Video:Beginner Rabbit Care

Transcript:Beginner Rabbit Care

Hi, I am Dr. Rebecca Campbell, of Symphony Veterinary Center in Manhattan, for About.com. Today I am going to talk to you about how to raise a healthy rabbit.

Provide a Healthy Rabbit Diet

More so than other companion animals, feeding the proper diet to your rabbit is extremely important. It's really essential for their survival. The most important part of a rabbit's food should be hay. Hay is dried grass, it's very rough and fibrous, and they need that fiber for their digestion. And without hay, they can't keep their molar teeth ground down properly -- their teeth are continually growing. So hay should be about 90 per cent of what you feed a rabbit, and the less commercial, the better. Food should really be fresh food, like hay, a little bit of fresh greens -- a rabbit this size should get about a cup or two of fresh greens. It's mostly for fun and variety. And then, the average rabbit should have approximately a quarter of a cup of plain rabbit pellets, which are essentially ground-up hay mixed with vitamins.

Some people feed their rabbits only rabbit pellets, which do have the nutrition that they need, but it doesn't have the fiber for their digestion. And as herbivores, they have to have a huge amount of dietary fiber or they can die, sometimes suddenly.

Rabbit Tooth Care

Their teeth will also get in serious trouble if they are not chewing fibrous food. Veterinarians who take care of rabbits can trim overgrown front teeth, even with the rabbit wide awake, but taking care of overgrown molars is a more serious endeavor and requires general anesthesia.

Some pet shops sell hay, and there are different kinds of hay -- grass hays like timothy are very common and nutritious. Other hays like alfalfa, pet stores will also carry. But the best bet is to use a hay farm and they sell their products over the internet.

Handle the Rabbit Properly

Rabbits enjoy being stroked in the company of their owners, but as prey species at the bottom of the food chain, they're really afraid of being picked up. So in general, try and spend time on the floor with your rabbit, let him or her come and hop around you and stroke her on the ground, but don't pick her up too much.

Occasionally, you do have to pick your rabbit up in order to move her to a different area or clean her cage, or play with her. The proper way to pick a rabbit up is to put one hand under her chest, and the other hand under her hindquarters, and hold her against your body. Never pick up a rabbit just by the front end or, he or she will kick very violently -- and rabbits can snap their spine and become suddenly paralyzed if they do that kind of kicking.

Rabbit Bone Care

In order to run quickly, rabbits are designed to have very powerful muscles and very lightweight skeletons, and their bones are far more brittle than other animals their size, such as small cats. Anyone handling the rabbit needs to be very careful not to drop the animal -- little children need to be carefully supervised around rabbit pets, because they scratch a bit and get dropped, and that can cause serious injury to a rabbit's delicate skeleton.

Rabbit Exercise and Care

Every animal needs to be exercised and rabbits should be let out of their cage for at least one or two hours a day. They need to be closely supervised because they can chew up your house and all your possessions very quickly! So any exercise area or room that a rabbit is allowed in needs to be thoroughly rabbit-proofed.

So it's important to understand the special dietary needs of a pet rabbit before adopting one, as well as the special handling requirements.

Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the Web at About.com.