Hi guys.  Welcome back to Animal Wonders.  I'm Jessi and today, I have a fun little something to share with you.  If you remember, a while ago we introduced you to a couple rabbits that we had rescued and I'd like to give you an update on how they're doing.

(Intro)

It's breakfast time right now, so I'd like to take you along with me as I do their morning routine.  Alright, I'm going to get them some rabbit pellets.  These are Timothy based, and then I'm going to give them some mixed greens and some vegetables.  The zucchini and some pepper and a little bit of apple.  Now, our rabbits have been slowly introduced to produce, so if yours have not eaten produce before, you can't just give them a bunch of produce because it will cause them GI distress, give them diarrhea, so if you want to start implementing some produce into their diet, go very slowly over several weeks and then about two months in, you can give them a nice variety, and to top it all off, we're gonna get some spring greens, a nice little handful.

Alright, guys, they are hiding right now because I just opened the door to the birds and it's loud.  This is Hazel.  Hi, bud.  He's a Netherland dwarf rabbit.  He's getting close to about a year old and when we first rescued him, he had lived alone pretty much his whole life and we wanted to give him a companion and we happened to rescue another rabbit and we worked on introducing him, so let me introduce you to his best friend.

Alright, guys, you have met this little cutie before.  He did not have a name the last time you saw him but we asked our Patrons on Patreon to help us choose a name from all of the suggestions that you guys left in the comments and they voted on Earl Grey, so everyone meet Earl Grey.

Earl Grey was not handled very much before we got him, so it's taken a little bit for him to get comfortable being handled and just being comfortable around humans, being mainly picked up by humans.  It took quite a while for us to introduce Hazel and Earl Grey to each other because they were both males and they had never lived with other rabbits, so the first step we did was we neutered Hazel, the other rabbit.  Earl Grey was already neutered, so that worked out well.

It's recommended to wait four to six weeks after neutering a male rabbit before introducing them to any other rabbit, because it takes that long for the hormones to kind of dissipate.  So, at four weeks, we introduced Hazel to Earl Grey and it didn't go very well because Hazel still had a lot of--his hormones and the male behavior of wanting to mount any other rabbit that they see, so we took him back out and waited another two weeks, and at six weeks, we tried again.

The introduction process was actually pretty slow-going.  At first, Earl Grey was really nervous about Hazel coming anywhere near him.  He would let him come close, but as soon as Hazel tried to touch him or groom him, which is a really good sign of a bond, Earl Grey would panic and run away and so it took about two weeks for the whole process to kind of calm down and Earl Grey finally accepted Hazel and they've been best buds since.

Alright, I'm gonna put Earl Grey back down to play with Hazel because I have to finish their morning routine.  Alright, first things first, I have to clean their litter box.  For their litter box, what I want to do is put down a layer of paper underneath and that's just going to help make clean up, when I dump everything out and then put some (?~3:51) down.  You're gonna fill it about 3/4 of the way there and then top it off with hay on the side.  The reason that I do it this way is because Earl Grey had no litter training whatsoever and when we gave him such a large space, he was going everywhere, so I had to work really hard to try and get him going in one space and the reason he's peeing in the litter box is because he sits and he eats the hay and a lot of times rabbits will eat and then go to the bathroom at the same time, and so that has helped us.  

So to keep that trend going, I'm going to put all of their fresh produce in this little hay holder.  Now I'm going to go get some fresh gress for them as well.  Now, the reason I can use grass from just outside my house is because we do not spray our grass at all.  You have to be really careful, especially if you're living in the city and you don't know what grass has been sprayed and what hasn't.

Every day, I want to give them something new to do, so I'm going to rotate out their old toys that they have in here now and give them some new ones to play with.  Sometimes you can just move things around and that will make them exciting again.  This is some applewood that we got from our apple tree so that is a safe wood for rabbits.  I'm just gonna go ahead and let them play with that.

The last thing I wanna do is I want to put down a new substrate for their feet.  This is linoleum and it can get kind of boring so I wanna change thngs up a little bit for him.  Not all introductions are going to work out between rabbits.  I'm really happy that these two finally figured out how to work out their differences and they became best friends.  It's important for rabbits to have companionship.  They are a social species and so it's unfortunate when they don't want to accept another one into their home and their space.  Makes me happy that they're happy.

Again, thank you so much for all of our Patrons on Patreon who helped us come up with a name for Earl Grey.  I think it suits him really well.  I'm going to go ahead and get out of their hair and let them enjoy all of their toys.  

Let's go check on an old friend.  Hi, buddy.  You wanna say hi to everyone?  Yeah, what a good boy.  Guys, you remember Kemosabe the prehensile tailed porcupine.  Well, we made a mug of our Kemosabe.  Look at that, buddy, it's your mug.  What do you think about it?  He is not a fan of the mug, but I love the mug.  It shows him eating a banana and this is for sale on DFTBA.com.  You guys can get your very own Kemosabe mug and I'm just so excited to be able to have it.  I love drinking out of this every morning, it brightens my day being able to hold Kemosabe right in my hands, 'cause I can't hold him in real life.

If you guys want your own Kemosabe mug, the link is in the description below and if you'd like to go on an adventure with us every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel AnimalWondersMontana.  Thanks guys.  

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