I think the trouble with rabbits and why conditions can look so bad is because as we all know, rabbits put out a lot of poop and while they are clean animals, they certainly aren't always tidy. I can sweep and tidy Bandit's room and make it all spic and span, come back a couple hours later and there's hay everywhere, a bunch of poop and various other things just strewn about the place. But I think mostly when you aren't aware how much comes out of a rabbit every day, you don't realise how messy it can look even if it's really only been a short time since you last cleaned.. If it was dogs in hanging cages, there'd be like... two poops under each cage a day, not for bunnies!
I try not to, but it is really easy to judge other people on their set-ups and cage conditions just by looking at them in a photo and claiming that we or someone else could do a far better job. To be perfectly honest, it's not poop or pee stains that bother me in those photos (because if you have a breeding set up in a shed or something, it has got to be dam hard to keep that clean), but it's more the size of the cages. Then again, cage size is extremely difficult to judge in photos. And it's not that the cages are too small, because most of the time they look a decent size, it's more of a personal thing that I would feel so awful not having enough time to let all the rabbits out on a daily basis to run around. Even if they were perfectly happy in their cages on a day to day basis. And I think that's certainly part of it, some people would never be able to bring themselves to house rabbits in a cage where they never got out on a daily basis, and some people are fine with it, and I think that's largely where the difference lies, for me at least
Then again, I wonder what proportion of the population takes their dog for a walk every single day without fail. 1% maybe, less?
My point after all that really is, that I think it's just largely based off of what different people feel ok with doing. And I'm not talking about how well the animals are fed etc, lets assume that free range bunny and caged breeder's rabbits are equally happy and healthy and well fed etc (After all, breeder's rabbits have to be healthy or they don't even make the show table!), but the only difference is in how much "run" time they get. I'm sure there's some people on here who really only get to let their house buns run around one or two days a week, and there are others who have them out almost all day, every day. That's really not much different when you think about it.
Edit: Also, I seriously admire your dedication to keeping people informed about breeders and how there are plenty of good ones and not all like the random bads ones etc. Good on you for standing up for that. Not everybody would.
