How to keep happy rabbits

These are sociable animals and should always have a companion.   Unless you want to be over run with bunnies, it’s best to get either the same sex or have one of them neutered.   It’s quite difficult to tell the sex of young rabbits so get help from the vet or an experienced person.   A female rabbit will be ready to breed at four months of age and could become pregnant up to ten times a year.   With an average of four babies in a litter, that’s a lot of rabbits!   Did you know that baby rabbits are called kittens?   They are furry and small and very sweet but finding good homes for them is difficult.   The vet will advise the best age for neutering, if the same sex, keep them apart until after the operation.   You don’t have to starve your rabbit beforehand, you should encourage him to keep eating and provide food when you take him to the surgery.    Rabbits are not so resilient as dogs and cats and need lots of t.l.c. when they have been neutered.   We’ve found that it takes them a week or so to get over it fully, so it’s quite an ordeal for them and it may be better to get a mother and daughter or two brothers and avoid vet bills as well as trauma.

As well as company, rabbits need plenty of space and as natural an environment as possible.  It’s important to get it right,  a recent survey found that 60% of all rabbits taken into rescue are given up within the first year of ownership.  It’s a combination of the pets being too time consuming to care for and that they have developed health problems.    These could have been prevented by getting the pet’s housing and dietary needs right.    It’s easy to go out and buy a bag of made up rabbit food and the pet food manufacturers want you to do this – it’s their business and what makes profit for them.   Rabbits can be kept healthy and fit with completely natural food – what do wild rabbits eat?    Provide hay (dried grass ) at all times, this is an essential munch and a little hay rack keeps it from getting soiled.   Rabbits love dandelions, grass, blackberry leaves and natural food.  Make sure you don’t feed any poisonous plants or anything that has grown near a road – the car fumes will contaminate the hedgerows.  You can make your own rabbit mash with oats, maize, a bit of toast, chopped apple, carrots.   Rabbits should always have access to wood to gnaw on, so provide branches – from fruit trees, hawthorn or willow.  You can buy twigs to give them – but fetch them for free helps save the earth. (no plastic, no transport, no factory processing, no storage).

Your rabbits need regular socializing with you.  If you don’t handle them every day they will become wild and difficult to pick up and catch.   Hand feeding them is one of the best ways to keep them tame, rabbits love titbits so save the treats and feed them yourself.   If your rabbit has become a lost cause and you can’t get near him, don’t despair.  If you make an effort to catch him and then confine him to quarters for a week or two, or even a few days might do it, he will become tame again.   Don’t ever force a rabbit to be handled, this is very stressful for him.   You are aiming for natural affection and for him to come hopping up to you for a fuss and to sit on your knee.   All it takes is patience.

The hutch should have at least three compartments, one for eating, one for toileting and a bedroom which needs to be filled with hay for a nest.   Rabbits naturally live below ground in a burrow and this keeps them cool in summer and warm in winter.   Providing the same type of environment is important.  If yours is a ‘house’ rabbit, then he will be warm enough in winter but a rabbit kept outside will need to have his shed moved into a warmer place, a porch or utility room perhaps.   If the weather gets very cold or damp you should provide a heat lamp or insulate with hay.

Drinking water should be changed daily and must be kept clean.  I don’t like the plastic drinkers because they soon get covered in green slime, it’s very difficult to clean the inside and if the rabbit drinks this toxic water it may die.   A nice stoneware dish is easy to clean and the water will be cool and wholesome.    Thirty or forty years ago rabbits were easy to keep as pets and they cost practically nothing to look after.   It would have been unthinkable in those days to actually buy rabbit food!   It was there all around us and food for free.   People used to go out with sacks to fetch food for the rabbits and they did very well on it  and never went to the vet unless they were injured.   If you wanted a pet rabbit you had to persuade an parent or grandad or uncle to make a hutch for you.  It was made from bits and pieces and adapted from unwanted items of furniture and scrap.   They were often grand affairs and far more solid than the expensive flimsy hutches we see today.   Now we have an industry built up around the rabbit and everything comes from a factory.  Who would have thought it!

One of the big problems in keeping rabbits is how to keep them safe.   Many dogs and all foxes see them as lunch and the pen and the hutch need to be of very solid construction.   The rabbits should always be shut up at night, foxes can demolish wire netting in minutes.