Accidentally Got a Bunny, New to Bunny Parenting

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MeAndB44

MeAndB44

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2010
Messages
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Location
, Louisiana, USA
Let me begin by saying that no, I am not going to consider giving my rabbit away and that, while I was not intending on getting a rabbit, I'm very happy that she came in to my life.

My rabbit is a very young, under six month old, Cottontail mix. She was born a wild rabbit and CAN NOT, let me repeat that, CAN NOT ever be released in to the wild. She's solid black, for one, and blind in one eye so she'd probably be eaten by something and I don't intend on letting that happen.

I got her under very odd circumstances that aren't too important, though if you'd like to know how I came about obtaining a wild cottontail mixed with some sort of domestic rabbit just ask. I'd be happy to tell you. :)

Anywho, her name is Beatrice and currently she's living in an aquarium with a cardboard box shelter in it. She's being fed lots of hay, limited pellets, and a salad of parsley, apple, and carrots every day. She's growing very quickly as well and loves attention. (In fact she's sitting on the computer desk with me, licking my hands.)

I intend on getting her a permanent cage of some sort, she seems to be potty training herself for the most part. She'll only use the bathroom in one area of the cage (with the occasional poop elsewhere). I have chinchillas and have limited, basic knowledge about rabbits.

I was just looking for some tips on:
Rabbit Food
Possible Environments (please note that she can not roam freely and is in a single rabbit home)
General Care
Grooming
Any other tips

Thanks a bunch!
 
I just thought that I'd let everyone know that I've decided on what type of cage I'm going to get for Beatrice. I'm planning on modifying a dog kennel to be a Bunny paradise!
 
Hi and welcome to the forum!

Cottontails cannot breed with domestic rabbits, and since Beatrice is black it sounds like she is purely a domestic rabbit :)How did you come about getting her? A dog kennel would be a good idea, as long as it is largeand you make it so she can see out better. Have you thought about making an NIC cage for for?
 
It is commonly said that US cottontails can't mate with domestic bunnies, but our resident wildlife expert says it may be possible. In any case, whether the bunny's domestic or wild, I agree it can't go back into the wild with dark coloration and a blind eye.

At the shelter I volunteer at, we recommend a dog kennel for a cheapish, easy cage. You'll want to put a litterbox in there to help with litter training. Sometimes you can make a shelf in the cage for them to sit on, many like this. Another good thing is a box for hiding in. They can sit on top of it sometimes, and go in there if they need time alone.

For litter, I like wood stove pellets. I get them at a pet store that caters to horse owners--they use them in stalls a lot. They're incredibly cheap--$5 for 40lb. Other good options are recycled paper bedding, kiln dried pine shavings, or aspen shavings. Non-kiln-dried pine and cedar shavings give off aromatic oils that are unhealthy for the bunnies. Depending on your bunny's size, you can get an appropriate sized litterbox. Many bunnies like corner litterboxes because they like to go in corners.

I put plastic "canvas" used for crafts on top of the litter in the pans to keep my bunnies' feet out of the dirty litter. Some people also use fluorescent light grids like you might see in a hardware store.

You'll need a lot of hay. Horse hay sellers are often good, but I find my allergies are affected differently by different suppliers of hay, and I buy it from a petstore in large quantities for around $1/lb. If you get it form a horse hay supplier, it will be much less--40lb for $3-4. There has to be hay near the litterbox at all times. They like to eat and poop at the same time. You can put the hay in the box, or in a container next to it. At her age, she can have alfalfa hay, but grass hay is better. Once she reaches a year you'll want to phase out the alfalfa hay and give it only as a treat--just give grass hay. If you have chinchillas, you probably have timothy hay already.

For a pellet, it depends on what you want to spend. She's young, and there are a lot of good feed store pellets out there for young bunnies. Purina Rabbit Chow in the green bag is pretty good, but once she reaches about a year old you'll want to switch from an alfalfa-based pellet to a timothy-based pellet. A more premium pellet that's readily available is Oxbow 15/23, available at some pet stores, including PetSmart. Even more fancy pellets can be purchased online and shipped to you from American Pet Diner or Sweet Meadow Farms.

Veggies: she's old enough to give veggies, but introduce them slowly and be careful to look for ones that will cause GI upset. Good ones to start with are spring greens, romaine, dandelion, and parsley. There are lists of good veggies on this site.

We also have a few threads on what you should have in your bunny first-aid kit: as an infirmary mod, I can't stress the importance of these things enough! Probiotic, simethicone baby medicine, canned pumpkin, and pedialyte are absolutely necessary.

I use cat clippers to trim my guys nails. You will also want styptic powder to stop bleeds if you cut too short.

Rabbits should really be spayed/neutered to help with litterbox habits, territorial habits, and behavioral habits. She may be littertraining herself, but her hormones may change and cause her to poop/pee everywhere to claim her territory. Females in particular can be possessive of their space, and snap at hands that enter it. In my experience with bunnies, this happens more with unspayed females, or with females that were spayed at a later age. For instace we have a bunny that was spayed around 3 yrs. She is very territorial. The other one was spayed under 1yr and she's not territorial. A lot of the shelter bunnies are like that too.

In addition, diseases of the female reproductive tract are very common and can be devastating. Also, it's good to have a vet you trust. I take my guys in for an annual exam and I recommend that to everyone. Know of an emergency vet that does rabbits too. We have a pretty good listing of good rabbit vets on this site that should help. It may be good to have a vet look at her eye to make sure it will not pain her or deteriorate further. A bunny came into our shelter a few weeks ago with an eye that had ruptured because the owner allowed a small scratch on the eye to turn into an infection, which then got out of hand. The eye had to be removed.

I've condensed a lot of info from several other posts on here, so please look around and see others' opinions as well.

Best of luck with your girl! Can't wait to see pics, and we try not to be judgemental about how people get their bunnies. I can tell you that nobody will say you should release her to the wild--she wouldn't survive out there and that means she's only a candidate for sanctuary placement. As long as you didn't steal her, or knowingly cause this damage, I think we'll be ok with it.;)
 
irishbunny wrote:
Hi and welcome to the forum!

Cottontails cannot breed with domestic rabbits, and since Beatrice is black it sounds like she is purely a domestic rabbit :)How did you come about getting her? A dog kennel would be a good idea, as long as it is largeand you make it so she can see out better. Have you thought about making an NIC cage for for?
Click to expand...
I know for a fact that she is a cottontail mixed with a domestic breed. It is an extremely long story, but there's no disputing it. She's a mixed breed.
 
tonyshuman wrote:
*insert tonyshuman's post here, it was so long I didn't want to actually quote it
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I use pine shavings for my horse's bedding and she gets Behaya hay, but the behaya is pretty low quality hay because she gets all of her nutritional stuff from her feed and the hay is just for roughage. I don't think I'm going to get hay through the feed store, only because I don't have anywhere it my house to put an entire bale of hay. (And down here there aren't any Timothy hay dealers that sell by the bale.)

The pellet I'm going to be feeding is a Sun Naturals pellet, it's all natural and I give the chinchilla formula to my chins. It really brightened up both of their coats and it's a forage-based pellet with lots of good things in it. I'm getting her the rabbit formula today when I go to Petsmart.

Right now neither me nor my parents have the money to get her spayed, but I have a few riding jobs that should be starting soon and I'm probably going to pay for it myself. I have a really good exotics vet in the same office as my dog's vet and he did surgery on my hamster (who is deceased) and treats my chinchillas so I think I'm going to take her to him.
 
Hi, Hannah!

I am extremely curious to find out how Beatrice came into your life. The members on here love pictures and would love to see how adorable she is, too! :)

Kathy
 
MeAndB44 wrote:
I use pine shavings for my horse's bedding

The pellet I'm going to be feeding is a Sun Naturals pellet, it's all natural and I give the chinchilla formula to my chins. It really brightened up both of their coats and it's a forage-based pellet with lots of good things in it. I'm getting her the rabbit formula today when I go to Petsmart.
Click to expand...
Are you using pine for the bunny? If so, then you should switch. Pine lets off chemicals when wet and it isn't good for rabbits. The only pine that is safe is "kiln dried"...but I, personally, wouldn't use that either.

Sun Naturals isn't a good pellet for rabbits. Does your feed store carry Purina High Fibre? That would be a good choice. You can also look into Mazuri rabbit pellets at PetSmart.
 
I just want to say "welcome" the forum and I hope you have many many happy years with your bunny.
 
TXsouthrngrl wrote:
elrohwen wrote:
I'd really like to hear how you got her and how you know she's part cottontail. It sounds like it would be an interesting story!
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Yep, me too! Start typing:biggrin2:
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I agree I wanna hear this story too. WELCOME!!!!!:biggrin2:
 
Congrats on getting your new bunny! I'm sure you are going to take wonderful care of her :]

I would love to hear her story! I am also interested to see what she looks like, I dont think I've ever seen a cottontail mix.

Good luck! I'm sure you will find everything you need to know on here, there is tons of info!!
 
I'm curious as to how she's part cottontail/part domestic? They cannot produce offspring when bred together.. And seeing as how she's black, I'd venture to say that she is fully domestic. She may have been captured in the wild, and that's what led you to think that she is a cottontail. ;) Did you make that assumption or did someone tell you?

Most people don't know anything about rabbits, so any bunny they see in the wild they will think is a wild rabbit. ;)

Pictures can help us verify it. ;)

Emily
 
I would love to see a picture of Beatrice! Everything I've ever read on Eastern Cottontails breeding with Domestic European Rabbit's states it's genetically impossible. What an amazing thing if she truly is! I've looked at studies in the past where sperm from Eastern Cottontail's have been artificially inseminated in Domestic European Rabbit's. To my understanding, the sperm can take but the embryo's never survive.


Although they may attempt to breed, the embryos will die before birth due to the difference in chromosomes. Domestic (European) rabbits have 22 pairs of chromosomes, cottontails have 21 and jack rabbits or hares have 24 pairs.

Read more at Suite101: Rabbit Reproduction: Understanding Domestic Rabbit Breeding http://mammals.suite101.com/article.cfm/rabbit_reproduction#ixzz0fYMFMKVP
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BlueSkyAcresRabbitry wrote:
I'm curious as to how she's part cottontail/part domestic? They cannot produce offspring when bred together.. And seeing as how she's black, I'd venture to say that she is fully domestic.
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Yes, I agree.

American Cottontails, of the Sylvilagus varieties, cannot breed with domestic rabbits because they're not the same species. Domestic rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus, are more closely related to the European wild rabbit. So, as tonyshuman hinted at, domestic rabbits can mate with wild rabbits, but NOT of the American variety.:)
 
BlueSkyAcresRabbitry wrote:
I'm curious as to how she's part cottontail/part domestic? They cannot produce offspring when bred together.. And seeing as how she's black, I'd venture to say that she is fully domestic. She may have been captured in the wild, and that's what led you to think that she is a cottontail. ;) Did you make that assumption or did someone tell you?

Most people don't know anything about rabbits, so any bunny they see in the wild they will think is a wild rabbit. ;)

Pictures can help us verify it. ;)

Emily
Click to expand...

:yeahthat:

It really does sound like she is fully domestic, anything I have researched says it isn't possible. In my country, wild rabbits can breed with pet rabbits, because the wild rabbits were domestic rabbits to start with. I have never came acrossanything online that shows a cottontailcansuccessfully produce offspring with a domestic rabbit. If Beatrice's Mother breed with a wild rabbit, it was most likely a domestic rabbit living in the wild that was turned loose/escaped from its owner.
 
irishbunny wrote:
If Beatrice's Mother breed with a wild rabbit, it was most likely a domestic rabbit living in the wild that was turned loose/escaped from its owner.
Click to expand...

So true! Especially here in the US, stray domestic Rabbit's are all too common and will breed like rabbit's (ha!) with other strays of their own species. Domestic Rabbit's can survive in the wild, but their life expectancy diminishes dramatically and it's not the type of situation any Domestic animal should have to endure.

I forgot to add this in my previous post; Welcome to RO!!! :wave:
 
I'm going to make a new forum with pictures, Beatrice's story, and my PROOF that she IS a cottontail/domestic mix.

PLEASE, if you're going to go to the other forum, STOP posting about how you think she's full domestic. She ISN'T, she's from GENERATIONS of crosses. Most of the DOMESTIC has been BRED OUT because of how long ago this happened but we still have full black, albino, and the occasional beige babies born.
 
undergunfire wrote:
MeAndB44 wrote:
I use pine shavings for my horse's bedding

The pellet I'm going to be feeding is a Sun Naturals pellet, it's all natural and I give the chinchilla formula to my chins. It really brightened up both of their coats and it's a forage-based pellet with lots of good things in it. I'm getting her the rabbit formula today when I go to Petsmart.
Click to expand...
Are you using pine for the bunny? If so, then you should switch. Pine lets off chemicals when wet and it isn't good for rabbits. The only pine that is safe is "kiln dried"...but I, personally, wouldn't use that either.

Sun Naturals isn't a good pellet for rabbits. Does your feed store carry Purina High Fibre? That would be a good choice. You can also look into Mazuri rabbit pellets at PetSmart.
Click to expand...
I'd never use pine shavings for any sort of small animal! I use carefresh bedding only.

I've used Mazuri pellets before for my chins and I've found that Sun Naturals worked better for them than Mazuri. I like Sun Naturals because they don't add preservatives, dyes, or flavorings to their food. Even though it's an alfalfa based food, I don't give any alfalfa hay and I monitor how much pellet she gets.
 
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