Feeding rabbits to dogs- How do you go about it?

[TwoAcreDream]

We feed dry dog food, a soft kind that looks like dry hamburg,
and we mix the meat in. Right now we are working through a bag
of cooked venison hamburg.

Must be doing something right. The vet thinks so

We had 2 cocker spaniels. The one made it to 15 yr and 3 months.
Just lost our other one at 16.5 yrs. Meat was a big part of his
diet the last few months to keep him going.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

I would not feed him any bones, or the head or fur...just plain meat.
I don't want him figuring out the cute bunnies in the cages
are meat. Currently he is happy just checking them out via sniffing.

I was worried about that at first too.

My dogs are always with me when I butcher rabbits. They get the head and feet straight off the rabbit as I work. I can let a rabbit hop around on the butchering table and the dogs don't try to go after it.

When I take a rabbit out for routine care (nail trim, breeding) they will come over and sniff it and sometimes lick its forehead in a friendly way. When the rabbits are in their cages the dogs pretty much ignore them.

 

[skysthelimit]

The dogs are always loose in the barn with me. I've seen buns come to the cage and let dogs sniff them. I even saw one rub her chin on the dog. Occasionally buns get loose, and dogs ignore them, or retrieve them, depending on what I say. I had a dog catch a rabbit once, and I made him take it back. They don't disturb buns on the grooming tables, break into the growout pen, or anything like that.

They chase the neighbors cat, but don't harm my own.
They do kill possums, so they know the difference between what is mine and belongs here, and what is trespassing.
The dogs also watch me cull and butcher rabbits. They do know what they are eating.

 

[TwoAcreDream]

Our basset is still young. We got him at 8 weeks old.
He is 63 pounds at 1.5 yrs old. Vet said he could lose a few pounds.
I want him to stay calm around the rabbits.

When we started with the chickens just over 5 yrs ago, our
2 cockers loved checking them out. The basset loves checking
out the chickens and what they have in their feeders.
Especially when I feed the chickens treats / cooked mush.
Our chickens free range in the good weather. The basset has
learned how to help us round up stragglers in the early evening
for lockdown in the coop at night. He plays tag with the head
rooster a lot. The youngest rooster still needs lots of
motivation to get back in the coop for night night.
I can tell the basset GO GET THAT ROOSTER and he will just
get the one I want, and not bother the hens.

When I was growing up on the dariyfarm, my dad had quite the string
of coon hounds. It was my job to feed them. And we also trained
them as we took them to coon trials.

 

[3mina]

I have house rabbits and raw fed dogs who eat a ton of rabbit, they know the difference and they know where their food comes from. They don't touch anything I don't give them permission to touch, everything is mine until I give it to them because they are pretty prey driven.

 

[skysthelimit]

So you've got plenty of training in, it will transfer from chickens to rabbits.

Mine were 4 years when I brought rabbits in, and one was a reformed chicken killer. It helps that the other two are trained sheep herding dogs, a get around command, pause and call off is essential. I do wish I had recorded video of Phoenix rounding up chickens. It is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. But I have noticed, as Phoenix spends the most time with the rabbits, it takes her longer to want to eat it, it has to age sometimes, and sometimes she won't finish it. She loves crunchy feet but won't eat the entire head.

 

[dobergoat]

I brought my 8 week old puppy home in September. Within the first week with us I brought her to do chores and some kits got out of the colony ( my mistake). Anyway, she found 2 before I did and ate them whole and alive, the poor things. She is on raw and was started on raw, but I don't think she knew what she was doing. She's 6 months now, and good with the rabbits, wants to play if anything with her dorky paws. That being said, I still skin anything I feed to the dogs.

I give whole skinned rabbits, whole chicken skinned, goat chunck, mutton chunck, beef chunk, whole fish, pork, anything I can get my hands on. I don't feed the skin. More for me as I don't want the dogs to make the association even though I know they know what they are eating. Their not stupid, it still smells like a chicken or a duck or a rabbit, lamb etc. but makes me feel better, and it's not that much extra work.
And make a spice premix that they get daily ( kelp, alfalfa, bee pollen, D-Mac, cayanne, tumeric, Marjoram, garlic, Greens +) I try and make sure they get a little of everthing every month. I've been feeding like this for 14 years. I feel that it's all about variety. I ran a dog business and had alot of raw dog clients, not every raw diet is the same. Or vet diet at that.

My older girls that just passed were raised in a big city, and moved to a farm at 10 and 6. One was a research center rescue, other was an adopted dobe with cardio myopathy. Both lived 3x longer then the vets expected. They were on raw from the day we got them, but had to learn not to hunt the animals once we moved to the farm, figured it out quickly, but still would catch groundhogs, and eat them if I didn't find the body, very stinky. The rabbits were really hard, and I never trusted them with the rabbits. I saw them hunting wild ones all the time before and they controlled themselves with ours but you could see the twitch, then they would remember.