The place for news, updates, announcements, and water bottle gossip from the Buns and their humans.
Hot Cross Hoppenings
February 22, 2024
****We received an amazing New Bunny Questionnaire submission last week by someone named Phoebe and promptly responded, but haven't received another reply. Occasionally our sent messages disappear and aren't received by their intended recipient. Phoebe, if you reached out to us and didn't receive our response, please let us know and we'll re-send our message. ****
May and early June are going to be busy for us, but I'm trying to come up with a manageable schedule for posting something new almost every day. This is a general breakdown of what we hope to accomplish each day:
Mondays - pictures or videos of one of the current breeding Buns, as well as our pet Buns mixed in. The current breeding Buns' posts will be on the Meet the Hot Cross Buns page, which is a subtab of our Home page. Our pet Buns' photos will just be here on the Hot Cross Hoppenings page.
Tuesdays - our hope is to add recipes, ideas, and product reviews for DIY bunny treats and enrichment activities. This is an area that we'd love reader feedback and suggestions, so please message us at hcbhollands@gmail.com with your favorites.
Wednesdays - we're going to try to be consistent in keeping Wednesdays as our All Things Bunny Blog new post day.
Thursdays - we plan to highlight one of our currently waiting-to-be-matched Buns each week. Most of these Buns are retired breeding does and the occasional buck, who have already been spayed/neutered.
Fridays - for posting pictures of new litters and baby Buns 16 weeks of age and under. We'll also update pictures of matched Buns waiting to go home on Fridays.
Saturdays - this day will be for sharing updates and pictures from our client families who give us permission to share. Some weeks we receive 2-3 updates, and other weeks we don't receive any, so this will be a hit-or-miss day.
Sundays - our hope is to take Sundays off from posting, unless a Bun goes home that afternoon or evening, or something else really exciting happens.
We're gradually going to update the photos of our breeding Buns on the Meet the Hot Cross Buns page. We haven't taken new photos of Sullivan in ages, so he was the first to pose for new pictures. Sully continues to be a wonderfully gentle, mellow little "sploot" Bun. He is very unassuming and never demands attention, but eats it up whenever he receives it. He still likes to hunker close to the ground. His favorite game is pulling hay from his rack, one piece at a time and NOT eating it. His hay rack is always thoroughly emptied each day, and nearly all of it remains in a tidy pile beneath it. He is the most mellow of all of our breeding bucks and we absolutely adore him.
Here are a couple of Sullivan's new pictures.
May 5, 2025
Today's blog post is about the meaning of foot flicking.
Nora is continuing to heal well from her spay. We hope to create her official listing towards the end of May, after she recuperates a bit more.
Chocolate 7-month old does Holly and Ivy are scheduled for their spays on May 19th. After they are done, we will hopefully place some more older Buns and save up to have Noelle's eye repaired. If Boggle or Parcheesi have still not been placed, we'll schedule spays for them, as well. Once that has been done, we'll move on to having our does Rosie and Posey retired and spayed so they can live out their days as our own beloved pet Buns.
Things have been fairly quiet around here, otherwise. We're trying to catch up on spring cleaning and making a never-ending list of projects to complete around the house. Evelyn is going to do a church bake sale for Mother's Day, then the two of us are going to take a two-day break and go on a little trip to the Toledo area. After that, Evelyn is scheduled to bake for a large event in early June, to prepping for that will keep both of us busy.
We keep hoping to be able to plan some breeding dates, but still need to place five or six of the older Buns before we'll be comfortable in doing so.
April 30, 2025
Tiddlywinks has been matched! Although she will be staying with us for another three weeks, she has an amazing new family excited to bring her home. Tiddlywinks has been given the beautiful name "Juniper" which suits her very well. She will be the bonding bunny buddy for Bear (HCB's Porridge.) It was a tough choice between Tiddlywinks and Mississippi Mud Pie, but Bear and Tiddlywinks began to groom each other and flop next to each other for cuddles, while Missy was tolerant of Bear's advances, but didn't seem to relax as much with him. Missy was, however, incredibly affectionate towards all the people with whom she spent time.
April 26, 2025
A New blog post titled "The Long, Slow Blink" has been added to the All Things Bunny Blog.
Today is Nora's spay day.
UPDATE: Nora is back home and resting comfortably. She is a wee girl and only weighs 3.1lbs.
April 23, 2025
We're excited to be able to check "create new listings on the Available Buns page for Gumption and Missy" off of our To-Do List. Their new videos are posted, such as they are, because neither Bun was being particularly cooperative. LOL.
Missy doesn't look her best if the background and lighting isn't perfect, and the fact that she's beginning her spring molt was making it more challenging. She was being quite the sassy wiggle worm and kept giving me stink eye when I interrupted her fun and had the audacity to ask her to sit still for a moment. She thumped, which was her way of declining the suggestion.
Gumption also had the wiggles and kept hopping or zooming when I tried to get him to be still for brief moments. He was a bit more cooperative. He has the wildest whiskers and eye brows that always make me laugh. I was trying to hold the camera steady, but kept giggling when his eyebrow antenna wiggled.
We so hope you all had a very Happy Easter. Evelyn had a lot of baking orders to do at our church bakery and, since our family was hosting, there was a lot of cleaning and food prep to do. That consumed all the time I had hoped to spend making a cute Easter video of all the Buns, so hopefully we can put something together to celebrate spring...or another holiday.
Bear (HCB's Porridge) and his human family are coming to visit on Saturday, with the hopes of finding a friend for him. We always get so excited to see one of the Buns, all grown up, and can't wait for Saturday to arrive!
April 22, 2025
New pictures of Nora, Mississippi Mud Pie (Missy), and Gumption have been added to their pages, in anticipation of creating their listings for the Available Buns page. It has been a busy week, so we didn't get as far as we had hoped in getting Gump and Missy's listings completed. We'll get there!
April 18, 2025
A new blog post about scanning has just been added!
April 16, 2025
Beautiful Whist is on her way home with her amazing new family! She lights up around them and becomes a completely different doe in their presence. Rather than being aloof and observant, she becomes sweetly engaging, seeking pets and playing gently.
Nick sent a wonderful update last week about Moose (HCB's Thomas) and Millie getting along wonderfully. They are now fully bonded! Millie needs to give Moose a little nip from time-to-time, to help him mind his manners, but they love each other already!
April 15, 2025
New photos of Whist (already matched and going home 4/15) and available does Boggle, Tiddlywinks, and Parcheesi, have been added to their listing page photo galleries. Enjoy!
April 11, 2025
We just added a new post about rabbits' circling behavior to the blog.
Things are really quiet. We've gotten a few NBQ submissions, took the time to respond to them, and then crickets chirp. Perhaps they lose interest when we tell them we aren't planning any new litters until homes are secured for our junior rabbits, Tiddlywinks, Parcheesi, and Boggle? I'm not sure, but it's disheartening to think that people only want tiny babies. Don't they realize that the tiny, cute baby stage is over in the blink of an eye, and that they will grow into bigger Buns who have just as much love to give? By the time most babies are placed, they are just about to enter the awkward "teenage" stage, so people like this are surely going to be disappointed if all they want is a baby rabbit. Rabbits grow and mature, just like other animals, but they do it much more quickly.
We always strive to be responsible in our breeding practices. We currently do not have the space to house more young rabbits if they are not immediately placed at 8 weeks of age. In addition to each of the aforementioned rabbits, we still have Noelle, Holly, and Ivy housed in another three cage spaces. We're pulling their listings until after they are spayed, as they are now six months of age. We will be having Nora spayed later this month, and hope to have one of each of the "baby" does spayed each month until we're caught up. We'll do Nora, Holly, Ivy, Noelle (her surgery will be much more expensive, as we plan to have her eye repaired at the same time), and then Boggle, Parcheesi, and Tiddlywinks, if they are still with us. The cost of their procedures will be added to their listing prices.
We're planning to list Gumption and Mississippi Mud Pie after Easter (we don't do "Easter bunnies") and hope that they will find loving forever families very soon. Gumption has been 100% spray-free since his neuter, so three cheers for neutering correcting that undesirable behavior!