Rabbit Care

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Rabbit Care

How to Approach a Rabbit
The safest way to approach domestic rabbits is open the cage door and wait for the rabbit to get quiet. After he settles, start lightly stroking the top of the his head. (Most rabbits do not like having the tips of their noses, chins, stomachs, or feet touched.)

Because rabbit's eyes are placed high and to the sides of the skull, this allows the rabbit to see nearly 360 degrees, and far above his head.

Do not offer your hand for a rabbit to sniff the way you would for a dog. Many rabbits seem to find this gesture of hand sniffing offensive and may attack. Since rabbits don't vocalize like dogs and cats, their attack is a lightening fast lunge with a snort (grunt), sometimes accompanied by flailing paws.

Toys
Toys are important for rabbits because they provide mental stimulation and physical exercise. You can use:

Cardboard boxes for crawling inside, scratching, and chewing. Rabbits like them much more when there are at least two entry points into the boxes
Cardboard concrete forms for burrowing
Cardboard roll from paper towels or toilet paper stuffed with hay
Untreated wicker baskets or boxes full of: shredded paper, junk mail, magazines, straw, or other organic materials for digging
Yellow Pages for shredding
Cat toys: Batta balls, and other cat toys that roll or can be tossed
Parrot toys that can be tossed, or hung from the top of the cage and chewed or hit
Baby toys: hard plastic (not teething) toys like rattles and keys, things that can be tossed
Children's or birds' mobiles for hitting
"Lazy cat lodge" (cardboard box with ramps and windows) to climb in and chew on. Also, kitty condos, tubes, tunnels, and trees
Nudge and roll toys like large rubber balls, empty Quaker Oat boxes and small tins
"Busy Bunny" toys
Plastic Rainbow slinkies
Toys with ramps and lookouts for climbing and viewing the world
Dried out pine cones
Jungle gym type toys
A (straw) whisk broom
A hand towel for bunching and scooting
Untreated wood, twigs and logs that have been aged for at least 3 months. Apple tree branches can be eaten fresh off the tree. Stay away from: cherry, peach, apricot, plum and redwood, which are all poisonous.
Untreated sea grass or maize mats
Things to jump up on (they like to be in high places)
Colorful, hard plastic caps from laundry detergent and softener bottles. They have great edges for picking up with their teeth, make a nice "ponk" sound when they collide, and the grip ridges molded into the plastic make a neat "rachety" sound when rabbits digs at the cap. The caps are nice for human-stacks-on-floor and bun-knocks-down kind of games. *Note Never choose caps from caustic material bottles.

Rabbit Fast Facts

Scientific name Oryctolagus cuniculus - rabbits are part of the lagomorph family related to hares and pikas. They are not rodents
Rabbits can't walk, crawl or run - they have to hop!
World record for the rabbit high jump is 1 meter.
World record for the long jump is 3 meters. That's over 9 feet!
Largest litter of baby rabbits is 24. It has happened twice. Once in 1978 and again in 1999.
Longest ears are 31.125 inches long. They belong to an American rabbit, Nipper's Geronimo.
Longest-lived rabbit was nearly 19 years old when he died.
Biggest bunny - 26 pounds
A rabbit has 18 toenails - 4 on each of the back feet, and 5 on each of the front.
Bunnies purr by clicking their teeth.
Rabbits can see behind them without turning their heads.
Male rabbits can hold sperm up to 4 weeks after being neutered and can still impregnate females.
There are over 150 different rabbit coat colors, but only 5 eye colors (brown, blue-grey, blue, marbled, and pink).
Rabbits are most active at dawn and dusk.
Netherland Dwarf rabbits are the smallest of all rabbits - are very small size weighing only 2 pounds
Polish Dwarf rabbits can follow voice commands and hand signals, which they learn through repetition. Along with the Netherland Dwarf, the Polish Dwarf is one of the most common small animal breeds used by magicians for their magic acts.