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RU members who don't live in Great Britain. Share your experiences with us.

Mrs. Bunnykins

Mrs. Bunnykins

Wise Old Thumper
Often wondered about members who live abroad and their experiences of rabbit ownership.

How are rabbits viewed abroad?
Are the vets considerate and compassionate to such small animals.
Do the vets have access to specific medicines, vaccines etc?
How easy is it to get rabbit food in some places?

Ideally covering as many aspects as possible.

Basically, would you like to share your varied experiences with us in old blighty?

I tend to forget at times that rabbit ownership is worldwide. :oops::oops:
 
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- I'm in the US (Florida) and rabbits are seen as one of the most common house pets, after cats and dogs.

- Yes, the vets have always been very kind and caring towards my rabbits and treat them just like they would a cat or dog. they always compliment on how cute or beautiful they are:love: I've met a couple of bad vets but most have been great and actually make me want to become a vet. I think Florida in particular has great vets for all sorts of animals, it seems to have more exotics and small animal vets than other parts of the country.

- There isn't myxi or VHD in the US so no need for vaccines. Medicine wise is probably very similar to the UK, I can't think of any difference right now.

- Rabbit pellets are very easy to get. Every feed store, pet store, and even Walmart has rabbit food. And same with the hay. I always get my timothy hay from Walmart and there's also lots of farms around that bale hay. With my pellets I get a 25 lb bag of Purina pellets from a hardware store.
 
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In Australia rabbits have bad P.R. due to the damage caused by their wild cousins. This is slowly changing as more people are keeping them as pets, although in Queensland it is still illegal to have a pet rabbit unless you are a magician.:roll:

The vet situation is similar to the UK. There are good ones and not so good ones but few who are rabbit savvy. It is necessary to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince when it comes to a vet with decent knowledge of rabbits. We are fortunate to have a very good one but he always tells us veterinary rabbit knowledge in the UK is about 5 years ahead of here.

Food is a real problem. Alfalfa hay is plentiful, meadow hay can be found and sometimes good oaten hay is available. Timothy hay is like hens' teeth. We source our Timothy through our vet from the Oxbow agent in Australia. We have to mix it with other grass hays as it is soooo expensive. Oxbow Bunny Basics pellets are the only ones worthwhile but are readily available. All the brands you have to choose from in the UK are not here.

Overall the situation is improving, albeit slowly. VHD and myxi are still released even around the outskirts of the cities. We only have access to cylap for VHD and are not allowed to vaccinate against myxi, even though the vaccine is held by government research facilites. Simple thing like toys and treats like fenugreek crunchies are all but unheard of. The good thing though is the bunnies themselves, they are as loving and beautiful as those in the UK.:love:
 
Rabbits are largely seen as food here :cry:

Vet wise I think its similar to England, some dont have a clue, some are OK. At a guess Id say that English rabbit knowledge is on the whole better than here. Having said that we are very lucky to have found a good rabbit savvy vet 5 minutes down the road from us :D

The ONLY suppliers of pellets, hay and pet supplies within an hours drive is unfortunately a pet shop that sells live stock, but I have no choice. I do order off the internet (especially the Hay Experts) a few times a year, but the delivery charges are extremely pricey!

Fresh veggies/herbs are scarce here. Because we are in the mountains theres not much variety, and the altitude makes everything rot really quickly :roll: I grow my own herbs for the buns and forage for them instead :thumb:

There is no VHD or Myxi in our part of the country, but our vet has said he can get some for us if we want it.

The nearest rabbit rescue to us is in Montreaux (actually in Switzerland) which is an hour and a half away, and the next one os 3 hours away. They ae always full to bursting :cry:
 
Gemmapookie said:
Rabbits are largely seen as food here :cry:

Vet wise I think its similar to England, some dont have a clue, some are OK. At a guess Id say that English rabbit knowledge is on the whole better than here. Having said that we are very lucky to have found a good rabbit savvy vet 5 minutes down the road from us :D

The ONLY suppliers of pellets, hay and pet supplies within an hours drive is unfortunately a pet shop that sells live stock, but I have no choice. I do order off the internet (especially the Hay Experts) a few times a year, but the delivery charges are extremely pricey!

Fresh veggies/herbs are scarce here. Because we are in the mountains theres not much variety, and the altitude makes everything rot really quickly :roll: I grow my own herbs for the buns and forage for them instead :thumb:

There is no VHD or Myxi in our part of the country, but our vet has said he can get some for us if we want it. The nearest rabbit rescue to us is in Montreaux (actually in Switzerland) which is an hour and a half away, and the next one os 3 hours away. They ae always full to bursting :cry:
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Thank you for all your replies. It is interesting to hear different opinions to welfare standards, food supplies etc.

The highlighted area made me chuckle.:) I know you mean vaccines.

Let's have some more people joining in from abroad.
 
Here in Ukraine, it is an absolute nightmare - rabbits are housed in pet shops in small plexiglass, wall-mounted "boxes", measuring no more than 40 x 30 x 30 cm, and this is for TWO rabbits - they are being roughly handled in most places (my little buck purchased here is still very weary of being stroked and being handled after 5 weeks of intensive love and attention) and not let out much, as it is impossible to get my buck back in his cage now, as he seems to think he will be stuck there forever :(

Qualified rabbit vets are almost non-existent (I have to travel by train 12 hours for the nearest qualified one), and non one knows how to perform a spaying, and also all vets recommend against it saying she will have heart problems after it, and that wearing a collar will make her stressed, although I'm fairly sure if sutured correctly, only a very small percentage of rabbits need to wear such a contraption! Most vets are quite happy to take your money, and if you don't ask the right questions, I think my doe would be dead by now at the hands of some butcher/doctor...

The first rabbit vet I visited with my doe, was only going to shave a bit of matted fur off, and ended up cutting her skin which resulted in the world's most terrible sound, and a very scared bunny, but thankfully she's over it now :)

Quality rabbit food such as pellets, hay etc. and products in general are hard to come by, and very expensive for the average Ukrainian, but thankfully vaccinations are readily available.

Having said all that, Ukrainians like animals in general, so those that find a home are reasonably well treated I think, but medical care is a huge problem...
 
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I am in the USA also. I am in Texas though. Rabbits are not nearly as common where I live. It is very hard to find a rabbit savvy vet. Finding an emergency rabbit savvy vet is very challenging. At times just finding a vet that will even see a rabbit without traveling too far for sick rabbit can prove difficult. The pellets and hay in Walmart,pet stores and feed stores around here is rubbish. It is all old and crumbly. There is a lot of sweet junk treats though. There is a rabbit rescue about 35 minutes from me that orders supplies from Oxbow and Busy bunny to sell to the public. They open their doors on Saturday mornings to the public for 3 hours. The oxbow hay that they get in is quite often broken small pieces. I stopped buying it when Julie started choking on it. The rabbit rescue are very accommodating though. They sell me some of the farm fresh hay that they get from a local farmer for the rescue rabbits. They allow us to pick through all the bales gathering just the stiff long pieces for Julie. I am very lucky to have them. Basically rabbits have to be house rabbits here because of the summer heat and fly larva eggs from the Bot fly. I can't even let Julie out in the garden to play anymore since a several of cases of rabbits and squirrels breathing it in have been reported.
 
I forgot to add that it is very hard to find cages and hutches that are not wire floors and are big enough.
 
Gemmapookie said:
Rabbits are largely seen as food here :cry:
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As Gemmapookie says, they are a food. I know plenty of French people who keep them in hutches in their gardens, breeding rabbits as they would chickens for the pot. This is a typical set up on our local buy/sell website: Depressing, huh?

I acquired Muppette because a neighbour's son had got bored with her and when she escaped from her makeshift run and cardboard box hutch (yes, really) from the side of her drive, she took up residence in our veg garden for the summer. There she proved herself excellent at harvesting the French beans, lettuces, radishes, carrots, etc but absolutely no good at weeding. When the weather got cold last year, I "rescued" her... and she proved that she was certainly female by depositing a litter of 4 kits. What a surprise. :roll:

She now lives with one of her daughters, Gingernut, in a reasonabe sized enclosed run and hutch with passing chickens, sheep and cats for company. I plan to give her daytime access to an even larger run in the spring.

Rabbit savvy vets... we found a vets that would spay (200 euros per rabbit because they use two vets per op, one to operate and one to monitor anaesthesia) but I think if I had to go in with a case of head tilt or similar, I would have to research here first and go in with information for them.

Vaccinations are available - myxi is in the general area and I have a friend who is nursing her best breeding (for meat) doe through it at the moment. I'm sure the vet thinks she's mad.

Rabbit food (pellets, hay, etc) is easy - because plenty of people breed them for meat. However, I have access to unlimited supplies of mixed pasture, hayfields etc so I forage twice a day for them and we have straw and good quality hay for the sheep so the rabbits get plenty of hay too.

I only know of a few British people with rabbits as pets - generally not something French people do. They cost about 35 - 40 euros in the pet department of the local garden centres. When I got talking to the manager of the local garden centre, she said they don't supply any info sheets with their rabbits (or gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs) because why should they? It's the responsibility of the people buying the rabbit. She disputed any need to have two rabbits together for company. She also poo-poo-ed my question about sterilisation - if you have one, you don't need to sterilise. You British people want to sterilise everything. Your dogs, your cats, your horses... and now your rabbits.

I've no idea about rabbit-specific rescues in the area but most of the SPAs (RSPCA equivalents) and animal refuges take smaller pets like rabbits, guinea pigs etc.
 
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Hi, i live in British Columbia, Canada and have 2 rabbits. Rabbits are very popular pets here but there is a divide I find on how people treat them. Some ppl have them as house bunnies and others still have them in hutches out back. Or in small cages in the house. But it is becoming more known how smart they are and that they need more space than just a cage. So most people let them out to run periodically.

Unfortunately, they are still seen as a disposable pet to a lot of people. There are numerous ads in the paper and online saying Free Bunny and that their kids are bored with it, etc. It's sad. And some people release them which caused a huge problem at the university near me. They ended up sending most to rescues but a lot of bunnies were killed. Very very awful.

We don't have vaccines here as we don't have the diseases that are found in the UK. There are numerous Vets that are experienced with bunnies, so that is good.

Petstores are changing and only adopting out bunnies from the SPCa and not buying from Breeders anymore. There are a few that still buy from Breeders, but more and more are changing. And it is HIGHLY encouraged to have your rabbit spayed or neutered. For health reasons and to stop overpopulation.

Rabbit food and hay is easily bought at many stores. I usually buy from Feed and Tack stores as they have the best hay for the cheapest.

I hope i answered all the questions! :):wave:
 
Well I live in Sweden and it's still pretty bad over here, most people are still stupid enough to think that it's ok to keep rabbits alone in tiny hutches outdoors & only take them out for "cuddles" every once in a while :? Either that or tiny cages indoors with no or very limited free range time. People get rabbits without doing their homework which infuriates me. They don't realise what a commitment it really is and thus, a lot of them end up being put online for sale, released in the wild or PTS because no one wants them anymore. I do believe there has been some improvement over the last 10 years or so, but the majority of people still consider rabbits to be worth much less than cats & dogs. It's sad :( I quite frequently get told by people that "it's just a rabbit." Would they say that to a dog owner or cat owner? No. Because apparently dogs and cats are more important. Makes me so angry.

As for vets...it varies. The majority of my local ones are clueless, others are ok and there are some that are very good, too (haven't found one of those where I live but I know they exist in other parts of the country. I need to move, damn it!) I've had to deal with vets that were extremely rude & obviously didn't give a ****, and then there are some like the one I've been taking Boris to who genuinely seems to care about him like she would with any other animal, even if her knowledge of rabbits is a bit more limited. You can find all sorts. It's hard though because often they all say different things and it can be hard to know who is right and who is wrong.

And then there's food. Finding decent hay is quite easy, but when it comes to pellets it's next to impossible where I live at least. I know one shop that imports and sells SS and another that has Oxbow, but apart from that, all you ever see are these horrible ones that contain 90% **** and no fibre whatsoever. I actually stopped feeding mine pellets as I couldn't find any decent ones that didn't cost a fortune but I now feed them SS which I get online from The Hay Experts :) Even if there's a shop close to me that stocks it, it's still way cheaper to just get it online!
 
Here in Holland, rabbits are very populair. But people don't really know about "real rabbit care"
Even if they do most people don't want to spend a fortune on things for their bunny.
There are quite a few cruelty cases. Especially(how do you spell that?) with cage issuses . They arn't usually given vaccines, but they do go to vet if neccisary.
Haven't experienced the vets here myself, but having had a look on websites and heard peoples' own experiences they are OK.
 
Oh I forgot to add that we do have Myxi and VHD down in the Southern parts, and there you can get your bunnies vaccinated. I live a bit further North however so we don't have any of that here.
 
This is great hearing from overseas rabbit owners. Thank you.

Such interesting comparisons and many of which I think should make us very fortunate to live in UK.:D

Please keep sharing your experiences.:thumb::thumb:
 
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