Animal Lovers Web Blog

Wow, what a day we’ve just  had! My daughter and I went to the Bradford Small Animal show in Harrogate in the  UK today. It is an annual event where they competetively show rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters and some other animals. We had never been to a small animal show before so we didn’t know quite what to expect, but we really enjoyed the day and we had an absolute ball.

It was held in two massive halls where around 3000 small animals, mostly rabbits but with a fair number of guinea pigs and much fewer hamsters were on display. We were free to walk around and view all of the animals and  we could also get up close and handle the animals, when they were on the judging tables. The animals owners and the judges were extremely approachable and willing to chat and give information regarding the animals, which made for a real friendly and informative atmosphere and they were also happy for people to take picture of their animals.

As well as the show animals themselves there were a number of trade exhibitons with animal feedstuffs, housing and various other animal related bits and  pieces. Around the perimeter of the halls there were also stalls manned by various animal breed clubs and societies, where the club members were happy to discuss their particular breeds of interest. There was even a television celebrity vet, Matt Brash from ITV Yorkshire’s Zoo Vet At Large who was also very approachable and happy to chat with the attendees including ourselves and my daughter even had her picture taken with him, and, of course, we had to buy his book, which he duly signed!

Although rabbits outnumbered all of the other animals by some margin and there was a fantastic array of beautiful rabbit breeds of all sizes shapes and colours, I particularly enjoyed the guinea pigs. I saw for the first time a number of guinea pig breeds that were new to me, including my personal favourite the Lilac Fox. This was a stunningly coloured smooth coated guinea pig with lighter eye circles and a very light coloured belly. I spoke in some detail with the breeder and look forward to hearing more about this breed from him and quite possibly acquiring one or two to add to our current pair of guinea pigs.

The only dissapointment for us was how few hamsters there were on show and nearly all of the Syrians were just curled up in a ball in their cages trying to get some sleep. Maybe what the Syrian hamsters need is a nocturnal small animal show to really shine! There were quite a few dwarf hamstes and a few long haired Syrians, which were nice as we hadn’t seen to many of them in the flesh before. Anyway it certainly made a great day out and we have already pencilled in it in the diary for next year and plan to find a few more similar small animals shows to attend in the spring and summer.

John 

Animal Lovers Web.com

Our baby chicks are almost eighteen weeks old now and not really babies at all anymore!  The two hens, Amber and Velvet are now officially “Point of Lay Pullets”, which means that they will be laying their very first eggs anytime soon.  Ordinarily, we’d be more than happy to have the extra eggs as, usually in the winter, egg production is markedly reduced. Unfortunately someone forgot to tell our other hens this fact!  It has been a pleasent surprise to still be enjoying almost full capacity egg production (i.e. 3 or 4 per day!) from our gorgeous birds, despite the freezing temperatures and what seems to be constant icy rain. 

It’s going to be tricky spotting exactly when Amber and Velvet do start to lay, as all the hens seem to have adopted a special area of their own in one of our barns as their new nesting area.  Usually, each morning, they will all take turns to sit on any laid eggs and plop one out themselves.  We could do with a webcam being honed in to see if either of the new chicks join in the morning ritual! 

Our laying hens all produce very similar sized brown-coloured eggs.  Maybe if we’re really optomistic, Amber and Velvet might surprise is with something a bit different, just to show us how unique they are!

Both of our young hens are still a little smaller than their older hen-house mates and have some growing yet to do.  Primrose, our third baby chick, is gradually changing into a magnificent mini-me cockeral version of his dad, Tiger. Our concerns about infighting between the two cockerels are yet to be realised. Primrose seems to be happy having Amber and Velvet to himself and Tiger tends to leave them alone - he has five other girls to keep him occupied! We suspect feathers may fly soon if Primrose’s pending sexual maturity causes him to encroach on Tiger’s territory - we’re going to have to keep a close eye.

Despite Primrose’s less than masculine name, he is starting to try and “cock-a-doodle-do” to emulate his dad’s decibel-crunching cries every morning..afternoon..evening…!  It is rather a pathetic effort at the moment and he does have some serious competition, poor soul.  His attempts rather remind us of a pubescent boy’s struggle to control a breaking voice, all to no avail!

All our chickens are looking a bit bedraggled, windswept and weatherbeaten at the moment.  They can’t resist trying to dig up juicy worms and bugs in their waterlogged grassy run even when there’s a force 10 gale blowing outside.  We’re sure they probably have the same opinion of our appearance really.  Farm life goes on, whatever the weather and chickens poop won’t clean up itself.  However, the reward of a delicious runny egg curtesy of our beautiful, friendly feathered friends makes it all worth while!

Diane

AnimalLoversWeb.com

The on-going saga of our male dwarf lop rabbits reluctance to get on in a civilised manner has finally been resolved and all parties seem to be happy at last!  Despite three costly castrations and our many attempts to integrate our male rabbits, we were resigned to the fact that our bunnies just preferred the single life. 

For the past four months or so, the rabbits have had to put up with less than perfect accommodation, rotating between hutches, our dog run (minus the dogs!) and one of the stables to ensure that they all had equal access to grass and a good run around at some point each day.  Like most rabbits, they really didn’t enjoy constantly being picked up and moved and we realised that, once it became clear that integration was not on the cards, we needed a more permanent solution to our rabbit housing problem.

Over the Christmas period, we have invested in three really spacious rabbit runs, complete with their own little houses for sleeping quarters.  Two of the runs arrived just after the new year and our rabbits Charlie and Snowy have enjoyed their new accommodation, much to the annoyance of poor Phil, who had to wait for delivery of the final run until today.  The rabbits still all get to see each other as the runs are housed together in one of the stables but they (and we!) no longer have to endure the thrice-daily ritual of trying to avoid being caught - even if it was for their own good.

Our rabbits seem much happier (well as happy as a rabbit can look) with their new living arrangements.  The rabbit runs  are spacious enough for us to sit in with them and it’s great seeing how much more relaxed they are in our company.  It’s lovely to see them hop over and take a carrot from our hands or have the confidence to jump over to sniff us out! 

Each rabbit has their own corner litter tray, although Charlie seems to think his new wooden house makes a much better toilet at this stage.  Phil and Snowy have obviously read the rabbit care book and realise that rabbits can be toilet-trained and are really good at using the tray.  It’s going to mean that we get to spend much more quality bunny-friendly time with our rabbits as cleaning out will be less time consuming, not to mention the many hours over the past few months of rabbit catching that can be much better utilised for rabbit cuddling.

Diane

www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

After our bad experience at trying keeping male rabbits together, it should not really have come as a surprise to find out that our boy baby dwarf hamsters were no longer the best of friends.

At six weeks old, we had finally mastered  sexing dwarf hamsters and all of our baby hamsters had been accurately identified as boy or girl hamsters and separated into two cages.  Out of an initial litter of seven, we found that the boys outnumbered the girls by five to two, but as we expected a couple of the males to be going to a new home shortly, we left them to enjoy each others company for a little while longer.

It became apparent that all was not well over the weekend as increasingly worrying screeches and squeals emanated from the boys cage.  We weren’t sure whether it was initially just over boisterous play (ever the optimist!) but closer observation lead us to single out a rogue hammy who seemed to get his kicks out of terrorising the other boys.  Clearly he preferred his own company and, once presented with a new bin cage of his own, peace was restored to the boys quarters again.

Our confidence that the boy dwarf hamster’s new-found harmony would last through the New Year was unfortunately short lived.  An ear-piercing squeal this evening sent us rushing to find one of the boys blood-soaked with bites to his nose, several puncture wounds on his back and other wounds to his feet and abdomen.  He was a very sorry and ragged mess.  We quickly assembled an old cage and, following some TLC, left him alone to rest and hopefully recover from his ordeal.

We’re not sure if he was the result of an ambush by the other 3 dwarf hamsters,  they all looked remarkably unscathed and the hamster which was attacked had been a late addition to the boys cage due to difficulty sexing him accurately.  We just need to hope that the remaining males continue to get along or we’ll be over-run with cages, never mind hamsters!