Is rabbit care made clear enough to new owners ?

I am not talking about a rescue rabbit or non rescue rabbit, just rabbits in general. are new rabbit owners given enough infomation?

When i got my first rabbit Penny, i got her as a single bunny. Her cage was far to small. She was vaccinated every 6 months. I over fed her on pellets. she didnt get as much hay as she need. Was this becasue i didnt care about her? no. It as becasue I didnt have the correct infomation on rabbit care. I read book ect but most are out of date
Obviously this has all changed now she is living in a 6ft X 3ft double hutch with attached 6ft run, 1 egg cup of pellets, unlimted hay, is now bonded and vaccinated!

New rabbit ownes will buy a 3ft hutch thinking that it is an ok size. New rabbit owners may not vaccinate - becasue they dont know about vaccinations.
I dont think shops will ever stop selling small hutches (or not for along time anyway) so instead of trying to change shops ect, shouldnt the new owner be educated ?
If a rabbt owner is educated this may well lower the amount of rabbit in rescues or being mis-treated.
Just my opionion though

Depends where the rabbit comes from. Pet shops and breeders now - where do you think the rabbits in rescue come from

I think it depends where you get your rabbits. Some breeders can give out great info, most rescues do, a few pet shops do.

CharlotteMc said:

I am not talking about a rescue rabbit or non rescue rabbit, just rabbits in general. are new rabbit owners given enough infomation?

When i got my first rabbit Penny, i got her as a single bunny. Her cage was far to small. She was vaccinated every 6 months. I over fed her on pellets. she didnt get as much hay as she need. Was this becasue i didnt care about her? no. It as becasue I didnt have the correct infomation on rabbit care. I read book ect but most are out of date
Obviously this has all changed now she is living in a 6ft X 3ft double hutch with attached 6ft run, 1 egg cup of pellets, unlimted hay, is now bonded and vaccinated!

New rabbit ownes will buy a 3ft hutch thinking that it is an ok size. New rabbit owners may not vaccinate - becasue they dont know about vaccinations.
I dont think shops will ever stop selling small hutches (or not for along time anyway) so instead of trying to change shops ect, shouldnt the new owner be educated ?
If a rabbt owner is educated this may well lower the amount of rabbit in rescues or being mis-treated.
Just my opionion though

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I agree with this, people aren't always going to listen to advice to rescue instead of buy so instead of focusing on that then really we should be educating people so that less bunnies end up in rescues!

I think it depends where you get a rabbit from. And also how prepared you are to go looking for information yourself. There is a lot of information on the internet, but not all of it is good, so you have to be careful where you take advice from as well.

no. I got my first rabbit from P@H. They also sold me a GP to live with him and a 3 ft indoor cage. He did live inside and have the run of a long hallway by day but he was in that little cage at night. No-one told me it was cruel, and it never occurred to me. Then he dug up the carpet and went to live in the garage in a bigger 2 storey hutch with a run attached in the winter and moved the hutch and run outdoors in summer. By that time he lived with 3 piggies. He was fed unlimited mix and I followed the rabbit book instructions to "never let the bowl go empty". Sometimes he had a little hay. Sometimes he escaped and went hopabout in next door's huge garden. He must have loved that so much. If only I'd known better then, he'd have had a better life.

It was better than I expected, but still not comprehensive.
They mentioned jabs and spaying and the appropriate times for them, that you can get pet insurance for rabbits, that they can be litter trained, that they needed to eat plenty of hay as well as pellets, and that pellets were better than muesli mix because of selective feeding. But some of the other things were just me asking them to confirm what I'd already heard: e.g. that they need the company of other rabbits, and you can't leave them alone for 24 hours with a timed feeder in the way that you could a cat.
I think the last bit is very important and needs to be emphasised more, as lots of people (esp singles) assume a pet can fit round their lives and rabbits need quite a lot of attention.
Another woman was getting a rabbit at the same time; she'd specifically said it was to live with her guinea pig, and they told her this was ok.
I have a feeling they tell customers what they want to hear.

They didn't have any cages that were big enough, so I went back a couple of days later and got a second one.
Why aren't some bigger cages stocked? Some people would buy them, though not everyone would whilst the smaller, cheaper ones were still in shops ... I don't really get the total lack of availability of good-sized cages for rabbits. Shops could be making money from them too, so it would be in their interests to stock them.

I completely agree tbh, I still don't know a great deal about rabbits and I am learning, I used ot have rabbits when I was a kid and my grandma and grandad did all the looking after them and they were always single rabbits. I know a hell of a lot more than I do now but I still don't know as much as most on here as these two are my first two since being a child and they were spare of the moment rescues as some idiot bought them for a neice and their mum said no and were given back to this idiot woman who was going to neck them and feed them to her ferrets as rabbits are vermin apparently so I had to take them that night..with no cage or anything.

The sad part is, I am nowhere near educated enough to give advice on rabbit keeping and I'm a second year vet nursing student, and I know more than the qualified vet nurses at the surgery I work at..and most of the vets actually. We have one rabbit savvy vet.

CharlotteMc said:

I am not talking about a rescue rabbit or non rescue rabbit, just rabbits in general. are new rabbit owners given enough infomation?

When i got my first rabbit Penny, i got her as a single bunny. Her cage was far to small. She was vaccinated every 6 months. I over fed her on pellets. she didnt get as much hay as she need. Was this becasue i didnt care about her? no. It as becasue I didnt have the correct infomation on rabbit care. I read book ect but most are out of date
Obviously this has all changed now she is living in a 6ft X 3ft double hutch with attached 6ft run, 1 egg cup of pellets, unlimted hay, is now bonded and vaccinated!

New rabbit ownes will buy a 3ft hutch thinking that it is an ok size. New rabbit owners may not vaccinate - becasue they dont know about vaccinations.
I dont think shops will ever stop selling small hutches (or not for along time anyway) so instead of trying to change shops ect, shouldnt the new owner be educated ?
If a rabbt owner is educated this may well lower the amount of rabbit in rescues or being mis-treated.
Just my opionion though

Click to expand...

nothing wrong with your opinion!

you are quite right. i'd go further than providing information with the rabbit - i'd make all pet ownership dependent on having a licence (must learn to spell that) which could only be issued on completion of a detailed training course - say an hour a week for six weeks. the extended period is essential (six one-hours rather than a single day) as commitment needs to be shown.

i'd start with a publicity campaign - changing opinions through advertising, documentaries, placing the message in television soaps etc then follow with a simple 'pet registration' programme where all current pet owners sent off their details to the government or local council (local might be better) and recieved in return an ownership document and care information - not a licence as they hadn't had training - and a reminder that pets owners can expect to be inspected to ensure adequate levels of care. while this interim phase was going ahead, the deadline for applications would be set, with the date from which all new animal owners had to be registered and licenced before acquiring the animal.

licence – to grant permission (license, American)
licenced – seems not to exist, seems to become ‘licensed’.
We live and learn.

No. We new nothing about rabbits when we got ours nor did the person giving us the rabbit know anything as he was kept in a 3 ft long hutch.
I think education on pets should be taught in school at an early age.

I think the information given in pet shops etc is enough to make them live, survive and probably "comfortable" but not enough to make them as happy as they can possibly be. Each bun is different.

one word NO

il admit i use to keep mind in a small hutch did have a run but still hutch was no where big enough
i feel bad now but at least its the past but yh rabbit care does need to be made more clearer :thumb:

No I dont think so...

I had NO idea the amount of care and attention bunnies would need untill I started researching in preparation...so i can see how people have them and they end up not getting the care and attention that they need! The thing is that you cant MAKE people research and really people need to take responsibility for their rabbits.

I know people now who have unvacced rabbits, dont feed much hay (if at all), feed most of their diet as muslie (sp?), dont have a run attatched to the hutch/make sure that they get time out of the hutch etc etc etc and they think im crazy when i talk about vacs/amount of hay/size of hutch etc etc etc

People seem to get rabbits on a whim without putting much thought into what they need...

No. I researched before getting my rabbits, but before researching, I thought you should feed them museli, keep them on sawdust and in a 3ft hutch. I didn't even know they should eat hay. :shock:

To be honest, if 3ft hutches are on sale saying its suitable for rabbits, what else are people supposed to think? If you had a choice over a cheap 3ft hutch and a hugely expensive 6ft hutch, (and both were advertised as suitable for rabbits), the vast majority of people would buy the 3ft hutch, because its cheap. Everything nowadays is run by money, so the cheaper you can buy things, the better, so if people can avoid buying large hutches, avoid vet bills (ie vaccinations and neutering), and high hay prices, then people will not do it.

I think pet shops, such as pets at home as an example, being a large chain store, should have sit downs will all people who want to buy a pet.

A small room in the store somewhere, (you get this when you buy a laptop!!!!) and go over information with them.

Give information sheets, explain proper care, diet etc. Give a starter pack of current food etc.

It would take 10 minutes and help so much. Discuss bonding in rabbits etc.

From a business POV as well, they would do better. If they tell people rabbits need constant hay, where are they going to buy the hay from? If they give them starter food and explain about delicate stomachs, where are they going to buy that food from.

And if they explain about minimum housing requirements etc, where are they people going to buy the big hutch from?

They would do better if they did this, and the rabbits would be happier as well.

16 years ago i got my first rabbit from a pet shop and the only thing i got asked was 'do you need a water bottle and food'?
she was lucky that she was a free range house bun, not through knowledge but through the fact i hate to see any animal cooped up unless neccessary, she had her own place but it was there for her to retereat to, not us to lock her in.
she never had unlimited hay, ate mix, was regularly given our sweet biscuits and chocolate and thought she was one of our dogs as she just ran with the pack!
she was vaccinated but not spayed, the thought never even crossed my mind!

despite all that she lived to be 8 years old and was a lovely, friendly, bolshie rabbit.

she was the bun that started my love for the little critters and i have learnt and changed things along the way. i feel even now i am constantly learning and hearing new things about them, even more so since i fully joined RU.

Definately Not

We heavily researched rabbit care before getting Buckley. The advice we were given was "feed him a small amount of pellets, unlimited hay, and let him have masses of space to play and be a bunny, don't expect him to be cuddly - rabbits hate being held".
Most of it reiterated what I had learnt from people on here.
I think owners do have to be willing to seek out information because if you bombard people with info they aren't willing to look for themselves generally speaking it falls on deaf ears.
I definitely think that the info people who buy buns from P@H get is quite outdated and I would like them to stop selling such outdated books and keep up to date with current welfare developments.

LionheadLuver said:

No. I researched before getting my rabbits, but before researching, I thought you should feed them museli, keep them on sawdust and in a 3ft hutch. I didn't even know they should eat hay. :shock:

To be honest, if 3ft hutches are on sale saying its suitable for rabbits, what else are people supposed to think? If you had a choice over a cheap 3ft hutch and a hugely expensive 6ft hutch, (and both were advertised as suitable for rabbits), the vast majority of people would buy the 3ft hutch, because its cheap. Everything nowadays is run by money, so the cheaper you can buy things, the better, so if people can avoid buying large hutches, avoid vet bills (ie vaccinations and neutering), and high hay prices, then people will not do it.

Click to expand...

That's what I thought!

The woman who sold me Poppet (breeder who also has a pet shop) did spend some time explaining, but not nearly enough. I was about to go for a smaller-size hutch, which she refused to sell me (good on her!) and I bought the larger one. We have since had a two-tier hutch built for the bunnies (as a companion was purchased from the same breeder a month later), and I am again thinking about getting a bigger one in the spring.

I admit I was clueless. I have learnt most of what I know from buying/reading books and asking questions/reading threads on this forum. Though I would never give my buns up now that I have them, I would probably have been somewhat put-off from buying them, had I known the amount of work involved in caring for them..!

I can see now that they are not suitable pets for children, and you must have the time, space and finances to care for them. They cost a lot more than I could possible have imagined! :lol: They have changed the way I live my life ~ for the better ~ and I spend so much time worrying about them. One of the books I bought talked mostly about death. Every other page was about the bunny dying, so I was actually thinking Poppet would die within the week!! :shock:

It would be a good idea for the breeder/petshop to sell a 'starter-package' which would include written info. Buying/collecting a new bun is so exciting, it's easy to forget all that is being said. I do know the breeder explained about vaccs and spaying, and what the bunny should eat, and to only try one thing at the time, and very little of it. I went back for more info, but that wasn't so popular ~ hence I went online and found this forum.
I'd like to think I'm a good bunny mum now, if not a *great* one ~ but I'm working on it!