posted by admin on Apr 30

No, it’s not another ‘green’ or ‘climate change’ awareness week – it all about bunnies!

Rabbits are the 3rd most popular furry pet in the UK after cats and dogs – but they really seem to get a raw deal when it comes to their accommodation and health care. 

So, along came the Rabbit Awareness Week (or RAW – as rabbits get a RAW deal) to promote their well-being.  Basically loads of vets across the UK this week are giving out free health-care and veterinary consults to all who apply.

Rabbit Care: 
Did you know for example that you can vaccinate your rabbit against various common infections that plague wild rabbits – like myxomatosis, a terrible infection that gradually and painfully will kill your pet!  Now if you live near wild rabbits it would really be a no-brainer to get the jab for your pet, wouldn’t it.  But if you don’t know these things, you can’t do them.

Also, not many people compare the size of their rabbit when adult to the space available in it’s hutch.  Now I know that there are only so many ‘mainstream’ hutches for sale – but that doesn’t mean you have to buy one!  If people demand bigger hutches – then pet stores will start stocking them.

Anyway, roughly estimate the ‘floor plan’ or your bunny (basically the size of it when you look down on it from above, then see how many of these ‘bunny floor plans’ fit into the hutch.  I bet it’s not more than 5 or 6 .  Now scale that up to other animals – like that would mean keeping a tiger at the zoo in a cage that was only about 20ft long and no more than 6 feet wide. 

I doubt if you would want to visit THAT zoo!

Hamsters get it great – I mean for their size even in a one storey cage they must get the equivalent of 16 times their own size – so a great big 3-storey hamster cage increases their available space to about 48 times their size.

Rabbits might be able to take 2 hops from one end of their hutch to the other, but hamsters get to scale flights of stairs and run around in wheels!

Rabbit Runs:
Yes, you can buy a rabbit run and let your bunny trot around on fresh grass – but again, they are very small compared to total bunny size.  and, you need to keep putting your bunny in them every day and moving them around the garden as well – and not in bad weather.

So, rabbits might get out in their run for more than an hour maybe just 100 days or less a year.

And although you can get then a harness and talk them out for ‘walks’ in your yard (and by this I mean that you just follow your rabbit around wherever it goes as oppose to drag it up the street like a stubborn Yorkie!), but you need to be with them all the time, so this isn’t normally a very long activity for them.

Letting them run free in you secure garden is also out of the question as they may well get killed by a neighbours cat – all too tempted by this fluffy things hopping around the shrubs!

So, needless to say, bunny rabbits can get very fat (through lack of exercise) and very bored (due to sitting in a tiny hutch for the majority of the year). 

And this is where RAW hopes to help out.  By offering a range of treatments, complete foods and toys – your rabbit need never live a boring life ever again!