Rabbit Ecology

Last Christmas, I was presented with a rabbit by my partner.  It’s a lovely little Dwarf Dutch Lop named Peta, and changed my mind about rabbits as pets.  She was soon joined by Eddie, a Christmas present that didn’t find a home with his 4yo owner, because toddlers really shouldn’t have such a difficult to handle pet.  

But now that I had these two rabbits, and given that I like to waste nothing, what was to be done?  Well, as it turns out, more than just a house pet with a cushion and a feed bowl, Peta and Eddie have been far more useful members of the household.  You see, I also like to grow my own vegetables, and I prefer to use low-impact methods to garden.  The Bunny Duo fitted right into that scheme.

To begin with, Eddie was not ever an exemplary house bunny, and as he developed male characteristics, the few good habits he’d had also eroded.  Given a choice of sterilising both rabbits right away, and letting them have a litter first, was an easy choice.  (Female rabbits in particular should be sterilised ASAP as they are prone to developing cancers, and males, well it’s up to you but they do tend to spray more when entire.)

So to begin with, the rabbits have an indoor place to be, and a series of day hutches and runs where they can forage and run to their hearts’ content.  The outdoor runs though are specifically constructed by me, and have a particular purpose…  I have wire netting across the bottom of one of these, and line it with hay and straw, and the whole hutch is portable so that I can place it over a garden bed.  The other is styled after a “chicken barrow” so that again, I can wheel it to a garden bed and place it down, but it has larger mesh netting so that the bunnies can dig down, pull up vegetation, but not so big that they can tunnel out.

So now when a particular vegetable has finished its season, I put the open bottomed rabbit run over it and let them clean up the leaves and roots and anything else they like, and in return they leave their little rabbit pellet offerings which fertilise the bed for next time.  After a week of daily visits by the bunnies to their “day job,” I swap the open bottom for the straw-layered one and the rabbits spend their days in that.

While they jump around, they are constantly battering the straw and hay (and their poops) through the netting, and I keep topping up their hay flooring.  The material that falls through is more fertiliser and soil conditioner and after a few weeks, the whole cycle repeats over the next garden bed.  I dig it in, and plant new crops in a nicely fertilised and conditioned soil.

Also the hay and poop from their indoor box and their night box is great for the compost heaps and also for the worm farm, the worms love getting a layer of broken up straw and poop and are breeding like crazy and providing me with a tub of rich fertiliser every month or two.  And when I’m trimming older leaves from vegetables or preparing them, I set aside the rabbits’ share of the spoils, which they appreciate hugely, and which all ends up going around the great cycle – and, well, you get the idea…

To me, making the most of everything I have to hand is almost second nature.  The rabbits get to visit various spots around the yard and don’t get as bored, the worms get to breed and multiply and have vermiform fun, my plants are happy, I’m happy, and the river (which flows along only a hundred yards away) is happy because it’s not absorbing pounds of fertiliser from my garden.

It doesn’t need to be rabbits – but whenever you plan a garden or plan on having animals, why not make a little draft “ecocycle” plan and seeing if you can’t do it in an eco-friendly way?  Many small efforts like this will add up to a large benefit.