Rabbit care
Rabbits - a bit of background
A female rabbit is called a doe (some call them a dam), the male rabbit is called a buck and the newborn babies are sometimes referred to as kits. There a lots of rabbit breeds, from lop ears to the huge Flemish Giants (some of which grow to 9kg!). There are dwarf rabbits that you will find in your local pet store and these don't generally grow as large as the normal rabbits.
Rabbit care - knowing the basic health parameters
A rabbit's normal body temperature is 39.5°C with a pulse rate of a whopping 300 per minute. Most rabbits can live up to 7-8 years and they are most productive breeding wise for the first 2-3 years of their lives. Rabbits practice caecotrophy. You may read about rabbits being coprophagic, they eat their own feces and that's what caecotrophy is - they ingest contents produced by the caecum (the large colon of the rabbit). The colon of the rabbit produces 2 kinds of feces - the hard pellets which are just excreted and what you find in your rabbit cages, and the soft droppings (which are rich in water and micro-organisms) which are ingested by your pet rabbit. Your pet rabbit will ingest these soft droppings (caecotrophs) as soon as they are passed out through the anus so it's highly unlikely that you will ever find any on your rabbit cage floor. If you feed your rabbits ad lib, you will notice that there is a 24 hour cycle to their feeding. They will eat most of their food in the evening, night time and early morning (and this is also when they will produce the hard droppings). The soft droppings on the other hand are usually produced in the times between 9am-5pm.
Rabbit care - feeding your pet rabbit
Do not feed your rabbit hamster or mice pellets. You can feed guinea pig pellets to your pet rabbit but you cannot feed rabbit pellets to your guinea pigs and hope that they will thrive. You can opt to feed your pet rabbit just the pelleted food, but I usually like owners to give them additional food like fresh fruit and vegetable waste. Hay supplementation is also great for their overall health as it gives them added fiber which would prevent hair balls from forming. If your rabbit is fed a lot of green food, you may notice that he/she will not drink much water. That's okay because they will be getting the bulk of their water from the food. Having said that, you must always ensure that your pet rabbit has access to fresh water daily even though you give him/her lots of green food as a precautionary measure just in case he/she feels like a drink.
Rabbit care - behavior issues
Most of what pet rabbits do can be traced back to their wild cousins. So if you know how rabbits behave in the wild, it will give you a fair indication of what your pet rabbit is likely to do in the domesticated situation.
- Rabbits are by nature very clean. You will notice that your pet rabbit will often choose one spot in their cage to deposit their droppings and urine (the exception being when a buck wants to mark his territory in which case you will notice that he will spray urine everywhere, and I mean everywhere and he may decide to deposit his droppings all over too). If you notice your buck rubbing his chin on everything (new toys are often a target), it's because he's 'leaving his scent' on it to say ' this is mine'.
- Rabbits will burrow. They adore digging tunnels. If your rabbit cage or hutch has no floor, you will end up with escapees in the garden. Also beware when you opt to give your rabbit a free 'run' in the garden to let him/her stretch the legs, if you aren't supervising, you may end up with a lost rabbit if they burrow out of your yard. Does tend to dig really deep tunnels - usually in preparation for her impending litter.
- Rabbits will cohabit quite happily with guinea pigs but 2 bucks will end up fighting if they are put in the same cage. Castrating them will not always solve the problem.
- Rabbits are in general quite easy to tame if they are handled regularly from birth. There are breed differences in this area, some rabbit breeds are easier to tame than others. French lops are usually quite docile and will permit you to handle them without much trouble. I have found that dwarf rabbits surprisingly enough seem to be nervous and sometimes can be quite aggressive when compared to other breeds.
- You will notice that your rabbit will sometimes thump their hind limbs. This behavior is akin to the rabbits in the wild who will stamp their feet as a warning to the others in the warren to sound the alarm that danger is approaching.
- The 'attack bunny'. Don't laugh, it does happen and it happens frequently. You will sometimes encounter situations where you open the cage door of your rabbit to take him/her out for a cuddle only to find that he/she lunges at you with bared teeth and claws. This is common when rabbits hit sexual maturity or if your doe is pregnant. The way around it is to open the cage door, allow the rabbit to come out the cage of its own accord and then you can safely handle them.
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