Bringing the forest to the rabbits!
It's slowly becoming colder and colder outside, so it's no longer possible to have the rabbits in their outside enclosure for most of the time. If we wanted to, we could have put them in a permanent outside cage but we prefer to keep them indoors during the winter, so it's getting really chilly for them now that we see temperatures like 5 degrees Celsius.
They still need to get fresh food every day, so now's the time to bring the forest into their indoor cage!
Phil (the white rabbit) sure is enjoying the birch (Betula pubescens). As you can see below, Kompis on the other hand tries out the aspen (Populus tremula) first. Despite him checking out the aspen, it soon became clear that they didn't care for it, since it was still mostly there after a few hours, while all the birch was gone by that point.
It's a pity that they didn't care for aspen, because I'm currently working on an experiment where we chop down a lot of aspen trees. We always get some leftover trees that can not be used for the experiment, so it would have been an easy way to get them a lot of fresh food every day.
The experiment is actually pretty cool, and I'm working on trying to figure out if beavers (Castor fiber) prefers to eat aspen trees that are unmodified, or if they will select randomly from the three categories; 1) unmodified, 2) partially modified, or 3) very modified.
I have a lot to say about this experiment, but that is a topic for another day. I'm currently working on creating a small series of post about this experiment, but you won't be able to read them for at least 3-4 weeks, because I want to get the first results in before I begin to post the series.
Anyway, I hope everyone is having a great Sunday! Tomorrow I will try birch and another non-toxic tree, then repeat it with their preferred tree plus another random species, and eventually we'll see which tree species is their favorite. I have a feeling that Norway maple (Acer platanoides) might make it very high on the list, but we'll see. And thanks for stopping by my blog!
Good to hear your bunnies are doing alright :) I am very curious about the beaver experiment though. Looking forward to checking out the post dedicated to it!
It's a cool project, so I'm looking forward to sharing it. Still a few weeks with field work before I can begin to process any of the collected data though.
Great :) Looking forward to the results of your study :)
Ahh froofy bunnies! It's warming up here and I'm still failing at getting an outdoor thing for our guinea pig (still haven't managed to find him any friends either :<) Bit unfortunate they don't like the easy food, guess bunnies don't eat a lot of tre leaves?
That beaver experiment sounds really interesting, looking forward to your writeup of that :)
Yeah, they prefer herbs, shrubs and that type of food, but at least they like some leaves. I tried giving the spruce as well today, and this was even less interesting to them than aspen. Oh well.
I like the grey colour on Kompis :) Such pretty bunnies!
I actually didn't know they would eat tree leaves. Always thought its just grasses, flowers, herbs... soft stuff.
Thanks! I like his colors as well. They really love the leaves on the trees, and they even use the bark to grind their teeth (since rabbits have teeth that grow their entire life), so it's really nice for them :)
Oh yea... now I remembered why they can be pests in young orchards ;)
oh hello @valth how are you?
the red eyes looks really scary are they really this red ??
Hi, @janemorane! I'm great - how about you?
And no, his eyes are only red because I used a camera flash for the photo. They are blue in real life ;)
i'm good ! @valth
ohh then they must look so beautiful in real.. thank God these cuties did not have red scary eyes..
Hehe, yeah, he looks a lot cuter in real life :)
Good luck with your experiments...
Doesn't matter what results are, it's always feels good to try and discover new things...
Thanks! It feels a lot better if we get real results though, but the initial observations are good so far, so it looks great :)
Has the white one really red eyes? OR is it an artefact of the photograph? He looks scaring!
No, it's because of the camera flash. They are blue in real life, so he does not look as scary as in the photos by far.
Ooooh no killer rabbit then. Less funny :D
How beautiful and funny they are.
Thank you for telling us about your experiments, @valth
I was very interested to know what these rabbits eat ))
I'm glad you found it interesting, @singa :)
I really like all rabbits very much. very nice picture.
I'm glad you liked it! And yeah, rabbits are nice animals ;)
all rabbits are very cute
Yeah, they truly are :)
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