Day 13: Here's Looking at You Kid

The bunnies have their eyes open now! Yesterday, most of them had their eyes open -- I think only three didn't -- and now they can see the world. They're starting to hold their ears up too and look a lot more like genuine bunnies now. instead of manatees (which is what they looked like before).

It was freakishly warm yesterday and that gave me a good chance to clean out everyone's cages. I put Genevieve and Andy in the outdoor cages out back, but Kate insisted on holding all eight bunnies in her lap while I cleaned. Pat Maley says that handling the bunnies will help them to be tame and I don't let her do it more than half an hour a day.

There's one little bunny that I'm sort of worried about -- and, surprisingly, it's not the runt, who seems to be thriving in a skinny sort of way on Kate's affection. This little bunny has a crusty place on his head and his right ear looks like there's a wound on it. It may be just left over gunk from the birth ... but I'd hate to think he's been injured.

Some of the others have a little bit of flakey skin especially on their heads. It seems to be around where their ears were close to their heads. I hope it's just normal skin flaking like human babies have -- not a mite infestation.

I may try my hand at sexing the little buggers today. Pat suggested marking them with a magic marker so we can tell them apart. It apparently won't hurt them and will eventually wear off. I thought it was a stroke of genius, but they're so dark I'm not sure where I can mark that would show up.

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Later: I marked their ears with a non-toxic magic marker in blue, red and green. No luck on sexing them, though. They all look like boys to me and that would defy the laws the probability. Does anyone have any tips for sexing baby rabbits? The pictures in "Completely Angora" aren't helping me much.