Hi, my name is Aileen Carol Hogspot, with Friends of Rabbits, I’m here talking about how to
care for your rabbit and we’re going to talk about housing. Now, to my left is a pure example of
what we do not suggest is good housing. This is a very small cage, it does not allow for a lot of
stretching, roaming, jumping, and truly does not allow your rabbit to become the happy healthy
rabbit it can be. We suggest that you keep your pet indoors, there’s quite a few reasons for this
actually. Your indoor environment is actually controlled for heat and cooling, whereas outside,
your rabbit would be subjected to high heat, very cold temperatures, which obviously may
eliminate from being able to get water if the water’s frozen. Predators outside are another good
reason, you wouldn’t want your rabbit to go roaming in the yard or be free outside of its cage
because there are prey animals that could easily take attention to your rabbit, including animals
even if you have your rabbit in a cage outside, if you get to it such as raccoons to have the ability
to be able to unlock locks that you might have on a hatch outside. Now some good examples of
housing for a rabbit would be a large exercise pens somewhere where they can jump, stretch,
play and run. Height, obviously, if you’re worried about them being able to get out to another
area of your house, there are condos that are built that allow with ramps and some type of
elevation so that your rabbit has multiple stories to space. Height obviously to be able to let them
stretch up on their hind legs and be able to stretch out, have some freedom and movement and
being able to jump without hurting themselves. If you have an exercise pen that’s working well
and you wanna protect your carpet, you can feel free to be a plastic hard kiddy pool and you can
put that in there. That will definitely help provide the protection you’ll need on your carpet while
still allowing them space to be able to play within the kiddy pool. Obviously you’ll gonna
provide a litter box. There are quite a few choices for litter box in the sense of what you’re
actually putting in your litter box. For instance, in front of me I have three different types, this is
a straw base pellet, it can be used, these pellets can easily absorb urine, recycled paper pulp, also
a good option for a contents in a litter box. This paper pulp actually comes similar to the pellets
and paper pellets as well. Now here you’ll see we some aspen shavings which are good option
for a litter box, however some of those options you’ll be presented with are not good options
such as, you’ll find options like, pine and cedar for bedding for rabbits which is not good. This
has been known to cause problems with liver and rabbit, and they’re very aromatic. We highly
suggest that you look at other options such as this. They have prone to have less problems with
health. Here is an example of a litter box that has been given the opportunity to be able to attract
the rabbit to come to this litter box by putting some hay. We’re encouraging good litter behavior
by providing some of the bedding and some of the hay, because rabbits tend to like to eat and
make droppings in the same place. So if you provide them with food, you’re showing them the
environment that you want them to be able to do that in safely. So let’s say you have a rabbit that
doesn’t have good litter behavior, and they like to kick it all out, this one will be a perfect choice.
Because of the top has the holes and the bottom is solid, it would still allow you to have some of
the litter on the bottom level and the litter on the top might get kick out, but there’s always some
down there. So then, even if your rabbit kicks it out, there’s still litter left in there to absorb
anything your rabbit may leave behind. Rabbits by nature are clean animals, and will tend to
gravitate towards one section of their pen to use as the bathroom. Because of this, it’s easy to
promote litter box training by putting a litter box in that preferred corner that your rabbit has
already have selected. Once your rabbit has learned good litter box habits, you may find it
possible for you to open up your home so that your rabbit may run freely. Now, housing also
includes having toys, other things for rabbits to run through like tunnels, cardboard houses,
cardboard rolls, any type of thing for them to interact with. These are just good options of
making positive environment for your rabbit for the home inside and now we’re gonna talk about
diet.
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