revised 12/15/2006
At the moment, we don't have any rabbits. Raisin, who died at age 4, was a dark gray brindled flop-ear who loved raisins and carrots. He was pretty close to being cat box trained and did not appear to be interested in chewing up stereo cords, etc. What a change he represents from Kalua, our previous tame rabbit, who was death personified for all plastic or rubber covered items. Raisin got along just fine with the dogs and cats and we used to let everybody out in the kitchen/den for a joint romp. Harmony is nice.
A couple of years ago, before the dog fence was built, our involvement with rabbits was significantly greater because Taz insisted on raiding a momma cotton tail's nest and bringing home little baby rabbits for us to adopt. She brought home at least six from two separate litters spaced a month apart. Linda latched onto them and managed to save and successfully raise four of them, two from each litter, by taking them to work with her in a cardboard box and bottle feeding them several times a day. When she started out, they were essentially hairless with closed eyes, probably no more than two days old. Eventually, they graduated to solid rabbit food, raisins, etc., and we hung on to them until they were four and five months old. We then turned them loose in the back yard and they melted into the underbrush. The two youngest continued to return to the outside bunny pen to get raisin handouts and alfalfa rabbit pellets for awhile. We eventually found the tamest of the bunch dead in the front yard, probably killed by Buttercup in play, but we don't know that for sure. We would very much like to know if any of the other three survived, but there's no way to find out. We like to think that they did, though. We worried about a repeat performance last spring, but Taz only brought home two and both were already dead. One other baby cottontail was pushed on Linda at one week age by a co-worker because of her previous experience as surrogate momma rabbit. She grew up alone and was almost tame enough to keep, but we decided against it. We waited to release her until she was almost full-grown and we hope that she managed to survive.