The place for news, updates, announcements, and water bottle gossip from the Buns and their humans.

Hot Cross Hoppenings

February 22, 2024

Snooker has a new family and home! We were anticipating a long visit with his new family as they met each of the Buns, but after meeting Boggle, Hopscotch, and Snooker, he was declared to be the right Bun. He has been renamed "Waffle" and was happy to go off with his very king and gentle family.

February 2, 2025

February 1, 2025

We just received word that Scrabble has been re-named "Matilda" and is settling in beautifully. She has been very adaptable to the wide range of human personalities among her new family and has loved every one of them in different ways.

We are looking forward to meeting with an approved NBQ family tomorrow afternoon, as they come to meet the available Bun and help them find just the right one to add to their lives.

In the meantime, I'm desperately searching for a washing machine, as ours suddenly stopped working and it's beyond my mechanical skills of repair. I refuse to let go of my beloved Speed Queen top loader, but need to call a service person to try to resurrect it. We need a back up in the meantime. Please pray for us! The mountains of laundry are piling up alarmingly quickly. The bunny laundry alone is going to take two solid days to complete. It's so difficult to find something that's available, affordable, large enough in capacity, and that actually gets the clothes clean. Is anyone else frustrated with washing machine technology? :0

UPDATE...our prayers were answered! We were able to purchase a very nice where/dryer set off of Facebook Market place for a reasonable price. We're climbing Mt. Laundry once again!

While we're preparing for Scrabble to go home with her family this evening, we took the time to make an updated video of Loofah and added it to his Meet the Hot Cross Buns page. We'll add it here, too, for the sake of convenience.

January 30, 2025

UPDATE...Scrabble's new family are absolutely wonderful! We have no doubt that she is going to be a very loved little girl, receiving much affection and attention. They're still trying to land on just the right name for her, and have promised to let us know when they do. We've so enjoyed this sweet, engaging little doe and will miss her. Her siblings will keep us on our toes, however, so we won't have time to miss her too much. <3

January 29, 2025

Today's blog post delves into further detail with Tips and Tricks of Litter Box Training.

If any of our HCB clients who have already been matched with an HCB doe and have already had her spayed is interested in a buck for bonding, we are still looking to place Loofah. Because we haven't been successful in our search for an affordable spay/neuter vet while our regular resource in searching for a new doctor, we will place him with a responsible family or individual who will keep him separated from their doe until he has been neutered and is fully recuperated (about 6-8 weeks post-neuter.) We haven't created a formal listing for him yet, as we don't want to offer him to unknown people who might be searching for a breeding buck.

Loofah is a sweet boy, who is more on the observant side. He loves interaction after adjusting to new activities (it just takes him a few minutes to shift gears.) We love him dearly, but he doesn't have the oomph and stocky build Holland Lops are supposed to have. He's a wee little man and we want to find the very best of homes for him. Please contact us if you would like more information. These photos were taken last week.

You may have noticed that the HCB Shoppe tab has disappeared from the header. We have deactivated the store for the foreseeable future, until I have time to do more crafting. Most of the stuffed animals and baby sweaters were either sold at a church craft sale or added to Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts in November, and I haven't had much time to catch up on resupplying the HCB Shoppe. I hope that's something that will happen, but it will have to wait while I spend time doing some other home-related projects. If only there were more hours in the day for doing the things we enjoy doing!

If anyone would like to purchase some Bunny Snuggle Mats, please let me know. We still have plenty of those in stock.

January 28, 2025

January 27, 2025

New pictures of the younger babies have been posted on their Available Buns page listings! We can't believe they are 8 weeks old now. Quinoa's babies have had quite the growth spurt over the past week and are so much bigger and sturdier now.

Quinoa's babies - Parcheesi, Tiddlywinks, Scrabble (matched), Hopscotch, and Snooker

Rosie's babies - Boggle, Mancala, Rummy (now named Bugz - matched), Whist

We have a new video and pictures of Ivy today! They are all on her Available Buns listing. She is such a mama's girl and still shares a pen with her mama Henrietta. Sister Noelle and Holly have their own cage spaces, as they were continually finding ways to escape their original pen space. Ivy is a true home-girl, and will want to form a very close, loving relationship with her new family. Henrietta loves to groom her, especially around the eye area, which is why the her eye-area fur looks a little wonky. We observed Henrietta doing this to all of her babies following Noelle's eye injury (she actually needed the extra eye grooming), so Henrietta was taking excellent care of her whole litter. What one needed, all of them received.

January 24, 2025

January 23, 2025

We just posted a new video and a few pictures of Noelle, who is available for placement with an approved HCB home. Her eye looks better. She has an incredibly sweet temperament. We so hope this lovely girl isn't overlooked because of her slight special needs.

Today's All Things Bunny Blog is a quick overview of litter box training, to help you and your rabbit be prepared for great success!

Are all of you keeping warm? We had a scare last night when we lost electricity for a couple of hours, and were so worried about the Buns. They have had two heaters keeping their room nice and toasty, but the temperature dropped very quickly (this house has lousy insulation). Thankfully the power came back on at 12:15am and they were soon back to a comfortable temperature.

We pray that all of you and your families are managing to be safe during this very cold snap.

January 22, 2025

January 21, 2025

We're finally updating the older babies' pictures and videos! Holly was the first Bun updated, and we're planning to do Noelle's on Thursday and Ivy's on Friday, just to spread them out a bit and prolong the enjoyment.

New pictures of the babies have been posted on their listings!

Rosie's litter... Rummy (now named Bugz), Whist, Mancala, and Boggle (doesn't she look great?)

January 20, 2025

Quinoa's litter...Scrabble (already matched), Snooker, Tiddlywinks, Hopscotch, and Parcheesi.

January 15, 2025

We went through nearly the entire day without mentioning that there's a new post about bonding with your new Bun on our All Things Bunny Blog.

Evelyn and I gave Sukie (our pet French Angora girl who provides lots of extra wool for lining nest boxes and keeping baby Buns nice and toasty when their mamas don't pull enough of their own fur) a new haircut today. She had gotten quite matted on her chest and feet (which is typical for her). Once we got started, we ended up shaving her down quite a bit because she looked so lopsided and silly. She still looks rather silly, but at least her coat will grow out evenly and she'll be altogether stunning in a few short weeks. We'll try to get some new pictures of her at that time...if she forgives us by then. Sukie lives in Evelyn's bedroom and is nice and toasty with her blankets and a little space heater, so we don't need to worry about her catching a chill. She's such a spunky girl and brings us so much joy, even when she's holding a grudge.

We've worked our way through the Waiting List and are now opening to all people/families who have gone through our approval process. Rummy (opal buck) and Scrabble (opal doe) have been matched with amazing families!

It always seems to happen that when we have a lot of people on the waiting list, we have very few Buns, and when we are blessed with an ample supply of Buns, we have very few people on the waiting list. We're praying for many new families to find their way to our website, so these little loves soon have families of their own.

January 13, 2025

January 12, 2025

All the new Buns' listings have been posted. Pleases let me know if you see any problems. If the videos say that they are currently unavailable, refreshing the page usually does the trick. The babies are such cuties!

My apologies for the silence of the past couple of days. We were moving our eldest child to her very first apartment and helping her get settled in. It's difficult for me to accept that the child we brought home just over 22 years ago is now a grown woman, with a college degree, a full-time job, and the ability to live on her own. She is very responsible and has a good head on her shoulders, but I'll never stop being concerned for the health and safety of each of our children.

Now that the moving project is completed, we are beginning to work on creating the listings for the babies. We're hoping to get everything completed by Sunday evening, but new pictures, videos, and thorough descriptions of each of them is a slow process, so please be patient if it takes a bit longer than anticipated. We only have three families on our waiting list, so are hoping that we receive many New Bunny Questionnaires in the coming days as we wait for these babies to reach the 8 week mark and go to their new homes. We won't be breeding again until all have found their new homes.

January 11, 2025

January 8, 2025

After taking a couple of weeks off from writing blog posts, we've just uploaded a new one today. This one is about why most rabbits don't like to be picked up and what you can do to handle moving your Bun from Point A to Point B safely.

New pictures of Rosie's babies have been posted on the Nursery page. Her babies are taking after their sire, Gumption. They are a very observant, thoughtful group. Cuddles are enjoyed by all, but trust needs to be established first and foremost.

Rummy, Mancala, and Whist

January 7, 2025

January 6, 2025

We posted new pictures of Quinoa's babies, along with their genders and a quick description of the temperament we're seeing so far. These little ones will be listed next week. Time has flown with these litters. We seem to be back to our typical numbers results when determining genders; we have far more does than little bucks.

Snooker (orange buck), Scrabble (opal doe), Hopscotch (cream doe), Tiddlywinks (chestnut doe), and Parcheesi (orange doe.)

Evelyn and I checked the genders of Rosie's litter tonight. It looks like we have have one little opal buck (Rummy), and the three others are does (Boggle, Whist, and Mancala). I'm not 100% sure about Mancala (the cream baby) yet, but we'll keep checking. Little Boggle, the doe with e. cuniculi, is slowly responding to the antibiotics. The day we started treatment, she could not hop around or return to an upright position when picked up and set down. But she is able to eat out of the food bowl and drink water on her own, although her head tilt is very severe. She still has 17 more days on the wormer and another week of antibiotics, and then we'll reassess. We're doing twice daily neck massages, in an effort to help her neck remain flexible and not lock into the tilted position.

We're going to check Quinoa's babies tomorrow. They are all doing really well.

January 5, 2025

January 1, 2025

Happy New Year!

We were able to post pictures of Rosie's babies today. It was still slow-going, but not as bad as yesterday. We're holding off on posting pictures of Boggle, the blue baby with e. cuniculi until we know how he/she responds to the current treatment plan.

Left to right (top to bottom on cell phone)...Whist, Mancala, and Rummy

We added an update to Francesca's listing on the Available Buns page. We hope to post new photos of Holly, Ivy, and Noelle in the next few days, hopefully when the weather is a bit clearer and the process of uploading photos won't be so painfully slow.

We're in the process of trying to schedule a spay for Mississippi Mud Pie and a neuter for Loofah, but the vet for the APL who was safe to use for bunnies has apparently left the practice. We know that, when the previous veterinarian we worked with for several years suddenly passed away last year, the APL would contract with a veterinary service who would fill in with spays and neuters for dogs and cats and, occasionally had one who was competent with rabbits, so we could still have some of the Buns' procedures done until the APL hired a full-time vet. Now we're just waiting to see if/when something can happen.

We had been so hopeful of keeping a baby doe out of Missy, but she has had two single stillborn babies the past two times we bred her, plus she's just turned four years old, so it's time to have her spayed, for her health and well-being. We have beautiful Figgy Pudding out of Penelope, so hope to have more gorgeous black Buns in the future. Our readers may be surprised to learn of our decision to have Loofah neutered. We had kept him because his sire Finnegan is our only other broken patterned rabbit in our herd. Finn is getting older, so keeping his son seemed like an easy choice. Loofah is a petite little guy and doesn't have the "bone" and width we would like one of our breeding sires to have. As much as we love this sweet little guy, he just doesn't have the physical traits we want to pass on to future babies. He won't be available for placement until after he is neutered, so it could still be some months before he goes to his new home. We've already reached out to one of our Bun clients about him, so are just waiting to see how the veterinarian situation at the APL plays out.

We're also considering scheduling Rosie and Posey for their spays, too, as they recently turned three years old.

Happy New Year to all of you! I have been working all day to get new photos of the babies uploaded, but it has been painfully slow going. Four hours to upload pictures of five babies! I'm not sure if it's the computer or the weather, but I think we'll save the picture of Rosie's babies for tomorrow. We hope you enjoy the latest pictures of Quinoa and Sullivan's kits, who are four weeks old today!

The kits all have their HCB names. We went with a wide range of games for this theme. Quinoa's litter includes Scrabble, Hopscotch, Tiddlywinks, Snooker, and Parcheesi. Rosie's kits have been named Rummy, Mancala, Whist, and Boggle.

We've had many inquiries about the status of Rosie's baby with e. cuniculi. It had been doing okay for most of the week, and was eating well. There has been marked deterioration the past couple of days. It's head is much more tilted and balance is an issue. I reached out to Dr. Krupka again today, for a prescription for antibiotics (Baytril), which he had been reluctant to prescribe during last week's visit due to the baby's very young age and his concern about disrupting the gut bacteria at the very beginning of the bunny's life. We're trying to protect it with probiotics, cecatropes from a healthy rabbit mixed in to supplemental milk, and we're going to add a motion sickness medicine because dizziness is going to worsen. We're praying for improvement. If things get even worse, the baby won't be able to stand up at all, and will have symptoms like vertigo. This little bunny, named Boggle, is so sweet and is a survivor. It's absolutely beautiful and is feisty with a will to live. The next week will be crucial.