All the rabbits are brothers and sisters so have been together for the last 9 months. They were dumped at the school by a parent who's 6 year old daughter had got fed up with them
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When they arrived they had been living together as one group, they were seperated into groups of boys and girls by our farm manager who has done this job for over 20 years.
When they first arrived they were underweight and one of the young females gave birth to some badly deformed babies, so one of the brothers must have had his wicked way with all the females.
The mother arrived some time later, and she too was underweight, but she lives on her own. All the rabbits were quite shy and not used to human contact, when they were picked up they would bite, scratch and kick out. After a couple of weeks they can just about tolerate being handled.
All the bunnies are now a healthy weight and have plenty of stimulation, one of their favourite games is hitting each other with empty toilet rolls.
When we tried to re-introduce the missing brother they have got on really well, better than expected as they spent 1 hour chasing each other aroud a neutral pen then the next hour having a mutual grooming session. Each day we are trying to increase the time spent togther.. but despite them not being castrated... its going really well.
The school farm is poorly funded at the moment (some thing of an LEA battlefield) so having 6 bunnies neutered is at the bottom of the list (I am trying to persuade them that the females are urgently in need of spaying). Especially as we have just had a Snowy owl dumped on us, the farm is working closely with the RSPB to sort this one out. Our farm seems to be the dumping ground for most unwanted animals, as we have numerous Snakes, Iguanas, Chinchillas, Donkey's, Hamsters and even a Bull. The RSPCA gave us a glowing report when they checked our premises, and approved our re-development plans........ but now the LEA is threatening to withdraw funding.
So you can see our dilema, we never turn away dumped animals and we always seek help if we can't handle them. My main priority is to sort out the pregnant female and hope that the other female is not pregnant as well. The last thing we need is a bunny explosion as we can only just handle the 6 we have got. Should any of the babies survive we expect them to have problems due to inter-breeding, so the babies would need experienced homes that could handle them.