You Have To Feed Them What?

Well, we've had our little bunny boys for more than two weeks and boy has it been a learning experience. We found several good websites to walk us through caring for orphaned cottontail rabbits. Most of them were not very positive about our success, but we did learn a lot. I'm glad I didn't believe them or we would have given up on these little fuzzy guys a long time ago. I won't go into all the details, but the most interesting and disturbing thing that I learned was that rabbits eat their own poop. Not only that - all rabbits poop two different types of poop. A regular poop - like the little pellets that you find in your yard and then a night time poop that is dark, gooey and gross. Well, the dark, gooey, gross one is the one they eat! Who knew? This provides some sort of enzyme that they need in order to properly digest food. My friend called me and said, you have to find this poop - the website says they will die without it. So, I had to call a friend who owns a rabbit and ask to "borrow some poop". I know she thought I was crazy, but she was a good sport. She did crack up about this and swore that she wouldn't tell "many" people about this. So I gathered what I needed and proceeded to feed it to my little friends. How weird and wrong - I've been feeding these little guys 5 or 6 times a day with an eye dropper and now, I'm trying to shove this gross stuff in them. It just felt wrong. But, they did manage to eat some. Apparently this poop is only good when it is fresh, so I did try to harvest some poop another day, but her rabbit must have been busy eating it before I arrived. In any case, my little guys seem to be making their own and I'm off the hook on feeding them that sort of stuff. They are now eating grass and drinking water and I'm only feeding them formula twice a day. We think they are about ready to release back into the wild. Just not around here - I would be devastated to find one of our sweet dogs munching on these little cuties. It has been quite an experience. I have a couple of adorable recent pictures, I'll post them next time I have access to high speed.