Here’s an idea for Easter: Adopt a bunny

Editor’s note: This story appeared on Jan. 12 in Journal North.

Maybe Easter was coming up, and it seemed like a great idea to adopt a couple fuzzy baby bunnies.

Then they became adolescents. Teenagers. They started marking the walls with their urine, chewing on furniture, strutting around like bullies – and wait! Those two babies you thought were both males suddenly produced a litter.

	All about rabbits For information on the care, feeding and virtually every aspect of pet rabbit life – including adoption – go to rabbit.org, the site of the House Rabbit Society, and newmexicohrs.org for the New Mexico chapter of the society. Both are invaluable for anyone considering adopting a rabbit or already living with rabbits.

Hello, animal shelter.

“A lot of people get them for Easter gifts but don’t understand anything about them,” said Bill Velasquez, president of the New Mexico House Rabbit Society. “When they’re spayed and neutered, they make great pets.”

“Rabbits are actually pretty hard to place,” said Iris Klimczuk, who has logged close to 200 hours of volunteer work with rabbits at the Santa Fe shelter in the last two years. “Most people don’t think of them (for pets). It’s out of sight, out of mind, for a lot of people.”

She first discovered rabbits when she had three daughters under the age of 10 and a husband who was allergic to a lot of animals. “I didn’t want the added responsibility and work of walking dogs and scooping poops,” Klimczuk said. “I started thinking about rabbits.”

Since that first thought some 12 years or so ago, rabbits have stolen her heart. Now, with only one daughter still at home, the household includes five rabbits.

“Rabbits have brought me and my family a lot of joy,” Klimczuk said. “But there’s a big learning curve at the start.”

Both she and Velasquez stress that spaying and neutering rabbits makes them easier to handle – not to mention that you don’t have to worry about endless babies. Rabbits are sexually mature by the time they are 3 to 4 months old, Velasquez said. Their pregnancy lasts only 30 days, produces four to eight babies, and the females can get pregnant again right after giving birth, he said.

You do the math.

Rabbits can be trained to use a litter box. And since they don’t eat any animal products, their waste can be used as fertilizer, Velasquez said.

And, surprisingly enough, they have a number of things in common with horses.

Their teeth grow continually, so they have to eat hay and chew on things to keep the teeth from getting too long. Their digestive system is very sensitive, and they can quickly die from a condition similar to colic in equines.

And, like horses, they are prey animals, so they are sensitive to noises or movements that they might perceive as threatening.

“You have to work a little bit more to gain the trust of a rabbit. They’re at the bottom of the food chain,” Klimczuk said. In other words, they have to be convinced that you’re not just another critter that wants to eat them.

And while many people think of rabbits as creatures to keep in a hutch in the back yard, she said the extremes of both high and cold temperatures are beyond their tolerance. Rabbits, who regulate their body temperature through their ears, can be getting too hot by the time the thermometer hits 75 or 80, she said, while temperatures plunging below freezing are too cold for them.

If you keep a rabbit in a cage in the house, you should let it out for exercise for three to four hours a day, they said. In the wild, rabbits naturally cover about five miles in a day, Klimczuk said.

“In the summer, I like to take them outside,” said Velasquez, who stressed that he has a secure, walled yard and supervises them. One time, a giant owl swooped down who might have grabbed a bunny if it wasn’t deterred by his presence, he said.

Klimczuk said she has a “bunny room” that is secured against hazards, and when she lets them into the rest of the house, she keeps an eye on them, since rabbits love to chew on things like electrical cords. “They think they’re roots,” she said.

Rabbits like to play and jump, and can be quite affectionate, depending on their personalities and how much they trust you, she added. But most don’t like very much being picked up or carried – they like having all four feet on the ground, Klimczuk said.

Europeans have developed a whole sport with hurdles they have trained their rabbits to jump, Velasquez said. Rabbits respond well to food, and Velasquez said he has trained his to come back in the house when he sounds his clicker.

Depending on breed, rabbits can range anywhere from a couple of pounds to as much as 20 or 25 pounds, he said, and can live five to six years for the larger breeds and up to 14 years for the smaller breeds.