Burgess Pet Care

During May we celebrated Rabbit Awareness Week 2011, a nationwide event to promote rabbit welfare and a better understanding of how to care for, house and feed rabbits. The event was sponsored by Burgess Pet Care, RWAF, RSPCA, PDSA, Pet Plan, Panacur Rabbit and The Blue Cross.

To promote the event we travelled the UK with Burgess, our Giant Bunny. Did you Spot him? Here is his photo account of the week:

Day 1 - Lake Windermere

On Day 1 of Rabbit Awareness Week Burgess the Bunny visited the beautiful Lake District in the North of England. He enjoyed a visit to the World of Beatrix Potter attraction. The team enjoyed chatting to rabbit owners about the importance of a fibre packed diet and gave advice on local vet surgeries offering free health checks to local bunnies.

Day 2, beneath the Humber Bridge in Hull

Day 2 saw Burgess travelling from West to East. Here he is waiting patiently by the Humber Bridge before meeting up with people to stres the importance of companionship and play. Rabbits need lots of space to hop and play and hate being confined to a hutch all day!

Day 3, Heaton Park, Manchester, with school children

Day 3, Heaton Park, Manchester, with Apricot the Rescue Bunny

On Day 3 Burgess the Bunny headed over to Manchester’s Heaton Park. This day was great fun, not only becuase of all the free range space to hop and play, but also becuase Burgess and the team got to chat with the school children from a local school. Several of the children had rabbits as pets, so we passed on lots of tips and advice.

Day 4, at Bunny Primary School, Bunny, Notts

Day 4, the children of Bunny School read up on RAW2011

Day 4, and the giant Bunny headed over to Bunny. Surely the best named town in all of the UK!! We chatted with children from Bunny C of E Primary school, who learned a lot about rabbits, feeding, behaviour, play and emotional well being.

Day 5 in Edinburgh, meeting Scottish rabbit owners

Day 5 and Burgess the Bunny headed up North to beautiful Edinburgh. We enjoyed a prize spot on the famous Pricess St and the bunny caught the eye of plenty of passers by! Here he is with a Scottish friend who has promised to spread the word about RAW.

The Giant Bunny spent a Windy Weekend at Wood Green Shelters

To finish the week Burgess the Giant Bunny visited our friends at Wood Green Animal Shelters and spent the weekend with their friendly team.

Wood Green Shelters are a key sponsor of Rabbit Awareness Week and every year they rescue and rehome hundreds of rabbits (in addition to cats, dogs, guinea pigs, ferrets, goats and a variety of other field animals).

It was a windy weekend (as you can see in the photo) but we had a great time chatting to potential new rabbit owners about rabbit ownership and how to correctly care for these wonderful pets.

A HUGE thanks to all who have supported RAW this year and many thanks to the members of the public who took the time to come and see our Giant Bunny. The team have really enjoyed meeting you. Now for Rabbit Awareness Week 2012… Watch this space!

Omlet is best known for its Eglu chicken houses and for resurrecting the popularity of keeping chickens in the back garden. But did you know they also make Eglus for rabbits too? For the second year running, Omlet have dedicated their newsletter to Rabbit Awareness Week and the nations beautiful bunnies. To view the newsletter please click here.

The newsletter is packed full of rabbit related news and information, including a short piece on the world’s smallest rabbit, the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit (and check out the adorable photo) and an informative article on the importance of fibre in your rabbit’s daily diet.

Omlet are also asking you to join in with their fantastic Online Treasure Hunt, where you can be in with a chance of winning rabbit goodies worth over £500!

The prize bundle includes

• A Rabbit Eglu and run in your choice of colour
  
• One month’s supply of Burgess Excel food
• Other goodies to help keep your rabbit happy and healthy

Join the Online Treasure Hunt!

Want to win this wonderful prize? Here is how to enter…

Over the next week you will need to visit different pages to pick up our secret passwords. There will be one password to collect at 10am on each day of RAW, and you will need to pick up each one to find the clue to the next one. Once you have collected all five passwords you just need to send them along with your name, address and phone number, to stephanie@omlet.co.uk. If you missed a day don’t panic, because the passwords will all remain in their secret spots until Sunday 29th May. You have until midnight on the 29th to send in your entries. The winner will be chosen at random, and there are two runner-up prizes up for grabs too.

Clue Number One:

You’ll find your first clue and password on the Omlet Facebook page on Monday 23^rd April. You can view this page here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Omlet-Chickens-Bees-and-Rabbits/263228290641.

(Don’t worry if you don’t have a Facebook account because you can still view the page without one).

Make a note of the name of the famous rabbit and the next place to visit. There are five clues to find throughout the week. Good Luck!

About the Omlet Eglu

The Eglu is a twist on the traditional rabbit hutch. It is a modern easy to clean and safe home for your favourite furry little friends. Developed with leading animal behaviourists and thousands of hours of testing, its unique design enables your rabbits to express their natural instincts, making ownership more rewarding and enjoyable. It has two main areas: the house and a secure outside run. These two areas are available for your rabbits to use at all times, they can spend time in the house when they want some privacy or use the run for exercise or simply to watch the world go by. Together the house and run create a fun and stimulating environment for your rabbits. The Eglu Pet was designed to offer bunnies a clean, safe and fox-resistant home that allows them to express their natural instincts and offers a stimulating environment for them to live in.

Hi Burgess Consumer Care Team,

Further to our conversation last week, I just wanted to put in writing my thanks for the literature and food samples you provided for our recent rabbit care day.

We all know that rabbits are such a misunderstood and sadly, often mistreated creature so we have held rabbit care days for a number of years and the aim of the day was to educate people in the correct care of rabbits.  To this end, we provided free health checks and low cost vaccinations and any help or advice people wanted.  At the same time we were also promoting the animals we rehome and our boarding service, which helps fund our rescue work.

We health checked 68 rabbits and of these, 47 were vaccinated. Some of those who were health checked were fine but most needed advice on diet, neutering and companionship.  Although we were hoping it wouldn’t be the case, we did see a small number of bad cases whose owners really needed our help – in some cases this was due to lack of knowledge on the part of the owners and in other cases the owners knew they needed help and came to us specifically for that very reason.

As well as the rabbits and their owners who saw the vet and or health checking teams, everyone who visited had the opportunity to discuss any aspect of rabbit care with our staff and volunteers.  I calculate that there must have been about 400 people through our gate on the day, so hopefully we have improved a great many rabbits lives or made people think twice before making an impulse purchase.

We made diet the theme of the day and our display posters focused on what a good and bad diet both consisted of and how to change from a bad diet to a good diet.  We also had samples of Excel rabbit food, hay and vegetables, along with other muesli types of food (which I will refrain from naming!)  to explain the problems of selective eating and the associated health problems this can cause.

The prime aim of the day was education and any money raised was a bonus, so I am delighted to be able to say that as well as helping rabbits on the day and educating a lot of people  we also raised the grand total of £1350 to help with the running costs of the sanctuary.

Thank-you once again for your support.

Rachel
(SAA Trustee)

Photos to follow…