Rabbit facts

Are You Ready For A Rabbit?
by Zach and Amy Phillips-Gary

House rabbits can be quite enjoyable members of your family. They
are affectionate, but in a different way than cats or dogs, for
example. They do not bark, growl, hiss, or meow so are relatively
quiet animals. However, rabbits will make grunts or click their
teeth depending on what their mood is. If they are in serious danger
or pain they will even emit a shrill scream.

When you come home, your house rabbit may not leap up and greet you
at the door as your canine friend might, but once a bond has been
created, s/he will run up to greet you and pause for a stroke or
other gentle attention. Rabbits may not want to sit on your lap
purring for long periods of time as some cats will, but if you get
down to their level, they are likely to hop onto your lap to say
hello or even climb up and over your back and head. Human climbing:
the house rabbit sport!

Other benefits of sharing your life and home with a rabbit are that
they can be taught to use the litter box, they can occasionally be
left in a well-stocked clean cage for short periods of time (2-3
days, as you might with a cat), and they are just fun to watch as
they hop and race about or just doze in a sunny comfortable spot.

While we highly recommend house rabbits as wonderful animal
companions, they are not low-maintenance pets. Please seriously
consider the following questions and information before bringing a
rabbit home.

1. Are you willing to provide daily maintenance for your house
rabbit?

House rabbits can be messy creatures! Even once they are litter box
trained, they can still leave droppings or urine to mark their
territory (spaying and neutering does lessen this). Depending on the
type of bedding you choose, cage litter boxes need to be changed 2 to
3 times a week at least and the entire cage needs cleaned about once
a week.

House rabbits are HUNGRY creatures! Due their unique digestive
systems, they eat quite frequently. Depending on the specific diet
you choose for your bunny, you may need to provide him or her with
hay and green foods several times a day. Making sure that your rabbit's
water supply is fresh is also important.

Rabbits can be destructive creatures! If left unsupervised for long
periods of time roaming about your home, your bunny is apt to get
into trouble. Because they like to nibble on such things as house
plants, electric cords, even books, it is vital that you not only
bunny proof your house and frequently check on them when they are out
of their cage, but also provide them with suitable chew toys made
from wood or cardboard.

2. Are you able to give your bunny rabbit adequate social outlets?

No, we're not talking about bunny dating services here. Rabbits need
a minimum of 2 to 3 hours a day out of their cages for exercise and
hanging out with the family. It is recommended in various sources
that house rabbits' cages be kept in a relatively active yet not
overly loud area of the house (i.e. the family room).

3. How will you integrate a rabbit into your life if you have small
children or other pets?

House rabbits can be a great learning experience for families with
children, though precautions need to be taken. Even with older
children who can benefit from learning to take responsibility for a
pet, ultimately an adult needs to supervise and make sure the bunny's
needs are being met. Patience in teaching children to pick up and
hold the rabbit carefully and to use quiet voices is vital. Rabbits'
backbones are fragile and not suited for rough handling and some
rabbits are easily startled by loud voices. And given the average
life span of a house rabbit-8-12 years-it is important that you
consider the rabbit your pet, not necessarily your child's pet who,
when s/he gets older, may not want to take a bunny to college.

If you have other pets such as dogs or cats, you need to introduce
the animals slowly and carefully. Some breeds of dogs may not be
suitable housemates for a rabbit because they have been bred to hunt
them. Cats can also be predators of rabbits. However, a lot depends
on the personality of your other pets as well as of your rabbit. For
example, our rabbit Buns safely shares our home with two cats and a
rather energetic lab-shepherd mix dog. We still need to loosely
supervise them, of course, and it took a couple of months of
training, limited access, and some water squirting to get to this
point.

4. Are you willing to spend the money necessary to keep your bunny
healthy and comfortable?

We outline more specific costs of what it might take to care for your
rabbit in the Bunny Basics Essential List of this website. What we
encourage you to consider at this point is your budget and how much
you are willing to spend. We spent about $130 to adopt Buns and set
him up in a cage complete with accessories. We spend about $70 a
month on supplies such as bedding, hay and pellets. And because we
adopted Buns from a pet store, he was not neutered. So we spent
another $115 on a vet check-up and neutering. (Our vet charges around
$35 for annual check-ups.) Of course, prices vary widely based on
what type of diet, bedding, cage, etc. you choose for your bunny as
well as from whom you choose to adopt in the first place.