Things to Know - FAQs About Us

Everyone comes with a list of questions to ask us before picking a new rabbit and taking it home, but quite often questions get forgotten, or people feel rude asking them. So here’s a few things about us that can help ease the minds of future owners that wish to buy our rabbits. This is basically our FAQs page with a focus on our rabbitry.

How old must rabbits be before we let them go to their new homes?

This isn’t a simple answer. There’s a minimum of 6 weeks, but it’s really dependant on the rabbit. Our babies must be weaned and fully onto solids for at least a week before they go to their new homes (though it’s usually longer). They must be gaining weight on a solid diet, and they must be a certain weight before they go (though that weight depends on the size of mum and their siblings, of course). Generally, our babies are ready between 6 and 10 weeks of age.

How are our rabbits housed?

Babies are kept with mum until 2 weeks of age (if they’re being hand raised) in the mum’s nesting hutch. The Nesting hutch is a rectangular hutch with a special area for nesting and is big enough to allow mum lots of room whilst not too big that her babies can get too far from each other, even if they’re born in different parts of the hutch. At 2 weeks old, our babies move inside where we start hand feeding them. They start out in our Tiny hutch, coming out into our laps at feed times. When they start exploring, we begin to feed them in a play pen where they can run around whilst taking turns being fed. Once they’re older and growing, we eventually leave the pen around them and give them access from the hutch to the pen most of the day, locking them up in Tiny only for the night.

Our outside rabbits each have their own hutch, though some of them get housed together. They rotate around hutches based on their needs. Some rabbits don’t like being housed together and are kept in separate hutches. All our outside hutches are covered in fly wire (mozzies transmit diseases to rabbits). Our outside rabbits get run time as well, dependant on them. Our friendly, outgoing adult buns get turns running around the whole yard, in groups or separate depending on how they go with other bunnies. The more timid buns and those that are a little young for the whole yard get to run around in the large play pen we have. Sometimes our hutches look small when prospective buyers see them, because they think our bunnies are restricted to just that tiny cage. Even with run time, our bunnies still get to rotate so that they aren’t always in the same cage and get a chance at the largest cages every week.

Our breeding rabbits get rotated around hutches. They have their resting hutch, which they use between litters. Then when they are being mated to our buck they go in with him in the Mansion (a hutch we have that has a small run as well as an enclosed area and opens out to the yard). They stay with him (they enjoy his company and seem happier than if we were to just mate him to them and then separate them afterwards). Then once they have been with him for 3 weeks they go into the Nesting hutch where they nest and then have their babies. Then it’s back to the resting hutches between litters.

What do we feed our rabbits?

Our rabbits get constant hay as well as pellets. Our babies are fed Vetafarm Rabbit Origins. Our older rabbits get fed either Vetafaram or some other brands of pellets (we are currently searching for a brand we like most). We also give our older rabbits veggies, fruits and herbs based on the season (some store bought, others grown in our garden).

What do our baby bunnies learn in their early weeks with us?

Our bunnies learn to drink from syringes with us (helpful for the future if any of them need oral medication as adults), and eventually learn to eat solids. We start litter training as well, though with so many babies in a litter it’s often hard to tell which ones are getting the hang of it and which aren’t, so this training must continue in their new homes until they’re better at it. The babies also learn to tolerate new things and overcome fears with us.

They socialise with different people; men and women, adults and children. We also introduce them to our dog when they’re young, at first letting her sniff them, and eventually they are fine with her walking beside them outside their play pen and sticking her nose in their fur for a sniff. They also get used to our kitten through the bars, but they never get too close to him (he’s still learning the word restrain and isn’t as trustworthy as our puppy).

We let children hold them and play with them before they go to their new homes and submit them to loud noises and commotion (multiple people, washing machines, loud music, etc.), increasing in frequency until they are accustomed to the racket and don’t act frightened in any way. They also get split up and left in small, random groups occasionally so that when they go off into their new homes they aren’t overwhelmed with loneliness after being around their siblings for so long. We want to prepare our babies for everything they could go through in their new lives, so that they aren’t thrown into the big bad world without some preparation.

groups occasionalund their siblings for so long. We want to prepare our babies for everything they could go through in their new lives, so that they aren’t thrown into the big bad world without some preparation.

#FAQ