Feuganetsah, did you find another bunny today?

My first bunny was sort of a rescue, but I didn't really realize it was a rescue when I agreed to take her. A young girl had bought the bun at a state fair and then decided she didn't want her anymore after a few months, so I decided to take her. When I picked her up I found her in the girls basement in a cage so small that she couldn't even lay down and stretch out, so it actually turned out to be a rescue. My new bun that I just got is basically a breeder throw away. The breeder didn't want him anymore because he "wouldn't produce" so I took him. Apparently he is just too much of a gentleman to breed on the first date!

I got my two from a bunny rescue a few months ago. Although their site has been offline for a while now, so I wonder if they no longer exist. (Anyone in the DC-area now anything about the status of Bunny Magic Rabbit Rescue?)

Not to give anyone nightmares, but another reason pet stores should NOT sell rabbits - I knew a guy in college whose roommate owned an 11-foot python, and guess what he fed it, and where he got them? A rescue is going to check out people's backgrounds, and while it's not foolproof, rabbits are less likely to placed somewhere they shouldn't be. The average pet store probably doesn't care who they're selling too.

At the time I was pretty horrified, but I don't know if there was anything I could do. I realize that in nature, snakes eat rabbits... but at least it happens naturally... the rabbit has a chance to try to escape, and is not trapped in a small area with the predator, not standing a chance.

Sadly, even those snakes often wind up mistreated...  like rabbits, people don't realize what they're getting themselves into or how long they live. I've heard there are a lot of exotic pythons loose in the Everglades because former owners got tired of them.

I hate to be so pessimistic, but sometimes I feel like 90% of pet owners, regardless of the animal, and NOT providing healthy and happy lives for their pets.

omg thats disgusting.  i know too that this is what happens in the wild but i shudder to think why a person would even want a pet that they feed live animals to under their care.  gees louise.  i know nothing about snakes, but something tells me that they do not thrive in captivity like domestic cats & dogs & bunnies & so on.

I know this sort of thing happens,  I was doing a Google search on baby rabbits and this breeder had said if you have a runt of the litter it is going to have some deformity so when it gets older you sell it to the pet shops as snake food, I was sick to my stomach in disbelief.

I got my Ebony off a vet close to home, I thought she was pregnant and the vet said no and of course I was right.

I now have 6 babies one was a runt and so far nothing wrong with him he is the boss.   I couldn’t imagine any of mine being snake food.

I got Piccolino at a pet store. I had read about rescue bunnies, but never really thought about getting a bunny. I was considering a small pet for my new apartment like a reptile or hamster or bird. But my friend showed me these baby lionheads at a local pet store near her home (Dolphin Pet Village). She had seen them a few days previous, but they weren't for sale yet. They just went up for sale the day she showed them to me because they were turning 8 weeks old that day. I fell in love with him and lions are my favorite animals anyway, so ..I did debate for a while and then a little girl and her dad came in and sang the praises of house bunnies, so  I'm afraid he was a bit of an impulse buy.  The stores employees seemed very knowledgeable and handled the buns frequently and they semed very well cared for there. But if I can ever afford or have room for another bun it will definitely be from a rescue.

I have 2 geckos and have an issue w/ feeding live animals.  This is the reason that I couldn't get anything but my leopard geckos...they eat crickets!  They need to be live b/c one of my geckos is dumb & seems half blind.  We've tried dead crickets, but they won't touch em!  Do crickets count as feeding live animals?

All our bunnies came as rehomers from craigslist, this includes Oreo & Trigger from my former pet therapy program.  Actually all our classroom animals came from Craigslist, 4 turtles, 4 bunnies, and a hamster.  They were all looking for a new home b/c their owners could no longer care for them.

Our main building had a pet therapy program that had everything: birds (i.e. a macaw w/ PTSD), lizards, snakes, hamsters, chinchillas, sugar gliders, you name it they had it.  They had only 1 bunny b/c we were the "bunny site". 

I didn't realize that shelters had every kind of animal until I ran a grant funded humane education program at our local SPCA.  They told me that the farm animals were usually taken out of the city into the country SPCA locations.  Those locations had horses & pigs!  We were blown away by all the animals:  birds, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, etc.

Another thought...I actually work several blocks from a live animal butcher shop--I don't know what's the real name of those places.  I drive by every day and am always sad by the bunnies.  I'm blown away that bunnies are a tasty treat!  I'm a veg head but the hubby is a carnivore.  He LOVES meat!  However, he told me that after having the bunnies in his life, he could never eat a rabbit...even if they are stuffed w/ craisin goodness !

Notjulesverne....are you in Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world?  How's the garlic ice cream?

Very umm...interesting...It tates like someone scooped ice cream after scooping garlic and forgot to rinse the spoon

It smells pretty potenet here...one of the first days I moved into town I got in the shower and was like "I can't smell THAT bad!" and then I realized it was the garlic wafting on the breeze through the window. But you get used to it.

I have a leopard gecko, too and I don't think crickets count as feeding live animals...It was suggested to feed him a pinky mouse every now and then, but no way I could do that! So I just use crickets and live meal worms (which are way less noisy and smelly BTW) There is a reptile store that just moved in right next door to my apartment and the animals are cool, but he said the other day that he fed one of the snakes a rabbit! It made me sad.

I had heard that about geckos as well, that you can feed them pinkies, that really grosses me out b/c I think the worms & crickets are just fine.  Our one, Strawberry Shortcake, won't eat the worms, she's the one who doesn't hunt the live crickets very well as it is.  Our lil' Starbuck will eat anything.  She was so small and damaged when we acquired her, from Craigslist, that we fed her wax and butter-worms. 

When we had our turtles at school, we actually discussed w/ the students how they felt about feeding them feeder fish.  Our most hard-core kids were totally against it!  That really surprised me.  Often the really rough boys, love live prey feeds.

My first trip to Cali, we drove through Gilroy on our way from San Diego to San Fran (not via the PCH).  You could smell it miles away!  A few years later my mom visited a college friend in Gilroy.  She said that she surprisingly got used to the smell w/in 24 hrs.  I think that's so funny!

when I was a kid, I loooved rabbits! it actually all came back to me over a pet store easter bunny whom I fell in love with! However I had gotten my cats from a shelter and knew they had rabbits in shelters. I knew enough about petstores that I didn't want to encorage anymore breeding at the least. So I did lots of research on rabbits, came across a rabbit rescue in my state and planned to go through them...until I found Craigslist lol! I would see buns on there but hadn't really inquired as I thought I would still go through a rescue, then isaw little rocky (I had actually intended on a large rabbit to do the fact that I have 5 cats!), and he kept popping up every few days (there were about 4 people that claimed they were going to pick him up & never fdid) so I inquired and he was mine! To top it off the cats are scared of all 3 lbs of him!! 2 of them are coming around though!

this is such an interesting thread.  i started reading it from the beginning and i was thinking who are some of these people?!  i didn't realize it was an old thread that was bumped up... lol!

it was a little backwards how i came across Meadow.  we had Stephen some years ago who i "rescued" from a "crazy lady"  (we used to be friends but we had a falling out...)  her daughter had been terrorizing poor Stephen, so i took him and gave him a better life.  not perfect, but better.

i knew i wanted to get another rabbit for awhile.  once i convinced the hubby, we were going to get two rabbits from the city animal shelter here.  they were running a "buy one get one" deal (i know it sounds kinda weird, but that's what they said).  it was a few months after Easter so i guess they had many rabbits there.  we went to the petstore on a saturday to get some supplies in preparation, and they had a rescue group with animals there.  i got my dog thru a Petsmart/Rescue program some years ago, so i knew that rescues sometimes worked with stores that did not sell animls.  i went over to see what they had.  it was mostly cats, a couple small dogs (terriers and other mixed breeds), and a couple rabbits.  there was only one small rabbit.  a little girl (maybe 7 or 8 years old) was looking at Meadow (who was not Meadow then) and she was WHINING at her mom to get her.  flat out about ready to cry tantrum-throwin' whining.  i kinda freaked b/c i knew this was not going to go over well for this small bunny.  the mom and daughter walked away to do some other shopping i guess, and i asked about Meadow and she never left my arms after that.  it didn't go exactly as planned (one rabbit instead of two) but i'm so thankful to have her and i'm really glad that she has a better life with me.

Meadow the day we brought her home...

Meadow not long ago...

I got all three of my rabbits from Petco... I really had no idea about rescues or anything like that. I bought the first one because I fell in love as soon as I saw her and the other two were about a month and a half later. I was looking at the rabbits to see if maybe I could find a companion for Bunny(the first one) and one of the employees said something about having rabbits in the back. When I asked why, he said they'd been there too long and weren't selling. Well, I asked him to bring them out and they were so adorable and clearly so attached to each other, I couldn't stand the thought of them being separated or just left unbought(didn't know what would happen in that case), so I took them home!

In retrospect, I should have looked into it more and adopted a rabbit that needed a home, but I couldn't be happier with my three bunnies. If I ever want to add another bunny in to the mix, I'd definitely look into a rescue.

I got Nel from a small local pet store.  I did my research first and checked with local shelters and rescues, but this is a very much dog/cat town and the shelters reflected that.  Dogs and cats, the occasional guinni pig or bird.  One bunny, which someone beat me to adopting, so I went with a pet store confident that there were no homeless bunnies I was ignoring.

The staff were very knowledgeble about rabbits, explained proper feeding (including hay and limiting pellets) and were even kind enough to show me to credentials of their breeder.

The choice at the time was between a rather hyperactive looking yellow spotted bunny, and of course the little white marshmallow.  The white one seemed to have a more calm and mellow outlook, so she came home with me.  And thus was how Nel came to live with me.  The girl who sold her to me said she was sad to see her go because she'd fallen in love with her.

I go back from time to time and they always ask about Nel.  I rarely see rabbits there now.  Seems they've cut back on rabbit sales too.  I suppose the breeder may have gone out of business, as I've not seen any rabbits around here since. 

As I've said, it's a very much cat and dog town.  More unusual animals aren't so common.  The downside is vets around here almost never see rabbits, and I'm having a hard time finding any with experience.

I've found one who says he's done a few rabbits, and as such is my current emergency vet.  But he sees ferrets and turtles more often than rabbits, if that's any indicator.

Is it ironic to say that bunnies are actually underpopulated here?