Not raise rabbits per se/we are a registered humane society homing special needs animals, but we also take in unwanted as space permits. Ppl get rabbits at easter, little bunnies are so cute/then the novelty wears off. Sometimes we get adults that started out as house 'pets'. One of the first things we do is put them into a large enclosed yard within the huge bird yard (ducks, chickens, geese, peacock and peahen, Poco the pigeon and few others). We have quite a family. This summer I bought 23 muscovy ducks that were on the fast track for a Chinese restaurant/I just love muscovy /they are so damn cool.
With the rabbits I separated the males from females but they are creative to say the least and can tunnel overnight even with perimeter underground blockade, so occasionally we had litters. Then I screwed up and put a lion-head female in with males/I'm not the best at sexing *blush*. Before I knew it baby bunnies/and the cutest damn things/the lion head with her pointy ears and shaggy fur mixed with regular bunnies/we call them Fraggles. They dug tunnels so deep and extensive I have to walk very carefully in the bird coup. I truly know the meaning of how deep the rabbit hole goes
I kept threatening to collapse the tunnels and 'take control' but could just never do it. Boy bunnies are excellent dads/raising the young is truly a family affair. One day as I was sitting in the bird/bunny yard I recalled something I read in J.Allen Boone's book, it was either Kinship With All Life or Letters to Strongheart (love all his books) about animals left to their own will regulate the population. We have seen that with feral cat colonies we have nurtured in the nearby town until development took over. But with bunnies I had this fear that soon we would have thousands...nothing like panic to get ya going eh? As I sat there I thought why should this be any different/and they are all having so much damn fun/so I scrapped my control plans and just let things be. That was over a year ago/don't have thousands/they regulate themselves. Poco the pigeon took up with the original lion-head female and sleeps with her at night/cept not recently so I think she might have babies in one of the dens. There's no way to collect their poop now unless I caught one for a week and caged/which I might do bc in a week they certainly poop a lot.
We also have plenty of manure from the pygmy goats and Fred the donkey. Not sure if our pot belly pig poop would work/but plan to check on that.
What do you do with your rabbits? When we get a bunny that has never touched ground it's so cool to see them hop at will. At first they don't know what to do and sit spellbound. I recall a few times a newly sprung would hop the perimeter of the yard and circle back to right in front of me and stare as if to say thanks...then hop off to a new way of movement. Sometimes on first land exposure they do this high thing in the air like half flips/pretty cool to watch. Can't tell you how many times we've received a bunny that ppl said oh he/she just loves to be held and um, nope. Once given the choice they really don't want to/at least not here. But on bunny rescue forums some of the bunnies do seem totally acclimated to living in the house/some amazing stories. One story that sat with me, 2 house bunnies/one was very elderly and almost blind. It was NE cold winter and the lady turned down the thermostat before leaving for work. When she came home the thermostat was always up and she could figure out how. A video camera gave the answer. The younger bunny maneuvered a way to reach the thermostat and turned it up, then would position the elderly bunny near the heat grate. The saying dumb bunny does not apply.
