I have 3 young children (6, 4, 1) and I have an opportunity to adopt 2 bunnies, both 3 years old with indoor and outdoor pens, food supply and whatever else comes with owning a bunny. My friends can no longer keep them for whatever reason. It would be 100% free. They are both female and medically have all shots, checkups whatever else they need.
I don’t know a thing about bunnies and if they would make good pets. Please share your experiences with pet rabbits to help me make my decision easier!
I could probably spend the next 6 hours feeding you rabbit facts.
Rabbits are excellent pets. Despite the 2-watt brain, they’re intelligent, friendly (if you treat them right) and low maintenance. They can be trained to do many things–tricks, where to do their business. They’re social animals and prefer to be indoors around the rest of the family.
Females need to be spayed to reduce uterine cancers. I believe females fight other females more than males fight other males. Each rabbit needs his/her own cage. Rule of thumb–one cubic foot of cage per pound of rabbit (at least); 5 pound rabbit=5 cubic feet of cage–2feet x 3feet x 1 foot tall.
Avoid alfalfa, especially in their pellets.
NEVER pick them up by their ears, very delicate–all the magician stuff you’ve seen is wrong and cruel.
Small children tend to want to poke those eyes. Nuff said.
Grab every book you can find, every piece of info is helpful and they discover more and more every day. When I got my first bun in 1989, life expectancy was 5 years. BRACE YOURSELF–rabbits can live 15 years or more.
They don’t need shots, but a vet visit will cost the same as a dog or cat; no break because of size.
An organization called the House Rabbit Society can expand on all this til you’re blue in the face with info overload.
Feel free to PM me for more info–I could do this all day.
Good luck!
They can but to be quite frank they make a better entree. I had seven at different times and six were basically just pellet-making-machines. One though turned into what I would call a pet. It could roam around the house, be walked using a walking harness and leash, and would play after a fashion knocking toys back to me and/or around. Try if you want but know the odds are against you. What you will basically have is a large land-born goldfish that smells - not what I would call a pet.
^ To be fair, some of that, too.
I’m against it. Not a fan of cages.
Is the outdoor pen a run? If not, consider getting one.
Ensure their legs are supported while held so they don’t injure themselves while kicking.
Generally, they don’t like being touched under their chins. Ours likes that and absolutely loves having his snout stroked.
As with most pets, it’s all in how they’re raised/handled. I knew a guy who had a house bun that was friendlier than most dogs … almost clingy (to him, her person, but not so much to strangers) in her affection and playfulness.
Caveat: they CHEW. Wood (furniture etc.) and electrical cords/wires are particular favorites. Keep your TV/stereo/video games away from them.
I would be concerned with the ages of the children. As someone else said, rabbits have to have their back legs supported when held. They can kick their legs and break their backs. I don’t think a small child could hold one correctly and would be likely to try to pick it up in such a way that it would kick. Even if it didn’t break its back, they can scratch pretty well with those back legs. This is not one of those wive’s tales, I work at a vet clinic and have seen this happen.
Right. With the young’uns, have them sit while you pick up a rabbit and hand it to them. Some rabbits are perfectly content with sitting in a lap or held on one’s chest in a “burp the baby” position.
An alternative is to lie down next to a rabbit, though if this is done on someone’s bed you should protect the bed from the rabbit suddenly needing to pee.
Long before I met him, my husband had a rabbit as a pet. It ate much of the base molding in their family room. So know where you bunny is and what it’s up to.
Rabbits ARE great pets - for the right owners. Like any pet.
I too have reservations about the age of your kids. They’d need to be well-supervised to interact with the rabbits. Rabbits are just quite FRAGILE, and can’t take much knocking around. If you and your kids could be OK with supervised visitation, then go for it.
Keeping your rabbits in the house works well for adults and older kids. Young kids tend to be too scary - loud noises, sudden movement, screeching - so your rabbits might be better off outside. House rabbits are much friendlier than yard rabbits, so you will be missing something of the pet rabbit experience.
In Australia, pet rabbits are inoculated against myxomatosis and rabbit calicivirus, which are present in the wild rabbit populations.
I’d be more curious how old the rabbits are & how well the previous owners cared for them.
If raised from young carefully, they’re sorta domesticated and sorta friendly.
If raised badly, or just left ignored in their cages for most of their lives, they’re antisocial hate-filled creatures that would gladly kill you and your family if only their claws were a wee bit longer.
In other words, they’re about like humans. Imagine adopting a random 35 year-old human and you see the potential for issues. Bunnies be the same, but harder to interview before you take them in.
Rabbit pee is absolutely the worst smelling stuff, exceeded only by a goat buck in mating season.
Nails need trimming if they are caged. That’s either a vet visit or a two person activity wherein the person with the clippers flips the rabbit over in his lap and secures the ears between his knees while the second person stands by with peroxide and bandages. As has been mentioned, a kick from a rabbit’s hind leg can lacerate your inner forearm from wrist to elbow before you know it. It goes without saying that you keep your face and neck either far away or covered in chain mail.
I’d rather pick maggots out of a wound than try to treat a rabbit with ear mites.
While I did like my bunnies in general – adorable little English Angoras – they were way more trouble than their fur was worth. Never again.
p.s. Don’t forget tetanus shots.
pp.s. The pellets are great fertilizer.
My nieces had a pet rabbit. The older niece wanted to call her “Rose Dusk” but then changed her mind. “I want to call her Cuddly.” She named the next one they had “Fluffy.”
Her dad said, “Another hard-hitting bunny name.”
Speaker cones. Our bun loved devouring speaker cones.
Heh. I had a bunny growing up (miniature, mostly-outdoors but brought in during bad weather or just to hang around the kitchen) who I got at age 10. Being the ultra-creative sort, I observed that he was cute as a button, and thus, dubbed him Buttons.
Protip for outdoor/yard rabbits in climates with hot summers: wash out and keep two plastic milk jugs mostly filled with water, rotating them - one in the freezer, one in the rabbit hutch/run so they can lie next to it and cool off.
IME, not really noticable unless it stagnates for a couple days. Ours peed on the sleeping bag covering my bed a few times; we wouldn’t have had any idea he did if not for the yellow spots.
I used to have rabbits, although they would not be the ideal pet for small children (unless you are prepared to monitor all interactions.) When I was a kid I raised them as meat animals, but they were well-cared for and had quite distinctive personalities. As I recall, mine required daily cage-cleaning (they poop a lot) and adored dandelion greens. I don’t think I actually fed them pellets; they just ate grass and greens and salad left-overs. Several were allowed to come into the house regularly.
Rabbits are actuallyvery trainable.
n/m. Sorry, double post.
Why is the person giving them away? At 3 years? (young)/
That reeks of “they didn’t work out” - and with ultra-small kids, they will NOT work out for you, either.
You can’t guard them 7/24/365 - the little ones WILL find a way to open the cage and either harm the critter or get a really nasty bite - find some nice kiln-dried (aka real) 1x2 or 2x2 and use dowels and glue to attach it in a vertical position in the shelter portion of the run - they will chew the handiest thing - this is how they keep their front teeth trimmed (they never stop growing).
Even if the rabbits are in good condition and not vicious/neurotic, I’d vote against, just on age of children - 8-10 would be my guess for earliest a kid could reliable handle a full-size rabbit.
Maybe gerbils or hamsters, growing into guinea pig.