It really is time this country made keeping rabbits in a hutch illegal. Having owned two house rabbits for many years you can see they are not suitable for a hutch.

They are social animals for a start and need company and a guinea pig doesn't count!! They also love to explore and roam like a dog or cat does.

Rabbits rock!

Let them roam however and they'd be picked off by predators.

Not if you keep them indoors like we do. Ours have roam of the house downstairs apart from at night when they have a 2 x 2 metre area they get locked in.

I agree DJGAVT. Rabbits who live their whole lives in a hutch and often alone have miserable lives. Although to their owners they may seem contented they are actually being deprived of the things they need.

They make wonderful house pets. They are quiet, funny, intelligent and sociable and can be trained to use a litter tray. Having the run of the house (or a couple of rooms) gives them the freedom, exercise and social contact they need.

I got into a major argument with a neighbour over her fondness for keeping small furry animals in cages - ie rabbits and hamsters. The rabbit kept making escape bids into adjoining gardens where it would, understandably, chomp it's way through any greenery. But the main issue was the fact that it spent it's life incarcerated in a small space and I found it heartbreaking to watch it incessantly trying to scrabble it's way out. Eventually she found a Fort Knox like cage that it couldn't get out of. But yes 'she loved animals' and the fact that every few days she went up the garden and talked to it while she cleaned out the hutch made it all alright

I have to admit shame at how we used to keep our bunnies, was years ago and my only excuse we knew no different. If we had bunnies now they would be indoors I think, or access to garden with supervision. We had ours in large hutch within large fenced grassed area but even that IMO wasn't enough to keep them happy.

This is so true, solare. I often say that rabbits are a really easy pet to give a totally crap life to.

They are fascinating creatures, have quite different and distinct personalities and habits, are utterly unlike a cat or a dog because rabbits are prey animals so their behaviour and instincts are quite different and I am amazed by how complicated they and their hierarchies are. Mine get supervised free-range time and when I want them to go back to their run, I rub my fingernail over a sweet biscuit and they're there at the door ready to hop back in. They then get a very small amount of biscuit as a treat.

It's worth posting this link to the RSPCA guidelines on keeping rabbits as pets, I think, because so many people still take them on thinking they need about as much care as a hamster or a mouse and they are so very different and much more demanding to keep well from a food, attention, company and space perspective.

The amount of people that give them lettuce as well which is poisonous to a rabbit. Rabbits diet should be 80%-90% hay.

They really are great house hold pets and are so fun to watch and they love to play and explore.

Some lettuce is fine for rabbits - and the neighbour's escapee that I 'rescued' from my veg patch certainly ate a swathe of lettuce and other salads with no ill effects - but some lettuce varieties are to be avoided, such as the iceberg types.

Sorry should of said iceberg. Rocket and lettuce of that type is ok

I hate seeing rabbits in tiny hutches, and thankfully the amount of these hutches are a lot less than they used to be. People seem to be realising that small animals needs more space than it looks like they need on first appearance. I was in pets at home today and was appalled to see a hamster cage the size of a shoebox being advertised as suitable for both dwarf and Syrian hamsters. It was too small for a dwarf, so it would have been criminal to keep a large Syrian in it. Personally I think cages shouldnt be allowed to be made smaller than a certain size as if they weren't made, shops couldn't stock them and people couldn't buy them. I think those who make such small cages should be locked in a box room for a week, see how they like living in a tiny space with no room to do anything. Apart from the effects on the mental state of an animal, you can't see their full personality and character in a too small cage as they've no room to really act naturally, so there is no benefit to anybody from using one. My own small pets are in spacious housing and I hate to think how miserable they would be stuck in a pokey box of a cage with nothing to do 24/7. My rabbit isn't in the house because I have a dog, but she is is free range in the shed, I can't imagine keeping her in a tiny hutch in the garden.

One of our local pet shops is run by a lovely lady who breeds rabbits for show and pets and they have a display outside with a tiny hutch and a big sign saying how awful they were for rabbits. They even have a tiny aviary next to it for people to stand it to feel what it's like to have to live in one..... great stuff!

Rabbits, IMO, are one of the most neglected pets, rarely reaching anywhere close to their natural lifespan

I keep my buns in a large shed with a Runaround tunnel connecting to a moveable run. I think this is ideal. The buns can choose whether to be indoors, outdoors or in the tunnel. On a hot day, they will sit in their tunnel. Can't keep them indoors as I have cats and a dog, but the only hutch they have is permanently open for them to hop in and out of, inside their shed. They have access to limitless hay and as well as grass from the run, I cut things like willow, hawthorn or rose branches for them to nibble on. They are angoras, so used to being handled although two came from a farm and were fairly wild when I got them. They always end up being very tame, my buns. My girls live as a bonded pair (I have an elderly male rabbit who does live alone but has a similar set up in the front garden so he sees everyone coming and going, is friends with the neighbour's dog who visits him every day, gets fussed by the postie, etc). He used to live with another bun who has gone to the great warren in the sky.

They are social animals but they probably prefer being social with other bunnies, not people, I suspect. I try and give them the optimum environment. They are litter box trained, have things to play with, etc.

I completely agree with you! A few months after I got my bunny, a friend got her own bunny from the same farm I got mine from and she gave him attention for a month or so before putting him out in a hutch in the garden and only going out to clean him out or change his food/water. It makes me wonder why she even got the poor bun in the first place if she wasn't interested in the long term.