Chickens and rabbits, can they make each other sick?

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john_francis

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Hello Everybunnie!

( Credit due: That's my wife's joke and greeting when she goes out to visit our rabbits )

We have two does and a buck plus seventeen baby bunnies right now and we also have four chickens, layers.

The rabbits live in hutches inside a shed and the chickens are in a movable coop about ten feet from the rabbits.

Is there any health or shared disease concerns we should have?

If there is how far apart should rabbits and chickens be from each other to avoid this?
 
Some evidence is in that chickens and rabbits can infect each other with coccidiosis...but that's really only a problem if there is wet dirty ground for the cocci to live in. I've got a couple of friends who let their free range chickens in the rabbit house to churn up the base and eat the flies and other insects that are ever present.

There are other folks with colonies who have chickens inside the colony with the rabbits. Works out well.
 
You don't need to worry. It's a good idea not to let the chickens up on top of the rabbit cages, where they might poop into the cages, but if they are housed separately that is not a concern.

Ann, I've always understood that coccidiosis is species specific. Is there new evidence to the contrary?
 
While coccidia are species specific, there's been some scattered research that shows if one is present, the other may be. It's not hard and fast, and most of the ones I've read reach the conclusion that it's more an ENVIRONMENT problem, since the coccidia is present in the wild at varying levels.

Clean and dry, that's the ticket. (my chickens are apparently park DUCK since there is always sloshing and spilling around the waterer :( ...they even stand in pans of water to cool off)
 
I have a pair of Rex rabbits living free in my chicken coop. I keep ACV in all of my animals water as precaution, but so far everyone SEEMS healthy. The doe is building a nest for her first litter in this set-up as we speak, so I guess in about 12 weeks we will see if there is any evidence of Cocci after babies go to freezer camp.
 
We've kept the two groups well apart. Every time I move the chicken coop it's been a little farther away.

I was concerned at one point about over-wintering them together in the same little building we have but I've decided that the chickens are going down the road come the first of November.

It makes more sense to start over in the spring with new hens. Chickens are very reasonably priced in our little neck of the woods.
 
Back when I had buns and birds the only problems I had was the chickens would steal pellets out of the feeders! Otherwise they kept the area under the cage rows nice and stirred up and took care of any dropped pellets (which cut down on the number of mice I had).
 

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