If you own a rabbit and aren't quite sure what to do with him or her why not train him. I will show you step by step how to litter train your pet rabbit. Within a few weeks, your rabbit will be trained to use a litter box both in and out of his cage. Don't worry, its not that hard to do, I did it with my six year old daughter.

Here are three things you should do before you start to actually train your rabbit.

1) Make sure you have a proper cage for your rabbit:

His cage should be big enough for him to have a "living" area and a "potty" area.

2)Let your rabbit exercise everyday.

You should have your rabbit out to exercise 1-2 times a day for 30-60 minutes.

3) Feed your rabbit

You should feed your rabbit a combination of fruits, vegetables and dry food three times a day.You will find that your rabbit has one or two favorite treats which you will use when you begin to train him.

Ok now that you have spent a some time getting to know your rabbit and have become friends its time to start training.

Litter Training Your Rabbit

This should be the first thing you teach your rabbit to do. It is a fairly easy task to do plus it will eliminate having to clean up after him while you are training himother commands. You will need a litterpan about 4 inches high and either hay or nonclumping rabbit litter to put in the litter box. DO NOT use regular cat litter. The dust can cause respiratory problems for your rabbit. Place the litter box in the room where you have been letting him exercise. Remove some "rabbit pebbles" from the bottom of your rabbits cage and place them in the litter box. Put your rabbit in the litter box and use a command like "rabbits name, go pebbles" or "rabbits name, go potty ". Don't worry if your rabbit hops out of the box, let him hop around for 10 minutes then place him back in the box and repeat the command. When you see your rabbit go potty in the box, praise him by scratching his nose or stroking his head and say "good rabbits name" or good boy/girl". DO NOT give your rabbit a treat for going potty. Do this everyday for a week. By the end of the week your rabbit should hop in the pan and go potty whenever you have him out of his cage.



By: DChick

You don't really have to worry about learning how to build a rabbit hutch. It is really quite simple. However, it is important that you draw out your plans first before you start soldering the hutch's frame. Make sure that you have carefully considered every tiny detail so you will have everything at hand when you start making the hutch.

When drafting your plans on how to build a rabbit hutch, you need to take into consideration the size of your rabbit and of course, its growth. Is your pet an incredibly large or small rabbit? Do you think he or she will likely to grow more in size? You really don't have to decorate the cage flamboyantly. You just have to make sure that the one-room space your rabbit will occupy is roomy, warm and safe.

So, what do you need? To build a hutch, you need to have the following at hand: wire cloth, eight pieces of wood or metal rods, hinges, staples, woven hardware cloth or wire rolls (with the former being much preferable), formica sheet, and 2x4" stock. For tools, you need to have wire snips, gloves, screw driver, staple gun, coping saw and soldering iron.

Of course, you can always make wooden rabbit hutches but it is better to learn how to build a rabbit hutch that is made of metal. Metal hutches are more superior. They are easy to clean and bad odors don't stick to metal easily.

When you are learning how to build a rabbit hutch, you need to consider the proper materials to use when building the walls, roof and flooring. For instance, you cannot use the wire mesh for the hutch's flooring. This will likely harm your rabbit's paws. The wire cloth is advisable for the flooring. The wire mesh, however, is great for the walls, but then woven hardware cloth is even better.

To construct the frame, you would have to lay out the pieces you need for the frame. Cut these pieces into the desired length. Solder the hutch side walls and then attach them to the front and rear rods in order to create the metal frame. Once you are finished with this, you can then construct the door and attached the same to the frame using screw and hinges. Once you have the frame, you can then roll the wire mesh or woven hardware cloth to create the walls. Tack the corner points and flatten the wire ripples. For the flooring, you would have to cut the 2x4 inches stock and attach them to frame with staples. Place a piece of Formica underneath to catch the rabbit's wastes.

You need to learn how to build a rabbit hutch properly if you want to ensure the safety of your pet. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to learn how to build a rabbit hutch. You will even enjoy doing it. All you just need are the right materials and that's it.

By: John Grant

People will most often purchased their rabbit from a breeder. The reason that people prefer to buy from breeders, is because they believe that pet stores often sell rabbits that are crossbred. Most often you can find these breeders listed in the classified ads under pets or livestock. There are other places to find rabbits, such as through rabbit breeders club publications, or through magazines related to rabbits which offered will include listings of breeders. These days a lot of breeders are actually advertising on their rabbits online.

If it's all possible though you should find a local breeder to obtain your rabbit, because any time you ship a rabbit over a long distance it causes undue stress on the poor thing. For the most part, you'll find most of the smaller breeds of rabbits in pet stores like the Holland lop, the Mini Rex, and the Netherland dwarf. Although these breeds of rabbits are a lot smaller than regular habits, this doesn't change the fact that they can live a long and healthy life. Often times though, many of your smaller breeds of rabbits are apt to have tooth problems like malocclusion.

Another really good place to check to find a rabbit is your local Humane Society, as they frequently have adult rabbits which have already been spayed and neutered and are relatively tame from being handled all the time. There are some conditions and circumstances, where your rabbit from a humane society may need some special attention because they were rescued because of abuse, so they may have some behavior issues.

All about Rabbits Training and Play

Just as with cats, you can train your pet rabbit to use a litter box in a specific part of your room. You can also put the litter box inside the rabbits cage, or you can train it to use the cage itself as a litter box. You will find the training your rabbit to use a litter box will become a lot easier after the rabbit is spayed or neutered.

Rabbits don't learn like dogs do, as with Voice Commands, but you will find that they recognize patterns of sound from your voice.As an example, if your rabbit is being bad like biting, you can let it know by making a high-pitched noise or an extremely low pitched noise, and your rabbit will get the message.Rabbits can learn their names, although they don't actually recognize the name as much as they do the pattern of the sound. Rabbits are really smart, and enjoy playing games and playing with toys.

Rabbits can be allowed to run loose in your house as long as you have rabbit proofed it, (i.e. removed any electrical cords or other items that could hurt the rabbit if they chewed on it). It is in the rabbits nature to chew on things that are in their area, and they love to chew on wires, but you can train them not to do so.

If you are going to let your bunny rabbit have the run of your house, you need to make sure that it is not possible for it to be able to get into anything that is valuable to you or is dangerous to it. Rabbits don't have the same comprehension as dogs or cats, so it isn't a good idea to physically punish your rabbit when it does wrong, as this will most often cause you rabbit to just become frightened and confused because they don't understand. If these things are carefully considered, a rabbit can become an excellent house pet.

Companionship With Other Rabbits

It isn't really a good idea to put unneutered rabbits of the same gender together as they often fight. Most often the cause of the fighting is because of inappropriate sexual behavior, as one male will try to mount the other and it will stress the mounted rabbit out and make it aggressive towards the other one. Unless you are wanting to breed your rabbits, putting rabbits together of opposite sexes which are not fixed, is not a great idea as they will breed very rapidly.

Because of the problems involved, it was once highly preferred to keep rabbits in their own individual cages. However, it is becoming common to spay and neuter pet rabbits allowing male and female rabbits to live together. Even with staying in neutering, it isn't a guarantee that there won't be any fights. Often times when rabbits are kept singly they develop behavioral problems such as biting or withdrawal behaviors. These problems can often be stopped by keeping your rabbits in pairs.

You can often adopt pairs of rabbits that are bonded and desexed from animal shelters, and they are normally one of each gender. A good thing about getting your rabbits from an animal shelter is that they have already had most of the expenses done to them, like getting them fixed, and if they are repaired you don't have to worry about having them get used to another rabbit.

Guinea pigs

Often times you'll read in book that it is a good idea to keep rabbits and guinea pigs together to help meet their social needs. While this is successful sometimes, it is generally considered not a good idea to keep the animals in the same cage together.Guinea pigs are not as tough as rabbits, so they can be easily hurt if they rabbit decided to become aggressive against it or it could become distressed and die just because it was afraid. Guinea pigs are easily startled, so chances are it would not be intentional but it is better that they are left without the chance of causing harm to one another. The diets of these two animals are also quite different from one another, so they have to be fed separately. Guinea pigs require additional Vitamin C in their diets that rabbit food doesn't have. If the guinea pig doesn't get its vitamin C it could lead to scurvy.

For the most part, guinea pigs don't really show any interest in the social activities that rabbits require like grooming, which is a big take away from what you were hoping for by putting the rabbit and guinea pig together in the first place.

Dogs and Cats

For the most part it is not a really good idea to leave your rabbit alone with your dog, as they can become over enthusiastic in their play, which could lead to the dog harming the rabbit. On the other hand cats, can potentially get along with rabbits very well as long as they are introduced properly and are about the same size as each other. It's funny that sometimes when you introduce a cat into a home that has a rabbit, the rabbit will establish his authority over the territory by acting aggressively towards the cat, who will normally cede the point, as it is not really concerned with the whole idea.