Well, as everyone here knows, I don't raise rabbits.
But I *do* have cats, and those cats have litter boxes, as does my one (and currently only) rabbit. Said cat litter boxes are scooped/changed regularly, as is the rabbit litter box.
I just cannot imagine the level, frankly, of filth in the "12 inches of straw" on the floor of her rabbit house if she has does, bucks, and babies coming and going for four or five
months without cleaning the place out at all.
It sounds completely unsanitary. We're not just talking about urinary and fecal products; we're evidently also talking about the excreta of birth, too, which include blood.
She may have been lucky with regard to diseases like coccidia and other airborne and rabbit-to-rabbit transmitted bacteria and viruses, too. Additionally, her breeding is entirely uncontrolled; this is probably OK for people raising "meat mutts," but for those who want to show some of their rabbits, this just wouldn't work. In the fiber world, Angora coats would never survive these conditions.
She also had two bucks living together in the rabbit house. Again, very nice that her bucks didn't compete with one another to be King Buck! That could have been a terrible scene.
She didn't know whether or how many babies her does had, whether there were dead babies (or moms!) or not, etc.
I'm not persuaded that this was the best solution
for the rabbits themselves and their health. I'm
stunned that she had done this for five years at the time she wrote the article. Having read this board since August, it's amazing to find a rabbit keeper as nonchalant as she about filth, potential disease, dead babies, etc. With so many bunnies she couldn't count them, how would she ever know if a doe seized during labor (for example)?
Something is either (a) very lucky about her set-up or (b) incomplete about her write-up. My basic turn-offs are the filth and the lack of follow-up on babies and moms.