Jolly was a little grey and white buck who hates being handled. He was born in about 2012. He came to us in March 2017 after his partner had died. He has had quite a few failed bondings but I am hopeful that he will now live with Margarite. She is an old lady but seems to have him well in hand. They are going to live in a hutch away from the other rabbits to try and prevent them from fighting. But I hoped the same thing about Myra it fell apart after several months, so only time will tell…
Jolly is very prone to gut trouble and we need to make sure he doesn’t eat any brassicas as he can’t cope with them. We also make sure to give him plenty of probiotics. Margarite also has some gut trouble so we keep them where we can keep an extra good eye on them, and where they can’t see other rabbits as we still don’t quite trust Jolly to behave.
Margarite and Jolly were bonded with Cherry, one of the big group of New Zealand Whites. She had severe gut problems too and was on a restricted diet too so it made sense to put them together. Margarite stayed the boss despite being so much smaller but seemed to appreciate having such a good natured companion. Even Jolly seemed to really like her.
Sadly they all died of RHD during the outbreak in October 2018, although Jolly resisted the virus for a long time after the does died, surviving until the middle of November. He apparently had quite a bit of resistance to it but was not actually immune as we had hoped when he appeared to have survived. All our long-term residents appear to be quite resistant, none of the others died, but Jolly was exposed to it directly and over a sustained time period and it got him in the end. We didn’t realise it was RHD when his companions died as Cherry had been very unwell the whole time she was with us and Margarite was nine and had had health problems. It didn’t require RHD to explain either of them dying although having since seen more cases of it it clearly was.