Considering Rabbits

[ColwynsMommy]

Our last ferret died over a year ago, and we're really used to having a lot of pets (5 ferrets and 2 dogs was our most). Now we just have 1 dog, and the chickens outside which don't really count.

We've been thinking about getting another pet for quite some time, and just went to the ag fair today. Colwyn just fell in love with the bunnies, it was so sweet.. he was all starry-eyed over a few in particular. So we're seriously considering getting a rabbit.. it would be presented as a birthday gift for Colwyn, though I have no illusions about who will be doing the work.

What are rabbits like as indoor pets? We had our chicks indoors for a while and that was miserable.. they stank and that dust they kick up.. ugh. Are rabbits as bad as that? I've heard you can litter train them and give them run of a room, but the only room we could really do that in is our kitchen if we gated it (and most likely only gave them free time for a few hours a day), does that sound feasible? We had the chicks in our kitchen and with that dust, I was so grossed out about it getting all over my counters.. how much of a mess would a bunny make?

I've heard that it's better to get adult rabbits, is that right? Are adults that are available at shelters usually socialized enough to do okay with kids petting them?

Anything else I should know?

Thanks!

[Oubliette8]

Check out the House Rabbit Society. They have EXCELLENT information on indoor rabbits. http://rabbit.org/ Also, see if you can get a copy of "The House Rabbit Handbook" The House Rabbit Society also runs rabbit rescues that do an excellent job of placing bunnies- generally already spayed and neutered and litter box trained. My local shelter always has at least a few rabbits as well- some of which have excellent temperaments, and some not so much. The shelter rabbits tend to be intact (the shelter will cover neutering if you pay the cat adoption fee instead of the small animal one, which is a good deal) and are not box trained, although there's no reason they couldn't be. They also seem to pick up parasites there according to my vet, so you'd want to have a shelter rabbit checked by a vet ASAP, particularly as some could be transferred to your son.

Overall Rabbits make really great pets, although you might want to spend some time with one (see if there is a house rabbit rescue near you that would let you visit) as they are a bit different than people expect I think- Some don't enjoy being picked up, some are cuddlers, but they have sort of a different vibe than most other pocket pets I think. Also, most rabbits are happiest in pairs, a bonded pair of rabbits should not be separated. BUT rabbits that are introduced to each other in adulthood may fight and can be hard to get to bond. It can be done, but you can't just stick them in the same cage and expect them to be happy right away.

[heartmama]

As a long time pet rabbit owner I really do not recommend them as pets to any but the most experienced and committed owner. Rabbits are MUCH more work than a cat, for example. If you are used to ferrets, the main difference is that a ferret is a predator and a rabbit is a prey animal. They are just so different. Rabbits are very fragile, they die easily, they are extremely sensitive, and compared to a ferret, probably not as much fun for a child. Once they reach maturity most rabbits will be quite sedentary, and the rabbit who is 'full of personality' in the sense that it does lots of funny things, plays with toys, and interacts with you in a way that is human-directed can be quite impossible to predict when you adopt a young bunny.

The other thing about rabbits is that they become incredibly lonely. The only way I would recommend just getting one bunny would be if you are determined to interacting with the bunny for hours and hours every single day. Otherwise, they should always be adopted in bonded pairs. Two bunnies are just MUCH happier than one, generally speaking. As a prey animal it is extremely stressful to be alone without your warren of other bunnies to help watch out for dangers.

Rabbits can be litter box trained but they are messy in the sense that some of them will never be trained out of leaving poop balls scattered about to mark territory. Males are much worse about this (even when neutered).

[ColwynsMommy]

Originally Posted by heartmama

As a long time pet rabbit owner I really do not recommend them as pets to any but the most experienced and committed owner. Rabbits are MUCH more work than a cat, for example. If you are used to ferrets, the main difference is that a ferret is a predator and a rabbit is a prey animal. They are just so different. Rabbits are very fragile, they die easily, they are extremely sensitive, and compared to a ferret, probably not as much fun for a child. Once they reach maturity most rabbits will be quite sedentary, and the rabbit who is 'full of personality' in the sense that it does lots of funny things, plays with toys, and interacts with you in a way that is human-directed can be quite impossible to predict when you adopt a young bunny.

The other thing about rabbits is that they become incredibly lonely. The only way I would recommend just getting one bunny would be if you are determined to interacting with the bunny for hours and hours every single day. Otherwise, they should always be adopted in bonded pairs. Two bunnies are just MUCH happier than one, generally speaking. As a prey animal it is extremely stressful to be alone without your warren of other bunnies to help watch out for dangers.

Rabbits can be litter box trained but they are messy in the sense that some of them will never be trained out of leaving poop balls scattered about to mark territory. Males are much worse about this (even when neutered).

Thanks so much for the advice. I'd consider getting ferrets again (my husband brought them up when we were talking about pets) but they require a lot in the health department (surgeries, meds, etc), their poops are messy and smelly. Otherwise I wouldn't mind having ferrets again at all. I don't know if I could realistically confine ferrets to a gated kitchen, though, and I really wouldn't want them roaming the whole house (we did that in the past, pre-kids).

We would most likely adopt a pair of rabbits rather than getting babies, now that I've read a bit more. It seems like there are a lot available for adoption around here.

I've been wanting a cat, too, but my husband says flat-out-no to that idea.

Here's another Q.. we often have large groups of kids over (I host a lot of activities for our homeschool group).. if the rabbits were near all the activity, but secure, would it really stress them out?

[heartmama]

As a rule rabbits dislike noise and activity. It is just in their nature to run from anything strange, new, loud, fast moving, or otherwise unfamiliar. Some rabbits are more flighty than others.

*As a rule* the larger lop eared bunnies are good bets in terms of the 'mellow factor'. I have seen this happen time and again. Some speculate this is because the lop factor isn't seen in nature and was bred deliberately for domesticated pets, and likely the strain of bunnies used in that process were selected for their 'mellowness'. The largest lop I ever had was so mellow I could run the vacuum next to him and he didn't even blink. He was extremely relaxed, even as a baby rabbit, when he once fell asleep on my son's shoulder and rolled down onto his lap--STILL ASLEEP!! However he died at just 18 months old without any warning at all.

The main thing about rabbits, that I think people really need to understand, is that they can be extraordinarily destructive. Just about every single object in your home could be destroyed by a determined bunny. Some of them are just voracious diggers and others are chewers and some are both. A digger will never stop until every bit of carpet, sofa, blanket, mattress etc. is ripped into pieces. A chewer will take the corners of every object in the room, from baseboards to desks to doors. I once had a chewer who got into the library and took the spines of an entire row of books. And I once heard of a bunny who found a chink in the drywall and managed to burrow straight through it into the next room!

Remember that in nature a rabbit is designed to *DIG* an extensive, complex, very deep warren. They are designed to do it and they WILL DO IT with any materials necessary and at any possible opportunity.

Like I said, the lops I've known (the LARGER lops, for some reason, moreso than a mini) are mellower.

But a rabbit can destroy a house really fast, and there is virtually nothing you can do in terms of redirection or training. They are a much more instinct driven animal than cats or dogs. You MUST adjust the ENTIRE environment to suite THEIR NEEDS. They will never really respond to the kinds of training you might do with a dog or cat. You can try 'giving them something to chew and dig' but some rabbits are just extremely difficult to cope with in a household setting without major adjustments. I mean you never hear much about 'cat proofing' a house when someone adopts a new cat, but one of the #1 topics among house rabbit owners the innocuous sounding 'bunny proofing'. The lengths you need to go too to keep some bunnies from killing themselves or doing serious damage to a house can be really tiring to just think about!

[ColwynsMommy]

Originally Posted by heartmama

The main thing about rabbits, that I think people really need to understand, is that they can be extraordinarily destructive. Just about every single object in your home could be destroyed by a determined bunny. Some of them are just voracious diggers and others are chewers and some are both. A digger will never stop until every bit of carpet, sofa, blanket, mattress etc. is ripped into pieces. A chewer will take the corners of every object in the room, from baseboards to desks to doors. I once had a chewer who got into the library and took the spines of an entire row of books. And I once heard of a bunny who found a chink in the drywall and managed to burrow straight through it into the next room!

Not that I want a destructive pet, but we definitely got used to that with the ferrets. It's the same in that you can't redirect or train them not to do it, you just have to ferret-proof your home. They dug out all the foam in our box spring, they practically ruined our leather couch from the inside out (again, with the foam), they stole things like jewelry and keys, they dug in house plants, and what made it really hard is that they could climb. So you couldn't even use a pen or gates unless they were made of plexiglass. Oh, and they could squeeze through the crack under the door, we had to add molding to seal the door properly. We ended up gating a section of our family room using the backs of bookshelves and we used a huge piece of MDF as a gate, held in place with a rolling file cabinet (it had to be something heavy, or they would pry the MDF open enough to squeeze through).

Anyway. What worries me is the noise factor, though.. our boys are very rowdy, and when we have group over here, the noise can be unbelievable. Maybe we'll have to hold off on rabbits until the kids are a bit calmer.. it's too bad, because Colwyn was just so unbelievably enchanted with the bunnies today..

[mistymama]

We had a miniture lop eared bunny when I was growing up, and he was a wonderful pet. We had an atrium/patio in the middle of of house with a garden and he lived in there. The atrium was off the living room and the bunny would scratch at the sliding glass door when he wanted in to play. We tried putting out a litter box, but found he was better at running back outside to use the bathroom. Of course, being a bunny, he would drop a random poop here and there.

But man, he was such a sweetie - loved to be petted and held. Would hop all over our dogs and snuggle with them. We never did have him neutered and I remember there was a period of time each spring that he could be a bit aggressive - nothing horrible but he would thump his back legs and try and bite and hump your legs when you went outside.

We got him as a young bunny and he lived 8 years. He was a wonderful pet! I've had some experience with other bunnies (my Mom was a teacher and had several as pets in her classrooms over the years) but none of the other bunnies were as sweet and fun as our miniture lop.

[heartmama]

Yes lops really are a great choice for an active household (noise, other pets). You should evaluate each bunny individually but given the OP's needs I would say look at the lops available at rescues nearby, and consider a large breed lop if there are lots of children visiting the home--people tend not to want to pick up the big bunnies which is good. Bunnies generally hate being picked up (feels like a predator grabbing them) especially by strangers.

[NaturalMamma]

We had a housebunny for about 2.5 yrs. He died unexpectedly. It was most likely due to an intestinal blockage. It happened incredibly fast. I woke up in the morning and noticed he wasn't eating, I called the vet and got an appt for that afternoon. I ran out for a quick errand and came back and he was lying on the bottom of his cage--gone. It was so horrific for me and DD. I was a mess. They have very sensitive GI systems. I thought it would never happen to our bunny b/c we had really read up on that issue and made sure he ate plenty of fiber and didn't give inapprpriate treats..

He was an incredibly sweet bunny. He was very good about using his litter box. When he was little, he dropped a lot of little poops around, but all "babies" poop and pee a lot. After he matured it was only an occasional poop here and there--and they're not smelly or anything. I loved that bunnies are herbivores and his diet consisted mainly of timothy hay, a bit of bunny kibble and some veggie treats. A very quiet and "un-smelly" pet, imo. My DH built a little ramp for him to come in and out of his cage. He was never interested in chewing any wood, but got his teeth on a few book spines and liked soft plastics (he chewed off Barbie's nose ). The one thing I found helpful was that I never had to worry about what I would wake up to (carpet ruined or something). Because at nighttime he was in his cage. This was our first time with a pet that had a cage/pen. It was a lot of work to clean the cage and litter box everyday (sometimes we emptied and washed the litter box twice a day), but he was worth it. Our DD was 6 when we got him, but I would recommend that a child is older (9 or 10 would be better) b/c bunnies are fragile animals.

eta that he was a Holland lop and we had him neutered.

[boricuaqueen327]

The house rabbit society site is great. We recommend it to clients at the vet clinic I work at. Everyone else has mentioned important factors to think about when getting a rabbit (or pair of rabbits) so I won't restate everything. I do think rabbits make great pets if you are committed to the amount of care and time that goes into them. Also, rabbits go downhill very quickly when sick so it is important to make sure to have a vet that is experienced with rabbits that you are established with and can get to quickly.

[miss_sonja]

heartmomma has some great information & advice that, as a former rabbit owner, I second. Our bunnies were great, but we ended up bringing them back to the non-profit from which we'd adopted them after a couple of years. They were too destructive, amoung other things.

They can be great pets, but the key is that they are prey animals and that makes a big difference in how you'll need to be with them.

They can be litter box trained (ours were). But their scent glands need to be cleaned, they chew (and chew and chew and dig--we still have cords mended with electrical tape, from them chewing on the cords).

What about rats? They're friendly, can be "worn" around the house and are relatively easy to care for. I like rats a lot. We have mice now and they're great, though not as assertive as rats.

good luck with whatever you decide.

[Jackies Ladybug]

i second the idea of rats as an alternative, i have had both rabbits and rats on separate occasions and i will never own bunnies again.
they just arent really meant to be pets in my opinion, some are great, but most dont do well in a home setting.
rats on the other hand seem to thrive on human interaction, can be kept in a reasonable amount of space, are actually really clean and can be let out to roam for periods of time once they have gotten used to the idea of their cage being their home.

[LeahBoo]

I had a bunch of rats at one time. They were great. They got to run around the house and would go back to their cage to potty. I had all the boys out one time - 4 of them. Three were really friendly - even did tricks (I didn't have dogs then), one was not very friendly, he wasn't mean, just didn't love me like the others. One by one I called them, each came running up (only to their own name), and jumped on my knee. When it came to the 4th, I called him, he poked his head out and looked at me. Didn't come to me, but still knew his name. There was another, a female, who had babies. I would let her roam while I played with the babies. I never knew what she did the whole time, but she always came back when I called her. When I moved out of that house, I found a HUGE pile of rat treats under my bed. The container was open.

Now I have Dachshunds, those days are over.