Thinking about adopting a pet rabbit to your child/s?
While the bond between a baby and its pet is valuable and might train beneficial life classes round empathy, accountability and care, it is very important do your analysis earlier than welcoming a furry good friend into your coronary heart and home. Like youngsters, pets have distinctive wants and as pawrents, it’s your job to make sure these wants are met every day.
New analysis on rabbits as ‘starter pets’ for teenagers
New rabbit analysis carried out in a Danish inhabitants and revealed by Cambridge University Press found that when rabbits had been bought as ‘starter pets’ for youngsters, they had been typically discovered to be housed in insufficient residing circumstances and uncared for, compromising the animal’s welfare. These findings included:
- Pet rabbits housed alone and in enclosures which can be too small
- Not checked day by day
- Insufficient meals provide and enrichment
- Limited gnawing (chewing) alternatives (enjoyable truth: rabbits’ tooth by no means cease rising, so they should gnaw to grind down their tooth.)
- Inadequate consideration paid to their routine well being necessities
- Unwillingness to pay for veterinary remedy
Inadequate care can negatively impression rabbit welfare
A driving issue behind these outcomes was the frequent false impression that rabbits are low upkeep and low funding ‘starter pets’, therefore they don’t require the identical stage of care as different companion pets, with young youngsters typically fulfilling the position of the rabbit’s primary caretaker.
Understandably, young youngsters are liable to considering of rabbits as fluffy toys and might typically be fairly tough with how they deal with them, inflicting rabbits to develop into fearful and reply aggressively. It takes time to build a bond with a rabbit and applicable dealing with is significant to creating them very secure and trusting.
Historically, restricted research on rabbits as companion pets have been carried out, however the few which have all discovered that insufficient care could make rabbits extra vulnerable to well being points and scale back their lifespan by almost half. It is vital to notice {that a} wholesome rabbit can stay 8-14 years, so with a view to be a accountable rabbit pawrent, you must be in it for the lengthy haul.
What do rabbits must be blissful and wholesome?
Though they’re smaller in measurement in comparison with different home animals corresponding to dogs and cats, rabbits are nonetheless very smart, social, curious and delicate creatures, and so they require the identical love and care as another pet. This consists of:
- The important three: contemporary meals, water and shelter
- Ample area to train, have enjoyable and stretch their legs
- Appropriately sized housing that’s secure from predators
- Regular interactions with individuals
- Training and enrichment toys/actions
- Regular veterinary care and day by day checks (In Australia, rabbits needs to be vaccinated each six months to guard them in opposition to calicivirus.)
Rabbits are social butterflies
It could shock you to be taught that rabbits are extremely sociable creatures and they don’t get pleasure from residing solitary – the truth is, it will possibly make them develop into depressed. For this cause, it’s so vital that rabbits be housed in bonded pairs.
Here at RSPCA South Australia, we solely undertake rabbits out in bonded, desexed pairs until the adopter already has a rabbit at home, through which case, cautious introductions are to be adopted.
Education and consciousness required to alter rabbit misconceptions
This report urged that implementing initiatives corresponding to tailor-made teaching programs, official codes of follow, and tips stressing the required stage of funding and sources for rabbit welfare may assist right the frequent misconceptions surrounding our furry associates.
Learn extra
Rabbits make pleasant companions, however earlier than adopting one, you need to do your analysis and guarantee that you’re absolutely educated and dedicated to caring to your bun-dles of pleasure. In return, a pair of blissful rabbits will deliver infinite pleasure, love and leisure into your life.
You can learn the complete report here.
Ready to welcome a pair of buns into your coronary heart and home? Visit our adoption web page to browse available rabbits.
For extra info on how you can greatest care to your pet bunnies, have a learn of our rabbit care weblog right here and go to the RSPCA Knowledgebase.
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