Chillin' with the girls

Spa day

Manicures, pedicures, and hair styling.  That's how I am going to think of it, as bunny spa day, rather than the actual livestock wrasslin' mess that it was.  This shirt was new and clean when I went out today.
I thought Antonio was going to gnaw a hole straight through the shirt and into my spleen!

This is why I am always buying new (to me) t-shirts at Goodwill and the Bethesda Thrift Store because Antonio is so hard on my clothes.

Then I accidentally clipped off too much of one of Cherry's back toenails.  Klot to the rescue!

She got over it, though, and was playing with her toy later on.  It started out as a ball of wicker and twine yesterday at this time and this is what it looks like today.

Haircuts!

So the heat prompted me to come home from working at the library today and give everyone a haircut!

The girls are not the most cooperative of hair salon clients.  Drew is relaxing in the background because they took a lot of convincing to sit still, turn over and let me at them with the child safety scissors.  I saved a bunch of the hair.

Antonio was, once again, far more relaxed and accepting of his haircut.  I didn't snap a picture of him because I got tired by the end of the session but he was even calm when I was trimming away mats from around his manly parts. :-)

Drew was surprised to see how much chocolate is in Cherry's wool when it is trimmed back because the guard hairs are so white.

Compare that to the "before" photo.

Hopefully, they all feel a little cooler now.

Health update

We weighed everyone on the new scale today.  Cherry weighed in at 5 lb., 8 oz.; Lizzie weighed 5 lb., 3 oz.; and Antonio weighs 5 lb., 10 oz.  The girls have really caught up!  Remember that box of Antonio's wool that I posted earlier?

We completely filled it and I weighed it. 1 oz.  That's right, you read it correctly, 1 oz.  It filled a box  that is 12" x 10" x 4" and it barely tipped the scale.  Crazy!  I'm giving it to a co-worker that does handspinning to experiment with.  We're still learning about harvesting and separating the wool so I just wanted someone to play around with it and tell us how it works out.

New tools!

We got our latest order from KW Cages this week.  A new scale so we can weigh our bunnies and our wool, a blower to groom them with, and a tattoo kit for new babies in the fall.  It was plenty warm out today but the rabbits needed grooming so we tried out the new blower.

The girls seemed to like it right away so I just held them on Drew's lap while he blew out all the hay and debris from their wool.  Antonio was another story so I held him while Drew blew him out.  I had Drew take a picture.

It's pretty powerful and they looked good when we were done.  Unfortunately, Antonio had matted up quite a bit on his underside so I spent 20 minutes working out mats.  At first, he was opposed to being on his back, but eventually he relaxed and lay quietly.  It was pretty bad but I got a new tool!  I read about it on another rabbit owner's website.  It's a Safari Mat Remover for dogs and, boy, does it work slick.

It's got curved blades and you can just work it into the mat, turn it, and gently pull it apart.  There was quite a bit of wool debris when we were finished.

Yesterday, I planted a few containers with herbs and greens for the bunnies, in hopes of supplementing what we buy.

After planting two kinds of parsley, mustard, and a mesclun lettuce variety pack, I hosed down the poop trays and swept out the enclosure.  A job well done, which deserved a beer.  Which I had, sitting in that reclining lawn chair you can see in the background. :-)

We got our second shipment of red wigglers.  The first batch died off, probably because the nights were so cold.  I installed the new ones and hope that they will start composting the rabbit droppings.  Lunsford's Fluffy Bunnies Garden Gold!

Mother's Day

We spent the afternoon outside with all the animals, just hanging out.

It was fairly hot and humid so everyone was taking it easy.  Otis, of course, had to stay on the outside of the kennel, but Milo is allowed to interact with the rabbits.  It was Milo's first time in the kennel, on the grass, so he really wasn't all that interested in the rabbits anyway.

The girls get to play with each other, but Antonio has to play by himself, so I think a little time with Milo and Otis hanging around was nice for him.

It's hard to see the truly bad haircut I gave Antonio yesterday while experimenting with blunt-tip children's scissors.  Sure the YouTube video says it is perfectly easy but I could have chewed the hair off faster and with more accuracy.  Geez!