Good news: since I cut back on Mickey's greens and started giving him 2 teaspoons of pineapple juice via syringe twice a day, he's started eating more hay and his poop has returned to normal size. What little hair that I've seen in it is decidedly thinner in consistency and barely noticeable (as opposed to the chunks of hair and poop-chains in the past).
I've also been mixing fresh papaya in with his juice when I syringe it to him. Each morning, I chop up a little papaya in a small bowl and mash it up a bit, then add the pineapple juice and give Mickey his syringe-ful, then the bowl goes in his cage in the hopes that he will eat some of the papaya as well. In the evening, he gets a second syringe-ful from the bowl; by this time, the papaya has had a chance to really integrate with the pineapple juice, so he's getting a good dose of papaya as well as the pineapple.
Syringe has so far been the only way that he'll actually take any of it, though--the bowl is almost always untouched. He doesn't like the syringe, but he seems to like the juice well enough; he'll usually give me a little resistance until he actually tastes the juice, then it's smooth sailing. The only downside to all this is that he tends to get the pineapple juice on his ears, chin and butt from both the syringe process and from bumping up against the bowl in his cage, so I've needed to keep a wet washcloth handy for cleaning sticky fur.
A couple of other (possibly diet-related) changes: he's drinking more water from his water bottle (since he's not getting as much from the greens) and he's discovered his salt lick. Karnage loved the little flavored Salt Savors licks, so I've had one in Mickey's cage, but he's rarely touched it up until I changed his diet. Now, I'll see him licking it from time to time.
No new wabbit pics at the moment, although I just finished recording an impromptu cell-phone video of Mickey with my son. I'm hoping it'll come out good enough to post: my son had just come out of the bathroom post-shower and he came into the dining room/office to see Mickey at play. As Allan approached, Mickey hopped over to him, sniffed at him and then got up on his hind legs and pawed at him a little to beg for attention. My son wasn't expecting it, and was surprised by the claws on his bare leg (he was wearing shorts), so he lifted his leg up and tried to move it away, but Mickey followed. What followed was a hilarious kind of dance between boy and bunny, and my son hollered at me to take a video of it--the only thing I had on hand, though, was my cell phone. As soon as I can get it off my phone and on my comp, I'll put it up if it's at all viewable.
I've also been mixing fresh papaya in with his juice when I syringe it to him. Each morning, I chop up a little papaya in a small bowl and mash it up a bit, then add the pineapple juice and give Mickey his syringe-ful, then the bowl goes in his cage in the hopes that he will eat some of the papaya as well. In the evening, he gets a second syringe-ful from the bowl; by this time, the papaya has had a chance to really integrate with the pineapple juice, so he's getting a good dose of papaya as well as the pineapple.
Syringe has so far been the only way that he'll actually take any of it, though--the bowl is almost always untouched. He doesn't like the syringe, but he seems to like the juice well enough; he'll usually give me a little resistance until he actually tastes the juice, then it's smooth sailing. The only downside to all this is that he tends to get the pineapple juice on his ears, chin and butt from both the syringe process and from bumping up against the bowl in his cage, so I've needed to keep a wet washcloth handy for cleaning sticky fur.
A couple of other (possibly diet-related) changes: he's drinking more water from his water bottle (since he's not getting as much from the greens) and he's discovered his salt lick. Karnage loved the little flavored Salt Savors licks, so I've had one in Mickey's cage, but he's rarely touched it up until I changed his diet. Now, I'll see him licking it from time to time.
No new wabbit pics at the moment, although I just finished recording an impromptu cell-phone video of Mickey with my son. I'm hoping it'll come out good enough to post: my son had just come out of the bathroom post-shower and he came into the dining room/office to see Mickey at play. As Allan approached, Mickey hopped over to him, sniffed at him and then got up on his hind legs and pawed at him a little to beg for attention. My son wasn't expecting it, and was surprised by the claws on his bare leg (he was wearing shorts), so he lifted his leg up and tried to move it away, but Mickey followed. What followed was a hilarious kind of dance between boy and bunny, and my son hollered at me to take a video of it--the only thing I had on hand, though, was my cell phone. As soon as I can get it off my phone and on my comp, I'll put it up if it's at all viewable.