Taking Care of Rabbits

[khash]

hi

i am hoping to start taking care of rabbits. i wanted to know if anyone had some good advice that they can give me.

some of m questions are:

1. can i keep male and females together in a small area? (by small i mean about a small room)
2. can i keep them outside during the winter? ( i live in calgary, AB, canada. winters get cold like aroung minus 30C)
3. how long does pregnancy take?
4. can i cross breed them?
5. can i keep different breeds together?

thank you so much and i look forward to hearing from anyone with any advice.

 

[Bunnylady]

1. Sounds like you are thinking of doing what some call a "colony." Whether a colony works depends on several things, including the temperament of the particular rabbits and just how much space you allow per rabbit.( I know of someone who keeps several does in a horse stall). Some rabbits get along easily, some are more dominant and tend to go hard on any rabbits they share space with. Having enough hiding places for all of the rabbits helps. You need to keep the rabbits from digging out, of course.

Bucks will usually fight, so you generally need to have not more than one in a colony. The problem with a resident male, is that a doe is capable of rebreeding immediately after giving birth, so you need to either separate out the does that appear to be pregnant, or remove him from the colony when you think does are due. It's asking a lot of a doe to be constantly pregnant and nursing at the same time.

2. I don't know about this one, I've never dealt with that kind of cold. Given shelter from the elements and enough food, they probably can survive temperatures like that, but the critical thing would probably be water. Without the water to process their food, rabbits won't eat, and without sufficient calories, they will freeze to death.Maybe someone from further north than my relatively balmy state can answer this one for you.

3. The gestation period for a rabbit is 31 days, plus or minus. A doe carrying a large litter may kindle on day 28, while a doe with only a couple of babies may go longer, 35 days or so. If she does go that long, the babies are often huge, and she has so much trouble giving birth to them that they usually aren't born alive.

4,5. Whether you can cross them depends on what you are trying to do. If you are interested in showing, you need to keep your breeds pure. Whether there is a pet market for mixed breeds will depend on the area you live in. With meat rabbits, well, they all taste the same.

Does won't care what breed the other does they live with are, and a buck will breed a doe regardless of her breed. It is usually best to not be breeding animals of significantly different sizes together, most consider breeding a large buck to a smaller doe a really bad idea.

 

[wyoDreamer]

Back in northern Wisconsin, one of our neighbors raised rabbits - and goats, pheasants, doves, pigeons, horses ... We had cold winters - I know we had a couple of January's that it never got above 0 degrees for the entire month and most years had at least one whole week of -30 and below temperatures.

He had the rabbits in wire cages outside year-round. The cages were built in a shelter with three sides and a roof, with the open side facing south. For the winter, each rabbit got a wooden box filled with hay tucked into the back corner of the cage. I can remember helping him chip out the frozen poo piles in the corners of the pens on the warmer winter days. He had one rabbit, she was my favorite, that would push the box out of the corner, pull all the hay out of the box and make a nest behind the box.

He never bred them in the fall, only spring and summer litters. But they were his pets and he would show them at the fair.
He had a number of different breeds over the years, Dutch were obviously his favorite, as he had aways had cages of these, but he had California, French Lop (I think because these were huge!), Rex, mini Lop, and he had some type of Chinchilla for a couple of years.