After learning the incredible value of rabbit droppings as fertilizer for my garden, I became obsessed with getting my own sweet, cuddly rabbits that could roam around my yard looking cute and pooping in my garden beds to help my plants grow. I am thrifty and always try to get a good deal or upcycle products or barter services. So I put out a post on my Facebook page asking if any of my 2.5k friends had rabbits they were interested in rehoming. My red flags should have been raised when within an hour a few friends were eager to rehome their rabbits to me.
I connected with 2 of those friends and made arrangements to get Jack Jack, a little black and white bun, and Yeti, a bigger white and grey lion head bun. They were both males that were kept indoors, and they came with cages, all for free. What a deal! They were so cute and friendly, and my kids immediately fell in love.
Now, I admit I can be a bit extra with design and wanted to have fancier cages that looked good on my porch, so I purchased a second-hand cage from the Facebook marketplace. This cage would house both rabbits and since they were both males, I didn’t have to worry about baby buns.
I started to let the rabbits run in the fenced garden during the day and then catch them at night and put them in the cage so they were protected from predators. I noticed right away that they were pretty forceful with each other, trying to establish dominance sexually. But after reading blogs about caring for rabbits, I wasn’t worried as it appeared normal. They would be aggressive and hold each other down but then let up and lie next to each other for hours. About 2 months after I had them, we had a run of bad weather with terrible rains for multiple days in a row, so I left the buns in the cage and just made sure it was clean from droppings. After being away from the house for a full day, I came home mid-afternoon and went back to check on them and realized the cage had much blood in it and Yeti was injured.
He was lying down spread out with his hind legs behind him and lethargic. There was a fair amount of blood on him and in the cage. Jack Jack was not injured and was in a separate part of the cage. I quickly got Yeti out of the cage and into a towel, and called the vet. As I called multiple vets with tears flowing, telling my story repeatedly, I finally found a vet in our area that was open and available for small buns. They took me within 30 minutes, and it was heartbreaking to find out he was paralyzed from the altercation. I had no idea that rabbits are very fragile and get paralyzed easily. It appeared that the two buns had a fight, and after being in the cage for a few days without much room to escape the aggression, they went at it bad enough that his back end was damaged severely.
He would need daily care and must be separated from the other. His bedding had to be a towel changed multiple times daily, so he didn’t get sores from wetting himself. We would give him daily (sometimes multiple times a day) butt baths. He was on antibiotics for infection and pain meds. Automatic feeders would not work, and we needed soft bowls to put small amounts of food in because he could not lift himself off the ground to eat.
What started as a fun project to get good fertilizer went south fast. After 6-8 weeks of very specialized care, he began getting back into the grass and dragging his legs behind him. I would alternate the buns' access to the yard so they would never be together in the same area again. He seemed very happy, and although not 100%, he was living a decent life. He needed some extra care as he would get sore from dragging and couldn’t groom himself. Rabbits are very clean animals; they like to be clean and tidy.
A few months went by, and he could pull his legs up under himself to almost hop around. Even though I kept them separate, they would lie next to each other all day and still want to be close. They would even clean each other's faces through the wire fences. They got used to alternating days in the yard and seemed to be living very good lives. The care for Yeti got more manageable, and he just learned to live with his disability.
My garden received the benefits of the droppings often, and I would use some in my compost to build the soil. Rabbit droppings have so many nutrients for plants and break down quickly with little to no smell. Rabbit feed is sold in large bags and comes in pellet form. I would supplement it with hay and fresh greens from my garden such as cabbage, longevity spinach, tops from my carrots, kale, mint, and lemongrass. I also used green scraps to supplement the buns' diet when prepping meals. They loved the lettuce scraps, some fruit rinds, and celery tops. What they couldn’t eat, I would add to my compost. We try to have the least amount of garbage waste possible in our kitchen.
Yeti thrived as a disabled rabbit for almost an entire year. He started to decline as the weather heated up, and he lost more control of his back end. He was dragging more and unable to position his legs underneath himself to hope. He lost weight and was hiding under plants often. He would squeeze his way between the cage and fence or into my compost bin to hide. I started letting him out of his cage less and giving him baths more often to help with flea maintenance and clean the mites off his ears. Since they were never alone anymore, and he couldn’t groom himself anymore, he began to decline even further. We finally decided it was time to take him to the vet again to check his quality of life. Although he started as fertilizer needs for my garden, he became our family pet. We could not bring ourselves to put him down at home and relied on the vet to help us make the decision.
The vet was surprised he lasted as long as he had with the disability and said we really did a great job in his care. Still, after the latest decline, he was down 1.4 lbs. from the original pre-injury weight, and it wasn’t sustainable for his little body. We made the hard choice to have him put down at the vet's office that day with gas and then medicine. As I said my goodbye through the tears and sadness, I knew it was for the best. Over the rainbow bridge, little buddy.
Jack Jack is still going strong and now has the entire yard and cage to himself every day. He christens my garden with droppings and eats like a pig. Watching him bounce around the yard and come up to us for treats is the most fun. He recently just started getting his winter coat and looks so fluffy and sweet. I would highly recommend buns to any homesteader looking to get both an excellent natural fertilizer for your garden and a fun pet that you can enjoy raising. We haven’t ventured into meat rabbits as some of my friends have yet, and I am not sure if we ever will, but raising rabbits for fertilizer has been a journey. Thanks for hearing our bun story; we would love to hear yours.
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