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I try everything else first rather than scruffing them. While I've never heard that it will suffocate them, picking a rabbit up by the scruff, especially a larger/adult one, separates the skin from the muscle beneath. 🥺 Unlike cats, rabbits never pick up their babies by the scruff, and their...

My daughter is doing the same thing with Rex, using Californians to improve the Rex type and muscle tone. In general, we keep the best/biggest improvement from each litter. All things being equal, we prefer to keep females since we don't want to grow out a bunch of "single-use" bucks, when the...

In our herd, a certain amount of internal fat (though not so much that it obscures the organs) indicates a healthy rabbit. They seem to have a different health profile than humans! :ROFLMAO: My daughter, who does the butchering and keeps close track of these things, says that healthy rabbits...

It might help if you pressed a little more firmly, to cause the genitals to protrude further for better sexing of the bunnies. Also, six weeks may be a bit early to be really sure about the sexes, but at least 4, 5 and 7 look like females to me. Mounting is a dominance behavior as well as a...

Welcome! There are a lot of experienced and generous people here that will be very happy to talk about rabbits! 😁 Here in our barn in Alaska, I don't start thinking about adding anything extra for cold protection till it's well below zero. At -15F to -20F we give the little rabbits (Polish...

Congratulations! It's hard to describe that feeling of seeing a moving fur blanket in a nest box! 😄 I usually keep the doe on her normal feed ration, or maybe a bit more, for a week or two, but I often add about a Tbl of BOSS (black oil sunflower seeds) especially if she has a large litter or...

Some of mine prefer to drink out of the little bowl underneath the bottle, but others seem to enjoy the pecking. This way, everybody's happy. 😁 You can buy heated water bottles for use in winter.

All of the chicks I keep in the house (chickens and quail) learn to use a water bottle, which has gone a l-o-n-g way to keeping the litter dry, as well as keeping the water from being filled with nastiness from the chicks' scratching. I start using the bottle after the first few days/week...

Ah, peanuts means she's not a false dwarf, just a really big true dwarf. I agree with @ladysown about the amount of feed - our Mini Rex ate 1/3 cup per day (we used 16%). Netherland Dwarfs probably should eat the same amount or less. Free feeding usually means keeping food in front of them...

Reducing pellets can help overweight rabbits drop some weight, but it can also result in healthy rabbits becoming underweight if it provides less than the nutrients and calories they need to stay healthy. Both Netherland Dwarfs and Mini Rex are dwarf breeds, which means they have one copy of...

That looks like coccidiosis to me, too, but I've never actually seen liver flukes in a rabbit. Here's an image from the article "MANAGEMENT OF SEVERE HEPATIC COCCIDIOSIS IN DOMESTIC RABBITS"...

Dosage and treatment duration might depend on what you're using it for, but there is a pretty recent thread that discussed this question. I link it here because there were research papers cited: https://rabbittalk.com/threads/ear-mite-healing-concerns.37566/#post-364821 I don't always believe...

I agree with @olhippityhop that you probably don't have to worry about your temps. Here, we don't start thinking about adding anything for cold protection till it's well below zero. At -15F to -20F we give the little rabbits (Polish, Mini Rex, Hollands) boxes with hay/straw, and several times...

That's what I've used... a regular pea for meat rabbits, a tiny pea for dwarf breeds. :) It does not seem to need to be exact.

When one of the kids raises birds for the market auction, they feed the quail turkey/gamebird starter. The aim is to get the birds to at least a pound at 10 weeks, and the gamebird starter gets them there. However, for years and years, when we were raising the quail just for eggs, we fed the...

No papers of any kind are required for showing at an ARBA-sanctioned show. The only requirements are that the rabbit fulfills the minimum requirements of the breed standard, and has a permanent identification tattoo in its left ear. Shows are tailored to purebred rabbits, but as one judge I...

Congratulations on your successes! 😁 I agree, those colors are quite surprising! Can you post pictures of the parents? If both parents are actually lilac <bb dd>, you shouldn't be able to get anything other than lilac-based colors. I could see the pale bunnies being lilac torts (pale kit on...

I never had any problem with either the clay cat litter or the pine, and we used them for years for two of my daughter's rabbits. The litter was only clay or 100% pine, without any clumping agents, scents or anything else. I didn't have problems with dust, either; maybe I just lucked out with...

Rabbits usually pretty much potty train themselves, since they tend to be fastidious and choose one spot to do their business. My suggestion is to keep them in their cage for a while and watch where they choose to pee, then put a litter tray there. Voila - litter trained! 😁 After they know...

You can wean them now, and they will likely be okay as long as they are kept on the same diet they've been on. In the wild, kits are sometimes weaned at 4 weeks so that the dam can raise another litter. However, a lot of people who raise rabbits like to wait for at least another 3-4 weeks, to...