Tomorrow's the day!

[naturestee]

They are a bit like puppies and kittens in that they're more messy and more hyper when younger. But my two 5 year old buns still do binkies with the best of them and one is just obsessed with throwing his toys around. He's been doing thatfor years. With good care and some out-of-cage time,rabbits arefar more active than many people realize.

My bun Sprite (my avatar), who would be 5 now like her sister is, played reverse fetch with me. She'd throw toys, wait for me to fetch them, snatch them out of my hands and throw them again!

Try giving them some basic bunny toys-toilet paper/paper towel cardboard tubes (stuffed with hay if you want), old phone books, hard plastic baby keys and rattles, plastic cat balls with bells inside, etc.

Try giving them a small treat like a dried cranberry or a baby carrot after grooming. If you do it every time they'll learn to expect it and settle down a bit more.

Quick note- if they're peeing over the edge of the cage you can get urine guards for the cages at some pet stores or from rabbit cage suppliers, or make your own with some plastic siding or even cardboard for a quick fix. The best litter IMO is wood pellet littersimilar to Feline Pine, but it's far cheaper to buy the horse versions (or untreated wood stove pellets) from feed storesor Farm & Fleet. I use a dog food scoopto take out the pooped-on parts and put them in a separate bucketfor my garden. A little woodmixed in the poop won't harm the garden, especially with the way this stuff holds moisture and then disintegrates into dust.

 

[fffarmergirl]

naturestee wrote:

They are a bit like puppies and kittens in that they're more messy and more hyper when younger. But my two 5 year old buns still do binkies with the best of them and one is just obsessed with throwing his toys around. He's been doing thatfor years. With good care and some out-of-cage time,rabbits arefar more active than many people realize.

My bun Sprite (my avatar), who would be 5 now like her sister is, played reverse fetch with me. She'd throw toys, wait for me to fetch them, snatch them out of my hands and throw them again!

Try giving them some basic bunny toys-toilet paper/paper towel cardboard tubes (stuffed with hay if you want), old phone books, hard plastic baby keys and rattles, plastic cat balls with bells inside, etc.

Try giving them a small treat like a dried cranberry or a baby carrot after grooming. If you do it every time they'll learn to expect it and settle down a bit more.

Quick note- if they're peeing over the edge of the cage you can get urine guards for the cages at some pet stores or from rabbit cage suppliers, or make your own with some plastic siding or even cardboard for a quick fix. The best litter IMO is wood pellet littersimilar to Feline Pine, but it's far cheaper to buy the horse versions (or untreated wood stove pellets) from feed storesor Farm & Fleet. I use a dog food scoopto take out the pooped-on parts and put them in a separate bucketfor my garden. A little woodmixed in the poop won't harm the garden, especially with the way this stuff holds moisture and then disintegrates into dust.

Thanks for the info - I really appreciate all of it. Are there any toys that are bad for them? Can they have stuffed toys?

Is there a reason they couldn't have bigger treats? I've given each of them a slice of apple - is that too much?

Would the urine guards prevent the buck from being able to spray outside of his cage? If I get the horse versions of the wood pellets, how would I ask for them at Tractor Supply? What do horses use them for? What about sawdust?

They poop like livestock, that's for sure, but they seem more - I don't know - sentient? They have so much real character that I feel it's wrong to keep them in cages. They pooped all over the living room when I let them run around, though . . . .

Anybody who thinks they're going to get rabbits and keep them in cages and just sheer them for fiber - well - I guess some folks do but I'm having second thoughts about this. I just didn't realize how alive they'd be. They're, like, real living beings. I just thought because people kept them in cages in barns and had tons of them and ate them that they must have the character of a chicken or something. They are most certainly not like chickens. Nothing against chickens.

 

[naturestee]

There's a ton of toys they can have, I just listed a few of the most popular and easily found. Here's the whole Library thread:

http://www.rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=12433&forum_id=17

And if that's a bit overwhelming, my favorite quick list of cheap bunny toys:

http://www.adoptarabbit.org/articles/2003/Toys.pdf

Some rabbits love having stuffed toys to groom and cuddle with, others don't care. Some chew on them and will swallow the fabric, which is bad! You can try giving them some, just stick to ones without removable parts like you'd give a baby or a dog. Take the toy away if they chew on it. I'd also stay away from rubber or softer plastics because some rabbits really like to chew- and swallow- those.

A slice of apple is a little large but fine as long as they don't have issues with it. I have smaller rabbits than yours and one has a sensitive tummy.

The urine guards are often used to keep bucks from spraying outside the cage, although sometimes it helps tomake them a little higher than the ones that are sold. I think those are a maybe 3-4 inches tall? That will work for some bucks, but we had a mini rex at the shelter that painted the wall behind his cage all up and down! Needless to say his neuter appointment was bumped up!

The wood pellets are used in horse stalls instead of wood shavings. I'm not sure how many people actually use it for that, but lots of people use it for rabbit and ferret litter! TSC should carry wood pellets. Sawdust isn't good because it's too fine and can irritate the rabbits' eyes, even if it's only in the drop pan of a wire-bottom cage. Really messy stuff. Aspen wood shavings (not cedar, pine is debatable) are fine but not as absorbant as wood pellets.

As for how they're kept and their behavior compared to other livestock- I suppose it's just a matter of what you're used to. My husband grew up on a farm and raised rabbits as meat and they were also pets, even at the same time. Same with the beef cattle. And he and his siblings taught some of the chickens to do tricks. Never teach a chicken how to ring a doorbell! With them, every animal had a name and personality and every piece of meat in the freezerwas named and that was ok. But that's just how things were.

Although now my husband will stop people in the pet store and convince them to buy bigger cages (or dog crates or pens), keep rabbits in the house, adopt from the shelter, proper food, etc. He much prefers them as house pets.

 

[fffarmergirl]

naturestee wrote:

As for how they're kept and their behavior compared to other livestock- I suppose it's just a matter of what you're used to. My husband grew up on a farm and raised rabbits as meat and they were also pets, even at the same time. Same with the beef cattle. And he and his siblings taught some of the chickens to do tricks. Never teach a chicken how to ring a doorbell! With them, every animal had a name and personality and every piece of meat in the freezerwas named and that was ok. But that's just how things were.

Although now my husband will stop people in the pet store and convince them to buy bigger cages (or dog crates or pens), keep rabbits in the house, adopt from the shelter, proper food, etc. He much prefers them as house pets.

Thanks for the toys links- I'll go there next. All of the info you gave me will be put to good use.

Although I was raised in a farming community and my dad owned a slaughterhouse, I've been a vegetarian for a while now because I don't want to eat animals that haven't been raised ethically. I don't mind , if they've had good lives and died quickly. Recently, we decided to start homesteading. We're getting chickens to raise on pasture for meat, free-range egg chickens, going in on a cow with a neighbor, buying goat milk from another friend, and growing our own fruit and vegetables. The rabbits (for the fiber, not meat) were going to be the first animalstep in the homesteading process. Don't know if I can do it. If I get this upset about rabbits in cages, I don't know how I'll feel about the meat chickens - especially now that I know they can be trained to ring doorbells.

Well - we've already got them and there are only 4. We'll build them a nice pen as soon as it gets warm enough, and they'll have lots of room to run around together - maybe go ahead and get that buck neutered. If hubby builds them a nice earth-floor shed . . . . no, can't do that - need to keep the fiber clean. . . . . somebody give me a suggestion that will allow them some freedom yet keep the fiber clean!

 

[naturestee]

Yeah, honestly I don't know if I'd be able to eat an animal I raised. I didn't grow up with that (but grew up near/next to it) and nearly went veggie when I was a teen. Although now I can eat buffalo with no problem, even though I see them in my in-laws' front yard every time I visit. The babies are cute!

There's a lot to be said for free range chicken eggs- omg yum! I try to by localfood when I can, and am really sad that that I missed the local food program at the nature center this last weekend- lastyear was a heaven of food. Cheese from grass-fed cows is the best stuff ever!

If you need to, just start small with the chickens, maybe try mainly for eggs vs. meat and see if you get attached to them. I've never seen much intelligence from them personally. Try honey bees too- wild/small farm honey has so much more taste! It's an easy sell at farmers markets too if you have anything like that around you. If you want some encouragement, one of my coworkers had a hobby/homestead farm that did well enough he quit his job to open up a small store out of the house for his extra eggs, meat, and honey. Although I'm only an hour from Milwaukee and there's a rich yuppie community nearby so that helps drive sales.

 

[fffarmergirl]

I am so jealous of your friend. That would be my DREAM - to be able to quit work and just homestead! There is a huge market for organic locally grown food here. At the organic food co-op, people pay $16.00 EACH for organic frozen chickens, and they still sell them so fast they can't keep them in stock. I tried to find somebody to buy organic meat from but the demand is so much higher than the supply.

We're planning to do bees starting next year and I have dreams of raising goats for milk and meat. But - we need homesteading partners. We have to have somebody who could take care of the animals every other weekend in the summers so we could go camping, and once in a while we need a vacation. We have a place right here where somebody could put up a trailer or a camper and we'd have separate yards and not be on top of eachother. We could take turns watching eachothers animals, share equipment, etc. But finding somebody like that is really hard to do.

 

[gentle giants]

I raised chickens for something like twelve years, and I gotta say, chickens have a lot more personality than you would think too. I remember one RIR rooster we had when I wasa kid, he would hang around the front door of our house, and anytime one of us came outside he would come running up and want to be held. His favorite treat was bits of mozzarella cheese. Myself and some friends actually taught him to say "please" to get a treat. We would hold up the cheese and tell him, "Say please!" and he would cluck softly every time to get his cheese. :hearts

 

[DeniseJP]

I am trying the Carefresh bedding in my drop pans and it absorbs urine like nobody's business! It is expensive but a little goes a long way.

Can't wait to see pix of your buns! They sound adorable!

Denise

 

[fffarmergirl]

gentle giants wrote:

I raised chickens for something like twelve years, and I gotta say, chickens have a lot more personality than you would think too. I remember one RIR rooster we had when I wasa kid, he would hang around the front door of our house, and anytime one of us came outside he would come running up and want to be held. His favorite treat was bits of mozzarella cheese. Myself and some friends actually taught him to say "please" to get a treat. We would hold up the cheese and tell him, "Say please!" and he would cluck softly every time to get his cheese. :hearts

That is so sweet and adorable. I never knew roosters could be nice! The only thing I remember about the roosters when I was a kid was when they'd chase us and try to kill us. LOL.

 

[fffarmergirl]

DeniseJP wrote:

I am trying the Carefresh bedding in my drop pans and it absorbs urine like nobody's business! It is expensive but a little goes a long way.

Can't wait to see pix of your buns! They sound adorable!

Denise

I'll have to keep my eyes open for the Carefresh bedding.

I got the bedding pellets for horses, like Naturestee suggested, and they're really working well. I feel so much better about having the rabbits in the house now.

They're starting to grow on me. I never imagined they'd be so full of personality. They seem more content, too, now that they're settling down and getting used to things. I just LOVE Buffy. I shouldn't play favorites - but she is awesome.

When I find the connector thing to put the pics online, I'll definitely post some! Can't find the darned thing.