Now don’t get me wrong, I love my two little girls to bits, but wow are they a lot of work! I’ve spent hours cleaning up litter trays, cleaning out cages, sweeping up poo, stopping them chewing the lamp, making them toys so they stop chewing the carpet! Hours learning what they’re body language means, because unlike a dog bunnies can’t tell us if they are happy or sad with a bark or a whimper, you have to be able to read them. And they have not been cheap! Sure their food seems cheap, but include, hay, straw, litter and toys on top of that and then there is vet bills, each one needs £50 worth of shots every year so they don’t get nasty disease like Miximotosis, they need to be neutered, which cost us in excess of £100 EACH! And if you choose not to neuter you’re looking at extra damage to your house, and if more than one bunny more vet bills when they start fighting, I’m presuming here you didn’t get a girl and boy cause that of course is a whole different problem!
Having said this I would fight with everything I have if someone tried to take them away from me! They are wonderful company, great stress relief and can always make me smile even after the worst day. So I would of course recommend them as pets to most anyone, but wow you need to be prepared and as cute as a surprise bunny would be on Easter morning, they’ll look a whole lot less cute when they pee on your carpet and chew your sofa up, and as for the poor sods that end up in a hutch in the back garden, I think this video says it all!
I’m a fan on facebook twitter etc of a lot of rabbit groups/charities etc and I’m hearing the same thing again and again from them, that every year thousands of bunnies end up unwanted and abandoned by May. Lots don’t even make it to a rescue they just get released into the wild, you’re not freeing that bunny, your sentencing it to almost certain death, generations of selective breeding have made it so the average domestic bunny is very, very ill suited to the wild.
So if you are thinking of getting a bunny just wait a little and take on a rescue, if you get lucky they might have already gone through the worst of puberty! If you think that someone special would love a bunny then why not get them the cage etc with a voucher saying you’ll go to a rescue and pick one out together after Easter.
It doesn’t matter where you live, there are lots of rescues out there, some run by big charities like RSPCA some run by one hard working person just trying to help. Bibbles Bunny Sanctuary is an example of one person trying to make a difference, this woman has turned her house and garden into bunny playground and on top of that has put lots and lots of bunny information online for people to see, so if you do decide you want a bunny or you already have one this is a great website to check out information from, or maybe even adopt from?
