How to properly care for rabbits at home?

Breeding rabbits is a great way to provide a family with tasty and nutritious dietary meat, as well as to make money by donating skins to furriers. Rabbits are also bred for sale, but such a business is risky and will require knowledge, experience, time and financial costs from the rabbit breeder.

Therefore, if you are just starting out or are going to start rabbits, then detailed instructions for caring for rabbits will help you grow large and healthy fluffy pets, avoid common mistakes and disappointment.

How to tell a hare from a rabbit?

Let's start with the question of how to tell a hare from a rabbit. The domestic rabbit is a subspecies of its European wild counterpart, adapted for life next to humans. A dwarf rabbit stands out separately, the weight of which does not exceed 1 kg. Breeding a dwarf rabbit is carried out exclusively for decorative purposes.

The closest relative of the rabbit is the hare.

So, the difference between a hare and a rabbit is possible according to the following visual characteristics:

• To size. The weight of mature rabbits reaches 11 kg (the common hare in Russia rarely weighs more than 7 kg);
• Along the length of the ears. Rabbit ears are shorter (up to 10 cm) and wider than those of a hare (7-15 cm);
• By color. The color scheme of rabbits is distinguished by its diversity (shades of brown, gray, dark yellow colors prevail), and the color as a whole tends to uniformity, even in the presence of spots. The color of the hare is not catchy, often spotted, the task of which is to disguise the color of the terrain;
• The rabbit's muzzle is wider and larger than that of a hare comparable sizes.

How to properly care for rabbits at home?

The rabbit differs from other domestic animals in its exceptional need for proper and careful care, which often prevents its mass breeding.

Rabbit care includes:

• Rational placement: one rabbit needs from 0.5 to 1 m² free space;
• Separate keeping of females and males, young animals up to 3 months old and adult animals. Pets with the slightest signs of disease should be immediately isolated from healthy animals;
• Maintaining cleanliness, which involves daily cleaning in the cages, changing the litter as it gets dirty, disinfecting the cages and equipment at least 2-3 times a month and when animals are moving. For disinfection, boiling water or a 1% formalin solution is used;
• Providing complete and varied diet, water;
• Ventilation of cages and walking pets in the warm season. If there is a rabbitry, it is advisable to walk all year round;
• Daily inspection of rabbits, disease prevention and vaccination.

How to choose and equip a cage for keeping and caring for rabbits in an apartment?

Experienced rabbit breeders make cages on their own, for which you need:

• Metal grid;
• Plywood sheets;
• Wooden boards and slats.

There are no standards for cell size, however, a parallelepiped cage with approximate dimensions of 40 × 70 × 60 cm is considered optimal, which provides sufficient space for a pair of rabbits, makes it easy to clean and disinfect the cage.

The walls and floor of the cage are made of metal mesh or wooden battens. When using slats, there should be gaps between them within 1-1.5 cm for ease of cleaning and ventilation. The rabbitry door is made of mesh and should be facing the sunny side.

The cage requires litter. For the arrangement, any available materials are used:

• Sawdust;
• Straw or hay;
• Needle branches, etc.

If you plan to arrange several cages, then it is best to equip a rabbitry. It is a closed building, where cells are placed in several tiers. A well-insulated log rabbitry is necessary for areas where the temperature in winter drops below -10 degrees.

The roof and outer walls of the outermost cages of the rabbitry are made deaf, preventing the penetration of air and moisture. If necessary, the walls can be additionally insulated with straw and other materials at hand. The roof of the rabbitry is insulated, covered with tar paper or slate. This allows you to protect rabbits from dampness, drafts, and in winter from severe frosts.

It is worth thinking about the rational placement of the rabbitry on the site. It is best to turn its front side to the southeast. This will create a warm and comfortable environment for the animals and protect them from direct sunlight. The space next to the front of the rabbitry is fenced off and a place is created for free walking of rabbits.

Feeder and drinker, mother liquor

The rabbit cage should have a feeder and drinker. Household items are used for manufacturing. The main thing is that they are firmly fixed and do not give the opportunity to climb into them with their paws. The feeder and drinker are simple and semi-automatic. A semi-automatic drinker is arranged as follows:

• You will need two flat canned food cans of different diameters, as well as a plastic bottle with a capacity of 1-1.5 liters;
• A smaller tin can be secured inside the center of the larger can, limiting the rabbit's ability to splash water or climb into the drinker with its paws;
• The neck of the bottle is placed in a larger can, and the bottle itself is tilted so that as the water disappears from the can, it refills itself.

A semi-automatic feeder for free-flowing dry food can be made in the same way.

For a rabbit breeder planning to breed pets, it will be necessary to equip a special device in the cage that simulates a burrow - a mother plant. Since rabbits in their natural environment live and breed in burrows, they need a similar design in captivity., which you can do yourself.

For this, a wooden box with approximate dimensions of 30 × 40 × 40 is used, made of boards or plywood. A round hole with a diameter of 15 cm is required in one of the walls of the box. And the lid of the box must open freely. A litter of shavings or sawdust is placed at the bottom of the mother liquor.

A rabbit preparing for motherhood is placed in a cage with a queen cell, where the rabbits will spend the first month of their lives. There is no need to equip a drinking bowl and a feeder in the mother tank, but it is imperative to keep it clean and carry out regular cleaning.

Feeding pets

Feeding rabbits in an apartment will not cause trouble for a novice rabbit breeder, the main thing to remember is that rabbits are almost omnivorous and eat a lot. The exact calculation of the need for feed is determined empirically and depends on the weight of the animal. If it is necessary to prepare supplies for a year, 1 adult rabbit will need 300-500 kg of products, 2/3 of which are grass or hay.

The summer ration of rabbits differs from the winter feeding in terms of calorie content, feed composition, and the presence of vitamins.

In summer, the following are suitable for rabbits:

• Herbs, especially dandelion, clover, coltsfoot, alfalfa, rape, plantain, nettle. Herbs are given dry, and even better, slightly dried to improve digestion;
• Leaves of grapes, strawberries, raspberries, currants, lettuce and other shrubs and trees growing in the garden;
• Root vegetables (potatoes, beets, celery, carrots, Jerusalem artichoke, etc.). The tubers must be clean, without soil, both raw and boiled;
• Some fruits and vegetables (apples, pears, cabbage, zucchini, etc.);
• Dry feed: cereals and legumes, compound feed.

In winter, grasses are replaced with hay, straw, and silage. The winter diet should contain more dry and nutritious food than in the summer. Food leftovers from the table (except meat and bones) are suitable as a variety for rabbits.

To provide vitamins in winter, rabbits need needles. Spruce and pine branches are the best way to add vitamin C to your diet.

Chalk is required to be added to the year-round diet, in the calculation of 1-2 g, salt 0.5-1 g per day.

The nutrition of young animals requires additional attention, taking into account the still weak digestion. Therefore, only tender grasses and roots are suitable for young rabbits. Pumpkin and zucchini, Jerusalem artichoke, boiled potatoes are especially useful for rabbits. But you should refrain from giving solid feed (hay, straw, grain).

The diet of pregnant and lactating rabbits needs to be increased and diversified due to nutritious foods: cereals, legumes, bran, compound feed, root crops.

The following should be excluded from the herbal diet:

• Elderberry;
• Ledum;
• Wolf berries;
• Datura;
• Celandine;
• Foxglove;
• Belene,
• Hemlock and a number of other poisonous herbs.

Diseases and their prevention

As in humans, rabbit diseases are usually divided into viral and non-viral. Most often, rabbits are susceptible to digestive disorders and respiratory diseases.

Colds, inflammation of the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract are the result of the action of cold, dampness, drafts, crowding. Such diseases can be diagnosed if there is a sneeze, nasal discharge, redness of the oral mucosa, and general weakness.

Digestive disorders are caused by improper feeding of animals. Signs of such diseases: discharge, covered with mucus, containing blood, diarrhea, etc.

The best way to prevent the development of these diseases is to properly feed, care, and protect animals from the harmful effects of the weather.

Veterinary medicine is also known for more than 30 viral diseases that rabbits are susceptible to. Among the most dangerous are:

• Salmonellosis, expressed in a viral lesion of the intestine. Symptoms: high fever, vomiting, weakness, diarrhea. It is forbidden to eat the meat of sick rabbits, and the carcasses of rabbits must be cremated;
• Spirochetosisthat affects the genitals of rabbits. Symptoms: swelling, redness, bleeding, genital ulcers;
• Colibacillosis - intestinal infection affecting rabbits in case of violation of the rules of keeping and communicating with sick animals. The main symptom is diarrhea;

Myxomatosis spreads extremely quickly and as widely as possible, the incubation period of the disease does not exceed 2 weeks. Almost all sick animals die. Signs of myxomatosis are the presence of tumors near the head and genitals.

Sources of infection can be ticks, mosquitoes, fleas. Also, the virus is transmitted from a sick animal to a healthy airborne droplet. A sick animal must be isolated immediately. Animals that may have come into contact with a sick individual are also isolated. For humans, myxomatosis is not a threat.

It is almost impossible to notice the symptoms of necrotizing hepatitis due to the lightning-fast spread of the infection. The disease lasts for 1-3 days. The main causes of infection are interactions with sick animals. Necrotizing hepatitis causes tremendous harm to the farm, as all sick rabbits die.

As a prophylaxis for viral diseases, animals are kept separately, and newly acquired rabbits are placed in a separate room for quarantine, the duration of which can be up to 3 months.

Vaccination

The fight against myxomatosis and necrotizing hepatitis is carried out using an inexpensive and effective procedure - vaccination. Only healthy animals should be vaccinated starting at 45 days of age. In practice, both separate vaccines against HBV and myxomatosis, and a combined version are known.

The maintenance and care of eared pets involves a lot of subtleties that are difficult to reflect within the framework of the article. Therefore, if you are seriously thinking about the business of selling young animals, meat or skins, then you should pay attention to the specialized literature, the authors of which will give exhaustive answers to your questions. We wish you success in such a difficult task as rabbit breeding!

And finally, we suggest watching a short video on how to care for and keep rabbits: