Rabbit hutch

“ THE HUTCHES
A hutch is the quarters sufficient for one adult rabbit. They vary in size according to the breed to be kept. Small rabbits will thrive in smaller hutches than some of the larger breeds. ”

“ This hutch should be supported on stout sticks or posts embedded in the ground for at least two feet, and it should be thirty to forty inches above the ground. Across the open runs, galvanized wire cloth, with half to three-quarter inch meshes, is to be nailed fast with staples. With a few coats of paint on the outside, this hutch will present a very good appearance.
The rabbit-house (Fig. 21) is a large, one-story structure, in which a family of rabbits can live very comfortably. ”

“ It also retards the constitutional vigor of the stock and losses of the young are frequent. There is only one hutch and that is the outdoor hutch. If you want to use an old shed or barn rip out one whole side of it in order to afford this ventilation and light. The rabbit, in order to be healthy need not be kept in the sunshine, but he must at least breathe the air on which the sun shines. ”

“ When the board is cleaned it should have a layer of sand sprinkled over it after it has been put back in its place.
The hutch should be from thirty to thirty-six inches long, eighteen inches wide, and about as many high. As a rabbit should not be expected to eat in its sleeping-room any more than a human being should, the hutch should [Pg 459] be partitioned off by a board, leaving the sleeping-room about twelve inches long. In this board should be a round hole large enough for a rabbit to pass through, and protected by a door sliding up and down in a groove. ”

“ Every-body knows how to knock up a rabbit hutch. The does should not be allowed to have more than seven litters in a year. Six young ones to a doe is all that ought to be kept; and then they will be fine. Abundant food is the main thing; and what is there that a rabbit will not eat? I know of nothing green that they will not eat; and if hard pushed, they will eat bark, and even wood. The best thing to feed the young ones on when taken from the mother, is [Pg 112] the carrot, wild or garden. Parsnips, Swedish turnips, roots of dandelion ”

“ For general purposes, it has been found that the ideal size hutch for a rabbit is one that is slightly longer than it is wide. The actual dimensions are not so important as the manner in which it is built and the general plan. ”

“ If your Himalayan is allowed to sleep or sit about in a wet hutch the colour of the feet will soon be destroyed; but if the hutch is built as I previously described, all water from the rabbit will soon run away. However, in the case of the rabbit under notice, it is best to make “assurance doubly sure,” so, on the bottom of your hutch put a nice layer of fine sand or sawdust, and over this straw or dried ferns, then any water will run through and be absorbed by the sand or sawdust, which should be raked over each morning, and renewed once a week. ”

“ Runways are unnecessary for rabbits. They do not need grass parks. If you put them out in a grass park they will soon dig out and get away. Where you are training young stock for show purposes, particularly Belgian hares, it is a good plan to have a long narrow hutch for them to run around in. For meat stock, however, better results are obtained by keeping them in ordinary sized hutches.
Salt. All rabbits need plenty of salt. It can be fed in the mash each day, or better still a piece of rock salt can be placed in the hutch, or regular prepared rabbit salt nailed to the side of the hutch. ”

“ The lop-eared rabbit is a stately beast and less brisk than his prick-eared relations. The Himalayan rabbit has no connection with the mountain chain from which it has its name, is white, with all its extremities—nose, ears, tail, and feet—black or very dark in color. The Dutch rabbits are small. The body is colored, but the neck, forelegs, and jaws are white. But to the ordinary owner of a rabbit in a hutch, particular variety does not matter very much. ”

“ We have heard of people offering strenuous objections to poultry, but we have yet to hear of any one objecting to the rabbit.
It is a noiseless animal. It never has anything to say and it makes no racket whatever, except to stamp its hind legs on the floor of the hutch once in a while when it thinks a stranger is near. ”

“ The fur is greatly in request for the making of imitation ermine, and good skins are always saleable to the manufacturers. Now that we have this beautiful little rabbit in our hutch, how are we to preserve its distinctive markings in all their beauty? For be it remembered that the white turns yellow, and the black or dark brown markings grey, unless proper attention is paid to them. In Chinese or Russian markets where these rabbits are on sale, we are told that the colour, especially on the feet, is not so distinct as is seen in our domestic specimens ”

“ In the first place, rabbits do not thrive in indoor rabbitries. That has been proved again and again. There is nothing that equals the outdoor hutch. The rabbit is an outdoor animal and even though he is highly domesticated that does not alter the facts. ”

“ The fact that the hutches can be placed one on top of another until as many as three tiers are occupying the same space of ground goes to show that the amount of space at one's disposal is really only a small factor in raising rabbits, while it might be a serious factor if other kinds of stock were to be kept.
Where the hutches are built properly and they are cleaned out as they should be, there will be no need to worry about odors. The droppings from the rabbit come in a pellet form that is dry and easy to handle. ”

“ The hutches in which the rabbit is kept need not be unsightly to any place, even in the most fashionable districts. If they are properly built, they will be neat and attractive anywhere and if the fancier so desires he can make them as ornamental as possible. Good, neat hutches, nicely painted, will add to any place. ”

“ Over and over they go, bounding and bouncing, snapping from their marvelous hind legs as if shot from a spring-trap. It is the greatest jumping exhibition that you will ever see. To have such legs as these is the next best thing to having wings.
Right in the thick of the fun sounds a sharp thump! thump! Every rabbit "freezes." It is the stamp of an old buck, the call, Danger! danger! He has heard a twig break in the woods, or has seen a soft, shadowy thing cross the moon.
As motionless as stumps squat the rabbits, stiff with the tenseness of every ready muscle. They listen. ”

“ If you are skilful with the pencil and want to design your own hutches, there is nothing to prevent your doing so. There are, however, the facts mentioned in the preceding chapter which must be kept in mind, if you are to get a good hutch. Further than that, the size of space required for rabbits should be kept in mind so as not to make them too small.
A nursing doe should have nine or ten square feet of floor space for herself and litter. You will find that a mature buck requires the same space because he is generally more active than the young does. ”

“ When pressed by hunger or hounded hard, they often take to a rail-pile, and sometimes they grow so bold as to seek hiding under a barn or house. One young buck lived all winter in the wood-pile of one of my neighbors, becoming so tame that he fed with the chickens.
"Bunny, meantime, is watching just inside the next brier-patch."
The nearest approach that a rabbit makes to a house is his "squat," or form. This is simply a sitting-place in the fields or along the woods, that he will change every time he is thoroughly frightened out of it. ”

“ I'm sure I don't know how this little bunny, all winter, would have escaped the eager eyes of Hungry Hawk, Mr. Wicked Weasel and Danny Fox, if his fur overcoat hadn't been white—for, of course, you haven't forgotten that his coat turns white in the Winter time, and that this is one way that Loving Mother Nature looks after the welfare of her little rabbit children. For when the snow is on the ground Little Jack Rabbit in his white fur overcoat looks like a snow ball, and at the first sign of danger he sits perfectly still, making it mighty hard for even Hungry Hawk's bright eyes to see him. ”

“ The rabbits (pretty innocent little creatures I had thought them, as I gazed at their representatives of white canton flannel, solidly stuffed, with such charming eyes of pink beads) girded all my young trees and killed them before I dreamed of such mischief, nibbled at every tender sprout, every swelling bud, were so agile that they could not be captured, and became such a maddening nuisance that I hired a boy to take them away. I fully understand the recent excitement of the Australians over the rabbit scourge which threatened to devastate their land. ”

“ The other side of the hutch has the same appearance as the side shown in the picture. The floor is made of 1 by 1 slats set half an inch apart and the center partition rests on top of these slats. The floor in the nest box is made solid in order to afford plenty of protection to the youngsters in cold weather. Young rabbits, you know, are not brooded as a hen broods her chicks, so it is necessary to take every precaution to keep them warm. The mother doe will pull all of her fur off that it is possible to pull out to keep them warm, but sometimes, even then, they will freeze. ”

“ If the breeder has three does and one buck, he will have his hutch room full from the start and will have to get rid of the young rabbits, either by eating them or selling them when they are around three months old. If he can provide other hutch room for them and mature them, he will get better results than those which we mention here. ”

“ It is amusing to see the care with which the mother rabbit makes her nest when she is about to have young. Some soft straw and hay is put in the box or cask and this she carries into one corner of her home, makes a hollow in it, and lines this with fur pulled from her breast, to make a warm, soft nest for the little brood. When the young are born she must be given something juicy, such as a turnip or carrot, or perhaps a little warm milk or water, for if left thirsty she grows feverish and is apt to eat the little ones, not knowing what she is doing. ”

“ BUMPER HUNTS WITH THE PACK. Bumper the White Rabbit, when he escaped from Edith, the red-headed girl who owned the garden where he lived, found his way into the woods, and, after many adventures with the Bats, the Crow, the Fox and Buster the Bear, he was adopted by the wild rabbits as their leader and king. The Old Blind Rabbit welcomed him, and told the story of how it was prophesied that some day a pure white rabbit, with pink eyes, would come to deliver them from their enemies, and teach them how to live in the woods without fear of danger. ”

“ Some have commenced to breed the rabbits before giving thought to this matter and it does not occur to them until they are desperately in need of more room. Others, and they are to be blessed, are agitated by the problem long before they commence to build the first hutch. ”

“ Rabbits are kept either in hutches or in warrens, where they make burrows in the ground, and live almost in a state of nature. Rabbit warrens are of very great extent, varying from a hundred to three thousand acres, and they can only be formed in dry sandy soils. When rabbits are kept in hutches, the rabbit-house should be particularly dry and well ventilated, as rabbits are very subject to a disease called the rot, which is a species of liver complaint, brought on by impure air and improper food. ”

“ Rabbits in a warren are all alike in shape, size, colour, and features: rabbits in a hutch vary indefinitely in the hue of their fur, the length of their ears, the character of their coat, and half a dozen other minor particulars, well known to the observant souls of boys and fanciers. This great variability, though partly perhaps referable to excess of food, is probably due on the whole to their having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent species is commonly exposed in a state of nature. ”

“ The same rule holds with birds rising. Aim must be taken above them. There is always more fear of your firing too much to the rear and too low, than too much to the front and too high. Fancy that hares and rabbits have only heads—and get into the habit of looking at no other part,—nay, of looking yet further ahead. The best cover-shot I know says, that he aims at a rabbit rushing through gorse or underwood a yard in front of the spot where he last caught a glimpse of it. Rabbits halt for a moment the instant they get hidden by cover—not so hares. ”

“ They should always have a warm bed in a basket or chair. They should never be allowed to stay out-of-doors at night.
Wild Rabbits
Of all rabbits the brightest and most intelligent, as a pet, is the wild rabbit. If you can get two or three baby wild rabbits and feed them on milk, they will grow up very tame. We heard recently of two small wild rabbits that were taken out of the nest and brought up by hand. They and their mistress and a collie pup would play together, and they ran about the room, racing over the floor and furniture. ”

“ The Rabbit lives in societies, and retires into burrows. It is not found on the open plain, but chooses for its home places where there are hillocks and woody banks. Like the Hare, the Rabbit has not a preference for day; but towards evening it comes forth and gambols about in the glades or nibbles the dewy herbage.
It has also, like the Hare, many enemies, and to escape them it takes refuge in its subterranean dwelling. As it has not the speed of the Hare, it would be rapidly overtaken by Dogs if it trusted to its powers of flight. ”