submerged in a waterer! It looked like she was dead but I pulled her out just in case, only to have her weakly struggle. I flipped her over and held her at an angle so her lungs could drain, patting her back. She coughed up a massive ammount of water and was weak and cold, so I asked the employee there if I could take her home as she would doubtless need to be on antibiotics for aspiration pneumonia. He agreed and asked if I wanted a second chick, a bantam with a bad case of spraddle leg, and I agreed figuring they could be buddies. Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out that way - aspiration chick is a MAJOR bully. But, they are both recovering well and yesterday the spraddle chick had her leg bindings removed and seems able to walk normally.

Photos:

Primula Brandycluck, the chick who nearly drowned.

Eglantine Chook, the spraddle chick.

Her corrective braces

After removal yesterday. I'm leaving the little "cuffs" on for now, until I'm sure they won't need to be re-bound, as they were a pain to get to a safe tightness.

I probably have more news/updates but that's all for now folks

 

[JadeIcing]

Nice update. You ever need to chat I'm here.

 

[RandomWiktor]

I've been mulling over what to get for the bunnies for hiding boxes. I don't really have time to build a wooden one, and the cardboard ones tend to attract urination and chewing - which means a lot of replacing and eventually resorting to buying boxes if you can't FIND them. Most commercial rabbit hiding boxes are either on the small side, or on the very expensive side. I was starting to feel hopeless then remembered something I used to use back home when I brought the buns out to play in the kitchen - kitty play cubes!

At about $3 it's no huge loss if it has to be tossed out, but it can be cleaned with soap and water if need be. It is spacious, has multiple exit holes, and the flexible top tends to discourage the rabbits from standing on it and using it to jump out of their pens.

I put them in last night and the bunnies are LOVING it. Especially Wendy, who has always preferred having a hiding place (Thanator could honestly care less). I need to get a picture of them in their cubes - it's so cute!

 

[Myia09]

Those braces! I feel bad for thinking it is so adorable! I hope she gets well! Love the new bunny set ups!

I have a tunnel for the bunnies made out of the same material they love!

 

[JadeIcing]

I have several of those.

 

[Ameliasaur]

You have a wonderful blog.
My boyfriend would be totally jealous of you & your husband if he knew the type of animals you guys have. He's a reptile guy.
I'll probably show him your blog later.

Also, his grandma bought our cat a play cube, but I think the bunny likes it better.