Rabbits

[Gardening with Rabbits]

When I started with the rabbits there were 5 dumped and one of them was pregnant and had 5 babies. Then, another neighbor dumped their pet rabbit named Snickers. Then, later another neighbor had a rabbit they did not want and it lived under my hutch, so I put it in when the weather got cold, and then a year ago a rabbit showed up in the yard and it was starting to snow, so she went in the hutch. Zoup the oldest rabbit died this year at the age of 9 and Lulu's sister Sunshine died at the age of 8 and Snickers died and he was 8. Lulu is now 8-1/2. This was a stressful thing for me and now I almost am going to miss them. The original ones were Flemish Giants. These 2 neighbor rabbits are smaller and totally different personality. I am not sure Lulu will make it to spring, but here are pictures of her. She knows her name is Lulu. The last picture is of her and her 5 babies.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I guess what made it so stressful was not knowing how to take care of them and when something did go wrong, a vet trip is expensive and most vets do not know how to treat rabbits, and they fought. I could not put the females out in a pen together. It was just war the whole time. Zoup beat them all up and if I put Zoup back in the hutch, another female who be the boss, and I never even tried to put the males out in a pen together, but you can see the amount of rabbit manure a rabbit this size could produce.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

My niece has a rabbit who is coming up on 8 years old. She lives in the bedroom with the niece, was spayed and ONLY likes Megan. Tries to bite the rest of the family.

 

[Marie2020]

I once had a rabbit, I named Jessica most mornings I would be awakened by this little ball of fluff. One day after five years Jessica wasn't feeling so good so off to vets we went, the only problem this little love of mine had was that she wasn't a she but a he. I still miss him today, rabbits can be adorable

 

[Marie2020]

When I started with the rabbits there were 5 dumped and one of them was pregnant and had 5 babies. Then, another neighbor dumped their pet rabbit named Snickers. Then, later another neighbor had a rabbit they did not want and it lived under my hutch, so I put it in when the weather got cold, and then a year ago a rabbit showed up in the yard and it was starting to snow, so she went in the hutch. Zoup the oldest rabbit died this year at the age of 9 and Lulu's sister Sunshine died at the age of 8 and Snickers died and he was 8. Lulu is now 8-1/2. This was a stressful thing for me and now I almost am going to miss them. The original ones were Flemish Giants. These 2 neighbor rabbits are smaller and totally different personality. I am not sure Lulu will make it to spring, but here are pictures of her. She knows her name is Lulu. The last picture is of her and her 5 babies. View attachment 36919View attachment 36920View attachment 36921View attachment 36922

How kind are you. What a story they are all such lucky bunnies. I thought rabbits only survived six years and a possible five years in the wild. Thanks to you they have all had an amazingly happy and long life.
I know how much it hurts to lose them, but please console yourself on the knowledge of how much you have given these lovely creatures. I applaud you

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Your story of Jessica waking you up in the morning, she/he must have been running loose in the house. After reading about rabbits when I got these, I started reading stories of rabbits living in the house and I saw a story of a rescue rabbit and the owner told this rabbit she had treats in her bowl. They were downstairs. The rabbit ran up the stairs to the bowl of treats. They are strange little animals and all different personalities. I did not turn these rabbits into pets. I just gave them a place to live. The oldest rabbit when she got mad whould get on her hind legs and kick at you and sounded like a cat hissing. They can be vicious lol.

 

[Niele da Kine]

The only fertilizer we get for our gardens comes from these bunnies. They're English angora so extra fuzzy and they provide fiber to make insanely soft and fuzzy angora yarn.

It works really well. We give a lot of the garden trimmings to the bunnies and they speed process it into 'bunny berries' which are a cold manure so it can go right back on the garden again.

This is DaffyDill before grooming,

After he's had a lot of the fluff combed off. I always wonder if he can see out of the fluff and what he thinks when his hair gets combed out of his eyes

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Your rabbits are really cute. Do you spin the angora and use it for crocheting, knitting? All if the rabbits in my picture were kind of wild, huge and they did not like to be picked up. They would come and let you pet them when feeding them. They never did like their pen we built for them. A few of the younger rabbits did like to dig and run, but when they got older they just sat and I thought well you can do that in the hutch. We had to catch them in the hutch, which was not easy and then carry them to the pen, and later take 2 of us to catch and put back, and if we put 2 in all they did was fight, the bully chasing the other one, and then you could take the bully out and put a different rabbit in and the one that had just been tormented now became the tormentor for the next rabbit. Totally nuts. Lol. Lulu above did die a week or so ago and now there are just the 2 latest dumped rabbits. One is around 6 years old, but this other one showed up last year and she has to be around 2. We are going to cut the hutch down to just 2, do some repairs on it, paint it and make more of a cute thing if possible and I am going to make a small compost bin I can handle and change their boxes weekly and collect droppings under the hutch. The whole thing might be more manageable for me.

 

[Niele da Kine]

Yup, they get haircuts and the fiber is spun into Hula Bunny Yarn. The commercial HB yarn is spun by some nice folks in Pennsylvania. They mix in some very fine Merino sheep's wool for bounce and a bit of silk for shine and then send it back to me. Then it gets sold in a local shop and we use the money to go on vacation, although not this year. http://hillsidefarmhawaii.com/pages/yarn/bunnies.html I need to update that page and add more pictures,

I spin pure angora which is a softer feeling yarn, insanely soft and luscious, although it takes too long when I spin it for me to sell the yarn. It also has zero 'bounce' so it makes great scarves and shawls, not so good for anything that should cling or shape itself to the body. I also save the best fiber for the pure angora since there's some variation in fiber texture from bunny to bunny. We've been breeding for 'silky' although some are still more silky feeling than others.

The yarn gets sold and we will sell rabbits as well, although so far we haven't been charging for bunny 'berries' but give that away for free when folks want some for their garden. It's the only fertilizer we can afford since commercial fertilizers have to be shipped in.

Bunnies are sensitive to scent and territorial, so when you take one bunny out, the remaining one is in it's own territory and the new bunny is an interloper. If they were both shifted to a neutral space, then they may get along although it's not guaranteed. Perhaps you could mix some lemon juice with water and spray the whole hutch and both bunnies with lemon scent before putting them together? Two adult intact males will rarely get along and they can kill each other. Sometimes a doe will be a 'diva' and want to be Queen Empress Bunny and she will chase everybunny else until they get the same memo.

Bunny berries don't need to be composted, they're a 'cold' manure. I just put couple inch thick layer on the top of the garden and scuffle it into the topsoil when replanting a garden. Although, we have a lot of bunnies and are using raised bed gardens so our ratio of bunny space to garden space is almost even.

 

[bobm]

I raised rabbits by the hundreds at a time. If you castrate the males at 5-6 weeks of age, you can raise 2-4 per cage -virtually no fighting. If you have females too you can keep one female with 2-3 castrated males with virtually no fighting. 2 or more Females in one cage are another story ....one will be a diva and fights to death are common.