I have had rescued rabbits for many years. I would like to tell you my oppinions due to experience. Some of these things that I have learned are things that a vet will not even inform you about, but are crucial and important to know. I would like to tell you to help your rabbits survive.
LONGEVITY OR NOT: To many rabbits spend their lives outside in hutches, isolated from people, never getting the proper excersize they need, and missing out on the constant companionship from humans, and dieing young because people don't notice their sicknesses in time (or lack of eating) because they only visit them a couple times a day. I know that it is easy to not visit them enough, it is "out of sight out of mind" even if you DO care about your rabbit, that is just how it is. It is what happens when you've got other things going on in your life. Statistics show that indoor rabbits live many years longer than outdoor rabbits. So many people keep their rabbits outside that people believe that 6 years is "old", and that is because so many rabbits die young who live outdoors. A rabbits normal lifespan is over 10 years. To figure "rabbit years" I divide their actual age by 8. so if a rabbit is 4, I times that by 8, so that means she is equivilent to a 32 year old person.
RABBITS ARE FRAGILE: Rabbits are actually to fragile to be left alone with children who aren't aware of how fragile they are. Their hind end of their body is so much heavier than their front that if a child carries the rabbit not supporting their rear, a simple kick from a rabbit can break their back. Vets see this all the time. It is very tragic.
Rabbits are overall sensitive and fragile. They have to be eating constantly, if they stop eating, then their system shuts down and will not process food any more. I have seen this happen and it is terrible. There is nothing to fix the problem once their system has quit entirely.
I just wanted to share this with you. If you are wanting to get a rabbit as an easter present to a child, have the rabbit be the family pet and you as the parent be the sole care provider of the rabbit.
HAIRBALL? If you offer a rabbit a treat that he normally likes, but he won't eat it, then he is obviously not feeling well, so you have to assume that he may have a hair ball or blockage of something. Rabbits are not able to cough up a hair ball like cats. So you need to force feed them some cat laxative- Petromalt. But mainly get them to a rabbit savvy vet ASAP. The go downhill extremely fast, in a matter of hours. Their digestive system will stop moving, which will kill them. A vet can give your rabbit a drug to try to get your rabbits system moving again, and give him an injection of liquid under the skin, and do an x-ray, but that is about it. If their system is still moving a little, then they can try force feeding them little bits of Critical Care. If your rabbit doesn't improve then he will get dramatically weaker within hours. At some point of no improvement, they aren't going to turn around and you will have to do the right thing and have them euthenized.
A stopped digestive system (AKA gut stasis) seems to be the number one killer of rabbits.
Usually surgery to remove things from a rabbits gut aren't successful, after the surgery the rabbits system isn't able to recouperate. Though my rabbit's vet said she has had a successful outcome before.
Here is a great in-depth article about gut stasis:
http://bio.miami.edu/hare/ileus.html
HOUSE RABBIT ENVIRONMENT: Before you get a rabbit to be a "house rabbit", you really want to think about your environment in your house. Does your carpet have regular length fibers? A rabbit will pull on the carpet and ingest it. Do you have wooden tables or chairs in the living room? A rabbit will definately gnaw them. Are their cords exposed in your home? you will need to hide them out of the rabbits reach. I see so many people who have these things in their living room so they just stop letting their rabbit out of their cage which is really sad. You really have to be prepared BEFORE getting a rabbit. In my own home I have indoor/outdoor carpeting which has very short fibers that she cannot grasp. I also have tables with metal legs, and my entertainment unit is made out of a wood that doesnt appeal to her to chew on.
A CAGE: a great cage idea is to get a large dog crate.
HOUSE TRAINING: Wherever a rabbit eats is where she poops. So get a litter box, put sawdust in the bottom and hay on the top. This is how you litter box train a rabbit. It's pretty simple. DO NOT USE CAT LITTER THAT CLUMPS. It will kill your rabbit emediately when ingested.
RABBIT FOOD: Hay should make up most of their daily diet. It is important for them to eat long fibers. Pellets should only make up a very small part of their diet. I can't stress this enough. A diet without hay can cause gut stasis (the stopping of their digestion system). DO NOT buy the alfalfa based pellets which is the most popular kind of food that is sold everywhere. It is to rich for rabbits and they will have soft stool their whole life. Also alfalfa is to high in calcium which can lead to bladder stones. Pellets must be Timothy hay based. There are only two brands that are sold locally that are timothy based. Oxbow and Kaytee. DO NOT BUY KAYTEE. It has a horrible preservative in it called Ethoxyquin that causes cancer and poisonings. My rabbit got a large tumor from this food. My gerbils got poisoned from it. The vet confirmed it. I did not know about the preservative at the time. The preservative has been banned from cat and dog food. Oxbow is the best brand of small animal food. You can buy it at Jco feed store on Highway 99.
They must have access to food ALL the time. If they go without eating for a while, their digestive system will totally shut down, and even if you force feed them, it won't work again, and the poor rabbit will have to be euthenised.
CANCER PREVENTION: This is very simple, but blueberries are so high in antioxidents. I feed my rabbit blueberries every day. I knew a lady who fed her mouse blueberries and he was living over the age of 4 which is pretty much unheard of. Most of my mice got tumors at 2 years old.
GAS BUBBLES: Several of my rabbits have had problems with gas bubbles moving around their belly. You can actually see the large bubbles moving while the rabbit is laying down. My first vet never gave me any suggestion of what to do. Another vet recommended buying Infant's Gas Relief Drops for human babies. You will need a syringe to put it in. I just drop it on carrots and hold the carrot while my rabbit eats it. You may want to do more research on gas bubbles and the causes of the problem. Sometimes it happens for a reason we don't know. Certainly don't feed your rabbit large quantities of fruits at a time.
VETS I RECOMMEND: I have been to more vets in this town than I can count. So many of them let me down and didn't give me answers, letting my animals linger in discomfort. After YEARS of looking I finally found a couple vets who I think are pretty good: Dr. Lamarche at the Cat and Bird Clinic and Dr. Shawn at the Santa Clara clinic. They both have done things that past vets never did for my rabbits. Dr. LaMarche removed the kidney of one of my rescued rabbits and it was a success! I do not recommend going through the phone book to find the cheapest vet. You will just waste your money actually and waste time while your rabbit is sick, and then it will be to late because they go downhill so fast. Trust me, I have made this mistake before and I regret it.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me. You can also print this page for future reference.
Greenhill has many great rabbits for adoption. www.green-hill.org
Don't support pet stores. They hide horrendous neglect. Yes, even local stores. Most pet stores do not have vet care for small pets.
LONGEVITY OR NOT: To many rabbits spend their lives outside in hutches, isolated from people, never getting the proper excersize they need, and missing out on the constant companionship from humans, and dieing young because people don't notice their sicknesses in time (or lack of eating) because they only visit them a couple times a day. I know that it is easy to not visit them enough, it is "out of sight out of mind" even if you DO care about your rabbit, that is just how it is. It is what happens when you've got other things going on in your life. Statistics show that indoor rabbits live many years longer than outdoor rabbits. So many people keep their rabbits outside that people believe that 6 years is "old", and that is because so many rabbits die young who live outdoors. A rabbits normal lifespan is over 10 years. To figure "rabbit years" I divide their actual age by 8. so if a rabbit is 4, I times that by 8, so that means she is equivilent to a 32 year old person.
RABBITS ARE FRAGILE: Rabbits are actually to fragile to be left alone with children who aren't aware of how fragile they are. Their hind end of their body is so much heavier than their front that if a child carries the rabbit not supporting their rear, a simple kick from a rabbit can break their back. Vets see this all the time. It is very tragic.
Rabbits are overall sensitive and fragile. They have to be eating constantly, if they stop eating, then their system shuts down and will not process food any more. I have seen this happen and it is terrible. There is nothing to fix the problem once their system has quit entirely.
I just wanted to share this with you. If you are wanting to get a rabbit as an easter present to a child, have the rabbit be the family pet and you as the parent be the sole care provider of the rabbit.
HAIRBALL? If you offer a rabbit a treat that he normally likes, but he won't eat it, then he is obviously not feeling well, so you have to assume that he may have a hair ball or blockage of something. Rabbits are not able to cough up a hair ball like cats. So you need to force feed them some cat laxative- Petromalt. But mainly get them to a rabbit savvy vet ASAP. The go downhill extremely fast, in a matter of hours. Their digestive system will stop moving, which will kill them. A vet can give your rabbit a drug to try to get your rabbits system moving again, and give him an injection of liquid under the skin, and do an x-ray, but that is about it. If their system is still moving a little, then they can try force feeding them little bits of Critical Care. If your rabbit doesn't improve then he will get dramatically weaker within hours. At some point of no improvement, they aren't going to turn around and you will have to do the right thing and have them euthenized.
A stopped digestive system (AKA gut stasis) seems to be the number one killer of rabbits.
Usually surgery to remove things from a rabbits gut aren't successful, after the surgery the rabbits system isn't able to recouperate. Though my rabbit's vet said she has had a successful outcome before.
Here is a great in-depth article about gut stasis:
http://bio.miami.edu/hare/ileus.html
HOUSE RABBIT ENVIRONMENT: Before you get a rabbit to be a "house rabbit", you really want to think about your environment in your house. Does your carpet have regular length fibers? A rabbit will pull on the carpet and ingest it. Do you have wooden tables or chairs in the living room? A rabbit will definately gnaw them. Are their cords exposed in your home? you will need to hide them out of the rabbits reach. I see so many people who have these things in their living room so they just stop letting their rabbit out of their cage which is really sad. You really have to be prepared BEFORE getting a rabbit. In my own home I have indoor/outdoor carpeting which has very short fibers that she cannot grasp. I also have tables with metal legs, and my entertainment unit is made out of a wood that doesnt appeal to her to chew on.
A CAGE: a great cage idea is to get a large dog crate.
HOUSE TRAINING: Wherever a rabbit eats is where she poops. So get a litter box, put sawdust in the bottom and hay on the top. This is how you litter box train a rabbit. It's pretty simple. DO NOT USE CAT LITTER THAT CLUMPS. It will kill your rabbit emediately when ingested.
RABBIT FOOD: Hay should make up most of their daily diet. It is important for them to eat long fibers. Pellets should only make up a very small part of their diet. I can't stress this enough. A diet without hay can cause gut stasis (the stopping of their digestion system). DO NOT buy the alfalfa based pellets which is the most popular kind of food that is sold everywhere. It is to rich for rabbits and they will have soft stool their whole life. Also alfalfa is to high in calcium which can lead to bladder stones. Pellets must be Timothy hay based. There are only two brands that are sold locally that are timothy based. Oxbow and Kaytee. DO NOT BUY KAYTEE. It has a horrible preservative in it called Ethoxyquin that causes cancer and poisonings. My rabbit got a large tumor from this food. My gerbils got poisoned from it. The vet confirmed it. I did not know about the preservative at the time. The preservative has been banned from cat and dog food. Oxbow is the best brand of small animal food. You can buy it at Jco feed store on Highway 99.
They must have access to food ALL the time. If they go without eating for a while, their digestive system will totally shut down, and even if you force feed them, it won't work again, and the poor rabbit will have to be euthenised.
CANCER PREVENTION: This is very simple, but blueberries are so high in antioxidents. I feed my rabbit blueberries every day. I knew a lady who fed her mouse blueberries and he was living over the age of 4 which is pretty much unheard of. Most of my mice got tumors at 2 years old.
GAS BUBBLES: Several of my rabbits have had problems with gas bubbles moving around their belly. You can actually see the large bubbles moving while the rabbit is laying down. My first vet never gave me any suggestion of what to do. Another vet recommended buying Infant's Gas Relief Drops for human babies. You will need a syringe to put it in. I just drop it on carrots and hold the carrot while my rabbit eats it. You may want to do more research on gas bubbles and the causes of the problem. Sometimes it happens for a reason we don't know. Certainly don't feed your rabbit large quantities of fruits at a time.
VETS I RECOMMEND: I have been to more vets in this town than I can count. So many of them let me down and didn't give me answers, letting my animals linger in discomfort. After YEARS of looking I finally found a couple vets who I think are pretty good: Dr. Lamarche at the Cat and Bird Clinic and Dr. Shawn at the Santa Clara clinic. They both have done things that past vets never did for my rabbits. Dr. LaMarche removed the kidney of one of my rescued rabbits and it was a success! I do not recommend going through the phone book to find the cheapest vet. You will just waste your money actually and waste time while your rabbit is sick, and then it will be to late because they go downhill so fast. Trust me, I have made this mistake before and I regret it.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me. You can also print this page for future reference.
Greenhill has many great rabbits for adoption. www.green-hill.org
Don't support pet stores. They hide horrendous neglect. Yes, even local stores. Most pet stores do not have vet care for small pets.