Today is the day

[sommrluv]

that I started locking my bunny barn. And that makes me sad.

I haven't changed my mind about the general (not 100% but primarily) that if you have nothing to be afraid of, that you will be fine. I.E. if your standards of care are appropriate, you will have no issues.

I'm much more concerned about the nuts who break into places and steal animals.

 

[Miss M]

Yeah, I'm right there with you. We started locking our rabbitry at night quite a while back, and started keeping it locked 24/7 a couple of months ago.

Cleanliness is subjective, too. What you think of as an appropriate standard of care may be completely unacceptable to someone else. I'm not saying your standards are inappropriate, I'm just saying some of these people have an impossibly high bar they expect people to reach.

Even right now, I'll admit, the rabbitry is overdue for cleaning. Yet not one bunny has poo or pee in his or her cage. All have clean food, clean water, and clean hay. That'll do, until we can get it clean.

We are about to do some reinforcing to the rabbitry, as right now it wouldn't be hard to get in and not even open the door -- it's constructed from old window screens on wood framing. We're about to attach 2" x 4" wire to it.

 

[curlysue]

Mines locked because i have my rabbits in the basement.we no longer allow strangers into the rabbitry.

 

[Cattle Cait]

Mine was locked when I lived in Wyoming. We had a rabbit and her baby stolen, along with a carrier, so we had enough of that!

We live very far out of town now, but we do lock the barn when we have parties. Better safe then sorry.

 

[Secuono]

I moved my cages into the chicken run partly because of the thefts I keep hearing about.

 

[akane]

We had an entire bantam coop of 2 dozen adults and 3 dozen chicks plus guinea keets emptied one night about 2 years ago. Some really nice serama roos and bantam ee in that group too. Never quite figured out why. Maybe the group of hispanics down the road who wanted them for food. Maybe the elite subdivision on the other side thinking they were poorly cared for or the roosters were annoying (we were right over the city limits line). Who knows. At least you can't just turn chickens loose. All they do is come home again and there's no shelters to dispose of several dozen chickens at so I have no idea what you'd do if you "rescued" 5 dozen chickens. They'd have to go to someone else's farm where they'd get treated the same. They missed the standard coop since the "coop" was a converted wood grain silo that looked abandoned but we padlocked both coops after that.

It's a quarter mile down the driveway with dogs to the stable so unless they want to shoot some dogs they aren't getting the rabbits. The bernese mountain dog has nipped strangers for ignoring him and walking in to buildings before and I doubt any shelter or police are going to hold him responsible for controlled protection of his property. We have no AC out here and farm dogs are standard protection that anyone from a farming community knows to keep an eye on when entering the property without the owner having greeted them yet. Now my akita I worry because if someone got aggressive with her there would not be a bite mark to argue over. If someone came on her property uninvited with no one outside while she was loose (rarely the case) and applied physical force to her in order to get past in to a building we'd have a body to discuss instead. I think it would be fully warranted the same as I'd shoot anyone that tried to forcefully enter my property but having a dog prove it's capable of making that decision probably wouldn't go as well.

 

[currituckbun]

Started locking about a month ago. We live in a neighborhood so we are quietly breaking some rules. Our area is very rural and we are surrounded by farms. The local rules are rural farm but the neighborhood rules are not really enforceable. We back up to a farm that has peacocks. What a racket they make. My rabbits are almost undetectable.

 

[trinityoaks]

I wish I could lock my bunny barn. Right now it's nothing more than wooden lattice-work lined with plastic sheeting with a couple of sheets of particle-board siding for a roof. It has no door at all to speak of--we just drop the plastic sheeting over the opening when it rains.

We live in town (barely) and technically have too many rabbits for our deed restrictions, but they're not enforced unless there's a problem.

Our next door neighbors (4Hers when their kids were small, and hunters as well) and our landlords know we have rabbits. Hopefully no one else does. When we get back into a place of our own, I want to have a proper barn with locking doors for our rabbits and any other livestock we end up with.

 

[sommrluv]

I guess I'm way behind in locking up! LOL

It still makes me sad.

 

[Random Rabbit]

We lock when we go away... We are rural so it isn't a zoning issue... however we Do have at least one 'nosey neighbor-with a big mouth' so it is best to secure things.
It tears me up to not talk about our animals ! DH is so proud of all we've done. I feel like The Grinch always 'suggesting' that maybe we should not duscuss the critters with 'outsiders'.
I hope that at some time the pendulum swings in the opposite direction and raising livestock again becomes commonplace and usual.

 

[Legacy]

I hope that at some time the pendulum swings in the opposite direction and raising livestock again becomes commonplace and usual.

It will. It has already started. When I first started talking about raising rabbits for meat, everyone looked at me like I had 2 heads. I never found another person that wanted to do that. Fast forward about 3 years and I can't keep my does until butcher age because they are selling too fast to other people wanting to raise their own meat rabbits. I sell out and still can't keep up with the demand.

I am not concerned about people knowing we raise meat rabbits around here. If anyone was going to do anything about "abused" animals around here, they would do something with the starving dogs and horse across the street. Their starving horse get out about 3 times a week to go find food. They make a b-line for our turnip patch we have planted for the rabbits. The neighbors just can not understand why they can't keep their horses in the fences. um... Because they are starving. duh. They just got some goats now so maybe their starving dogs will eat their goats rather than feasting on out ducks and chickens all the time.

*stepping off my soapbox now*

 

[MamaSheepdog]

We live in a very rural area- the local K-8 has around 100 students in a good year. All properties in our development are 20+ acres. Of the 4 properties adjacent to us, two are undeveloped, one is under construction and the owners are wonderful people who think like us, and the other is a vacation home used a dozen times a year or so.

The two legged predators aren't much of a concern for me at this point. Most people raise livestock anyway. Only the newcomers to the area have the "pet" mindset, and once the critters eat a few of their beloved pets or decimate their gardens, their outlook begins to change.