Meet Amber & Opal

[LLH]

Hello everyone! I would like to introduce you to Amber & Opal! Let’s start at the beginning, my sister wanted a pet, and my mom always says you can have it if you take care of it. So my sister and I drove out to a farm 1 hour away from our house to adopt 2 bunnies from a craigslist ad. When we got there the family of about 7 talked to us about the bunnies, basically saying that there were 5 choices, each ‘about’ 1-2 and 15 bucks each. My sister asked the to show her all of the choices and then an 8 year old little girl ran off and came back a minute later with a kennel of rabbits. She then picked up the rabbits by their legs and showed them off to us. By this point I was disgusted and just wanted to save them all from this gruesome family! My sister picked 2 bunnies, one that had longer hair and red on top of the gray, the other with shorter and only plain gray. My sister named then Amber and Jasper. She took them home and placed them in an old guinea pig cage (that’s a whole nother story) Gave them a bowl for a dish, some pellets and hay. 

A few months later my sister lost interest and I’m one of those people that’s dedicated when it comes to animals. So I started taking care of them, but not trying to bond because they weren’t mine. I then told my sister about c&c grids, so she ordered a hundred or so and we spent a Friday night assembling their cage. About 5 by 8 foot bottom layer and then a little 1 by 8 foot upper level. My brothers started saying that Jasper is a boy’s name and not a girl’s so my sister changed it to Opal. About a month went by until I realized that these precious creatures were mine now, I started researching and gave them a little litter box so that I wouldn’t have to do that much cleaning anymore. I started making DIY toys for them and giving them homemade treats (their pellets mixed in with hot water, then add parsley flakes, and  honey, shape it like a cookie, then bake) 

The next month my sister left. She went off to college and she officially said to me that I was the official pet parent now. I started laying in their cage for 3 hours a day, feeding from my hands, re-arranging their entire living place into a different area of the basement. 

This brings me to present day, for the first time today Opal let me pet her with my whole hand, and Amber let me pet her with 2 fingers.  I feel like I have come so far from the first day I saw them hanging upside down from that 8 year old’s hands, but I have so much further to go. 

[jerseygirl]

Welcome to Binky Bunny!

It sounds like the buns are trusting you more and more. Well done for stepping up to take care of them! I hope your Mom acknowleges how mature that is. If your whole family is new to rabbits, one of the surprising things to learn is how expensive they can be to care for and how expensive the vet is. They are classed as exotic pets and it can be tricky to find vets that have a lot of rabbit experience and are up to date with the latest in treating them. So even though they were your sisters pets, and now yours, I hope your parent(s) will be supportive in helping you financially in caring for them. 

I got my first rabbit without really knowing a lot about them. It was a steep learning journey! I came to this site A LOT, to learn my way, even before I signed up as a member. I also found the sites people referred to on here to be very useful. Like the House Rabbit Society, for example.

It’s a shame the rabbits were handled the way they were before you got them. Im guessing the 8 year old was never shown the correct and safe way to pick up a rabbit. One of my rabbits was picked up by the ears by the man that had her. And she is a large breed… He was just old fashioned and thought this was the only way to handle them without being bitten.

The people that were there to collect her and some other rabbits, did show him an alternative that supported the hind end. I really really hope he adopted the approach.

When they told you the rabbits were “about 1-2”, did they mean years old? Or months??

[LLH]

I assumed years because the bunnies were already pretty big. If you want to see how big they basically are, you can look at this picture from 3 months ago, I don’t know if you need a Reddit account to see this picture I posted of them, but you might?

[LLH]

Either the link or my album has the picture of my babies 

[jerseygirl]

I cut & paste link, it the photo opened fine. Ive added it into your post for you. Im sorry, I think I messed up the link you had posted there.

They are just beautiful! Well, I cannot see the 2nd one completely but im sure she is just as sweet. They are lionhead rabbits? They certainly look it but they appear to have fluffier ears! The head shape reminds me of a jersey wooly a bit. 

Im told Lionhead’s often “grown in” their mane and skirt around one year of age. So, by the looks of them, they are already adult bunnies.

[LLH]

I wasn’t told what they are, I’m just assuming they’re a lionhead mix, and the one in the back is Opal, she looks like Amber but without the red on the top of her fur, and her fur is a bit shorter.

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