Rabbit Facebook Groups

I have joined a few rabbit facebook groups and wow is it interesting! :lol:
I always have to chuckle when a black and white rabbit is called an English Spot, rabbits with upright ears are lops, and if you don't know it must be a rex. Also, people keep saying they have mini rabbits who stay small forever (a scam like teacup pigs).
The other day someone asked if a Flemish Giant (or in their words "GIANT FLEMISH" was a wild cottontail rabbit and they decided (despite everyone saying she was wrong) that he must be wild because he is brown.
I do however get annoyed when the HRS people show up and put down perfectly good rabbit owners because they have a hutch or God forbid they have day jobs and cannot stay home with the rabbit all day.
Just thought I would share my amusement (and sometimes annoyment) with others that might understand.

be careful in those pet groups to conceal your identity if you can. Do you need radical ar's after you?

ladysown":2iijx7j9 said:

be careful in those pet groups to conceal your identity if you can. Do you need radical ar's after you?

Click to expand...

I tried to only join groups that say they welcome all rabbit owners whether they are free range or caged. It's just the individuals that you need to watch out for. I don't post pictures of my rabbit or post anything (if I had a question I would come here) I just enjoy the pictures people share and DIY toys.

On FB i do have my name.... it is difficult to use a screen name there.
But i try to be Extremely cautious about my location. I keep it as vague as possible. Even people i know in Real Life i donot readily give out our address.
Also in photos... If those are done In the barn... i crop down to just the rabbit with a tiny bit of backdrop. I certainly do not want a rara yipping about anything.
Some groups are a lot of fun... and can be very informative. Others... i end up turning Off the notifications so i'm not bothered.

I stick with breeder groups and show pages on FB...
There are just too many ..... frustrating..... people out there.

Also, be careful not to feed the trolls.... there is always someone out there trying to stir up trouble.... just don't respond and block those people ASAP. (and double check your privacy settings!!)

Aside from the backyard meat cavies group for guinea pigs the only place I really discuss small mammals is the feeder breeders group. There is also a group for building shelters of large to small livestock that can be useful for outdoor cage/pen designs but since I currently can't keep anything in my yard in this town I haven't really used it. The rest are quite insane to actually post to. The gerbil breeder group is iffy but since the forums have all died it's the only place to go when I can't solve a health problem or what color genetics an individual has.

In a ton of FB rabbit and livestock groups. I read most. Some are for just information. Some I comment on all the time. Others once in a while. Personally, I have been booted from meat groups cause if it sneezes in my barn it is in the freezer that day. I do not wait. I do not test. Sneeze = Freezer.

I had to remove myself from the FB rabbit groups, even the meat ones, because the health and genetics misinformation had gotten so bad, I just couldn't take seeing people getting and giving so much poor advice. I think, as Akane has mentioned before, they tend to run a bit like personality cults. Whatever the popular-person-of-the-day says being the only "truth" anyone will hear. Too many (literally 100's) of poorly informed people all piling in with their opinions instead of facts. The solid reasonable people I wanted to talk to just kept getting drowned out by current information(or misinformation) fads.

Backyard meat cavies got flooded a few months back of people just sick of the mentality of following the latest person who talks the loudest instead of facts. Unfortunately it's brought in a whole lot of misinformation from those groups, flaming of places those people tried to post first, and a few just plain questionable people as to whether they care about the guinea pigs as living things or not. The goal is not to talk about the stupidity of the animal and their lack of feelings so they can be turned into meat or some other requests like how to drug a biting guinea pig with no concern for the health risks of substances used in order to let people play with it whenever they host a party. While some just want a place to freely exchange information some seem dredged from the bottom of the pet keepers that make all the pet groups paranoid of everyone else's care style. I'm glad I turned down the offer to help moderate. :lol: When I have time I try to scroll through and fill in where the regulars have missed repetitive misinformation based on nothing but guessing and those spots of questionable integrity that most simply don't want to touch.

akane":2xvzpm79 said:

and a few just plain questionable people as to whether they care about the guinea pigs as living things or not. The goal is not to talk about the stupidity of the animal and their lack of feelings so they can be turned into meat or some other requests like how to drug a biting guinea pig with no concern for the health risks of substances used in order to let people play with it whenever they host a party.

Click to expand...

Yeah, That makes me sick. It's funny how when I came to RT, I finally found some people where I could talk/inquire about cooking and preparing GPs. I had to step back and post about how cute and fun they were as living creatures.

In David's heard, there was one GP that had a really cool marking, I first noticed him back in October. He was so cool whenever, I went to feed the GPs they would come from the shed to the courtyard in a rush. the cool GP was always in the first four or five to come out. The problem was since beginning January, the cool GP would not stop fighting with the other males. He would get scratched up, but then heal, then get scratched up again. Finally it was bad last time, so I had David cull him. It was kinda sad, because When the GPs came out in a rush, I had to remind myself that the cool GP would not come out.

It worked out in the end, the cool GP was humanely dispatched, then given to a wild cat. The cat bated him around a bit then picked him by the neck and strutted around it's enclosure, before dining on the rodent. You would think the medium cat was a big cat that had taken out the biggest gazelle in the herd. It seamed a fitting end for pour the little GP.

I don't do Facebook. At all. I have boiled it down to three reasons so far. First, I am mostly a private person. I share what I want with who I want.

Secondly, the herd mentality. Opinions tend to change with the wind. Not a lot of reasoned discussion.

That ties in to my last reason- the lack of tolerance for anyone with a differing opinion, way of doing something, belief, etc. I suspect this is symptomatic of what is going on in our country at the moment, but it is magnified by the anonymity of the medium. I got into a discussion on another forum with a person who is against rabbit breeding, believing ALL rabbits should be obtained from shelters. I tried to explain a few reasons about why I breed, and their response back began with, "I don't care that you take good care of your rabbits, but...". *headdesk*

Marinea":3clfjdpb said:

I don't do Facebook. At all. I have boiled it down to three reasons so far. First, I am mostly a private person. I share what I want with who I want.

Click to expand...

I definitely think the same way you do. I don't want some causal acquaintance of mine to go onto Facebook and track me down. I might go to work to hear the cry, "Oh, my god how can you kill bunnies/guinea pigs" or some such similar thing.

I took a couple years off from facebook a while back, but restarted again when I moved back to AZ to stay in touch with my VA friends. During that time off, I was a much happier person lol. I think about disabling it again every day but in the end, when you have rabbits it's much easier to find transport and advertise on facebook.

I like the rabbit groups - in fact, I spend most of my time on facebook on them, but I try my hardest not to get involved when someone is trying to start something or is just plain stupid. I gave up on trying to correct people a long, long time ago. There's no winning, even when you're right, even when you can point to ten sources, for some reason people can't let go of any beliefs. I just try not to get involved and sit back and chuckle... Yep, you definitely have a pedigreed checkered giant, nevermind the fact that it's commercial typed with no distinguishing markings... yep, that's definitely a true to life himalayan, never seen one over six pounds but hey, there's a first for everything... yep, sure, keep your unaltered bucks together indefinitely, I'm sure they'll become best buds... Back in the day I would have argued with people for days (maybe that's why I was never popular with the rabbit crowd... lol). Nowadays it's just sort of entertaining, and part of me hopes to see this really fat himalayan in a show someday. :lol: Keeps things entertaining, for sure.

There's a page for bad rabbit sellers/buyers and man, I could spend all day reading though some of that stuff - but it's probably not good for the health. :lol:

akane":v1yxkvpu said:

Backyard meat cavies got flooded a few months back of people just sick of the mentality of following the latest person who talks the loudest instead of facts. Unfortunately it's brought in a whole lot of misinformation from those groups, flaming of places those people tried to post first, and a few just plain questionable people as to whether they care about the guinea pigs as living things or not. The goal is not to talk about the stupidity of the animal and their lack of feelings so they can be turned into meat ...

Click to expand...

This got me to wondering if you (or someone else) could send out exclusive invitations to rabbit talk to those few sane people left. I know, run this idea past the RT moderators first. I would love to chat with sane people about meat cavies, without the Facebook BS. I think the vibe of this forum could accommodate.

I did admittedly look for crazy people on Facebook a few months back, and I looked at Facebook forums. The forum structure/software on Facebook seams to be optimized to get people on Facebook with absolutely no regard to whether a productive conversation can be had. The phpBB setup here and the moderators tend to keep things in line.

Ghost":2r51rgto said:

Marinea":2r51rgto said:

I don't do Facebook. At all. I have boiled it down to three reasons so far. First, I am mostly a private person. I share what I want with who I want.

Click to expand...

I definitely think the same way you do. I don't want some causal acquaintance of mine to go onto Facebook and track me down. I might go to work to hear the cry, "Oh, my god how can you kill bunnies/guinea pigs" or some such similar thing.

Click to expand...

The groups are private. It's not like even people you add as friends can see your posts to them or opinions. They aren't even alerted you posted in the group and I believe the setting did allow me to not show at least some of the group names I'm in even to friends. If you set the entire account to private anyone not added as a friend can't see much of anything. Unless a group is public it only alerts to friends who are also in your group and only they can see what you posted specifically. You can also set each post you put to your main feed to only show to certain people and block specific people in groups from seeing your posts. That's not to say someone can't decide to be an excessive stalker to find slightly more info and what you share with one person they can go on to share the same as anything you say in person to someone. Your name is on it so like speaking in person people can repeat things that others will know come from you and can ask other people/sources for information not otherwise provided to them. You need to take the same care of what you say to who as in person interactions because while not everyone is "there" to see it directly if you have a shared acquaintenance or group it spreads the same as any gossip. You don't have to announce though everything you are doing on fb if you watch the settings of the groups you're in and don't rely on the default fb settings.

Really the problem I ran into was sharing my info to a group and not what was posted to my main feed or what people added to my friends list saw of my groups. It was within the group someone assumed incorrect information and lied to animal control to cause me trouble after flat out saying they did not have the knowledge to help with the situation in the first place. If I'd contacted the state association members for help by any other means it could have happened equally or if the person I ended up dealing directly with had talked back to the group it could have happened and partially it was them sharing info to other people instead of it being asked directly of me that did escalate the issue. They'd have had my name and where I lived anyway from meeting up with me over the animal I needed help with. No one outside the group I shared info to were involved or changed their interactions with me.

It's not the only place with that info. I'm listed on a few associations as a breeder with my connecting email account so if you want to know I have bred gerbils, horses, guinea pigs, rabbits, and bought animals like dogs from breeders instead of adopting you can find it long before fb existed. My city and last name were on several mailing lists for local breeders and shows of various animals along with a few other groups. One forum I buy/sell reptiles requires full legal name and city to use because it is most often used to buy/sell/exchange living animals and has a review section of individuals and dealers using it so to avoid scams, people coming back with false info to hide past transgressions, etc... it is required you are not anonymous but a section is given to explain yourself for others to read the details of what happened and decide to have further interaction with someone for themselves or listen to the person complaining instead.