with Nala and Gaz, my mistakes were:
~ using pine bedding for a few days (before I found out how bad it was)
~ finding out that babies should have alfalfa rather than timothy and quick-switching them to the alfalfa (breeder had been feeding timothy), which upset gazzle's tummy
~ looking at a 9 week old lionhead/10 week old holland lop then looking at a NIC grid and thinking to myself "their heads won't fit through that." boy, did Nala prove me wrong! thank god I was home and the scuffling of feet on tarp woke me from my nap.
~ thinking a bit of cooking oil around the neck might get a 9-week-old lionhead's head out of a NIC panel (talk about messy!)
like others, I had a bunny as a child in the dark ages when "internet" was something most people didn't know existed, let alone have in their home. our "knowledge" about rabbit care came from whatever the shelter told my parents + library books that were probably outdated. looking back, I can't believe how much has changed as far as "common knowledge" and how many mistakes we made then.
~ I think my bunny had a wire (grid) flooring like my hammy cages at the time had so his poop and pee would fall through.
~ he ate mostly pellets
~ we did feed veggies, but it was scrap from cooking dinner most of the time... we did know not to give iceberg, but he'd get the peels from an entire carrot (save a few scraps that went to the hammies) with a tiny bit of top, a few scraps of lettuce, some bits of bellpepper, etc. in other words, he wasn't getting enough veggies and at least half of what he did get was non-leafy greens.
~ the only hay he EVER got was those compressed alfalfa cubes and he only got one cube (maybe 1''x2''x1'') once or twice a week 'cause mom said they were expensive and to "only give them as a special treat"
~ only one bunny at a time
~ I actually had two bunnies total, as one escaped from the back yard and a neighborhood dog came out of nowhere and killed my first bunny
~ we let him out in the back yard for a few hours a day even in summer when it was hot out (lived in new orleans, he'd go out in the evening on weekdays if it wasn't summer) - I'm sure the bunny was out in 90F+ heat at times, though always in the shade.
~ we let him outside while he had a little cut on his shoulder and he got flystrike
... fortunately, we checked on his cut/applied a little bit of neosporin twice a day and when we checked it that evening, mom could tell that something was horribly wrong and rushed him to an emergency vet who saved his life.
