Last week in The Burrowers: Animals Underground Part 1 we saw an artificial rabbit warren built and populated with ten domestic rabbits, who quickly started work on increasing the head count. This weeks episode focuses on how life in the burrow prepares the babies for taking their first steps above ground.

Baby Rabbit Development

A month in, there are seven litters (over 20 kits) in the warren, but we follow Pipkins litter – possibility with a few cameos – I know they were going for the ‘wild look’ domestics, but as they are domestic anyway, it would have been handy to mix the colours so ID-ing individual rabbits was easier!

At two weeks old, the kits weigh five times the amount they did at birth, and start taking a few steps from the nest, but still inside their nest chamber. By 18 days old they are leaving the chamber and venture into adjoining tunnels where they encounter, and play with, other litters. By 3 weeks, they are ranging through whole warren, behaviour, we are told, is driven by the instinct to learn to navigate the tunnels – knowledge which will help protect them from predators. Again, it’s suggested the domestic offspring will behave the same as wild:

“Their parents are from domestic stock, but they should behave as they would in the wild, because our rabbit warren is based on data from the real thing.”

Although the babies mix freely, we are warned the adult females are very defensive of their nest chambers, and under stress territorial mums can kill kits that stumble into their path – it’s not clear if this ever became an issue during this study. At nearly 4 weeks old, and looking like mini rabbits instead of babies, we see them venture out for the first time into the pen above.

There isn’t much in the way of information here about life underground, but there were a lot of cute scenes of baby rabbits to ease the disappointment.

Aww, cute baby rabbits… science, who cares about science.

Water Voles & Grass

The program also covers water voles and badgers (and this week moles too), although they didn’t link it to rabbits, the section on grass and tooth growth in water voles was interesting. Like rabbits, apparently voles teeth grow continually to cope with the wear from the rough surface of grass – learn more on my blog post: Why grass is good for teeth.

Close up of grass showing rough surface and ‘spikes’ of silica.

Excavating a Rabbit Warren

I found the section on excavating a warren the most fascinating. Back at the abandoned warren at Bicton park, they filled it with 10 tons of liquid concrete, and let it set. Then excavated it.

The excavation revealed multiple living chambers, with over 120m of tunnels, occupying same floor space as average new build home. At one junctions there are seven different tunnels meeting!

As you can see it’s a massive system of tunnels and living spaces. Now imagine the average four foot hutch super imposed, you can see why that’s woefully inadequate.

Predators

The big benefit of the warren system is protection them from predators, except the stoat. Which sometimes not only attacks but then take over the tunnel to nest in. Those watching just to enjoy cute bunny rabbits might want to skip a few minutes around 35minutes in. It’s not footage of the artificial warren’s rabbits, but it is grizzly. There are also a couple more predator shots at 46mins.

Back to the artificial warren, and they introduce the concept of physiological adaptions to help avoid predators – independently rotating ears, and eyes on side/top head so they can look up for buzzards and to the sides for ground predators. All in all rabbits are excellent at detecting whether there is a predator in the area, aren’t they? Not according to the TV crew: “We know there aren’t any predators in enclosure, but they don’t know that.” Lot of use those ears are then!

Which takes us back to the domestic/wild issue. Domestic rabbits act differently to wild rabbits, not necessarily because of their domestic genes but because they grow up in a safe environment. They learn from experience a weird smell/loud noise/giant human never indicates actual danger, so they start ignoring them. It’s how a skittish scardy rabbit can learn to relax and love nose rubs. Not that I particularly want to watch a warren complete with predators, I just don’t think rabbits ability to perceive whether or not there is any danger and the impact of removing danger on their behaviour should be ignored.

With the babies venturing outside for the first time, the mums behaviour is remarked on: “Look how attentive she is here, she’s head up the whole time, she’s not feeding at all, she’s looking around constantly vigilant, then occasionally she’s thumping away to warn them.”

We still haven’t seen what the rabbits are feeding on. There is one shot of a baby nibbling on a remarkably intact looking gorse bush but the rest of the pen looks barren. Possibly she’s not grazing whilst supervising the youngsters because there is no grass?

One interest fact: The babies learn the right types of food to eat from the chemicals that were in the milk that they drank when in the warren – they know those plants won’t be poisonous because their mum ate them and survived. Which is a very logical explanation for how wild rabbits manage to avoid poisonous plants that our domestics would eat given half the chance.

There is a nice scene with a mixed group of adults and youngsters grooming each other, which the expert explains helps them build bonds and secure friendships so everyone can watch out for danger. Of course, the more rabbits working together, the more eyes/ears on lookup and the more time an individual can spend feeding (still wondering what they are feeding on).

Watch Episode 2 on BBC iPlayer Next week: how will rabbits cope with warren full to bursting?

Did you watch it? I’d love to know what you thought!

Last night the BBC broadcast the first in a new series: The Burrowers: Animals Underground presented by Chris Packham. It aims to observe what badgers, water voles and rabbits get up to whilst they are underground by building and stocking artificial tunnel systems accessible to cameras. Just in case you missed it, here is a review of the first episode. I’m just going to talk about the rabbits, but the badgers and water voles were certainly interesting too.

Investigating a Real Rabbit Warren

The program begins by exploring an empty rabbit warren at Bicton Park Botanical Gardens, Devon, to create a template to built an artificial warren from. To do this they pump smoke into a tunnel entrance and look for where it escapes to reveal the other entrances and exits (they find 13 in all). Next, in steps Tanya the ferret, fitted with a beacon transmitting position and depth, she reveals the tunnels reach 2.5m underground at their deepest. The tunnel diameter is  around 20cm, with multiple chambers about twice the size of a football.

Although not shown in this episode, the trailers for next week (and some online articles) hint at a more extensive exploration of a set by filling it with concrete and excavating the resulting mould.

Creating an Artificial Warren

With a real warren for a template, they next set about building an artificial one from concrete and fibre glass, with an adjoining observation room (entered via a hobbit door) allows the cameras to view a cross section through the warren. I noticed the tunnels in the artificial warren were 25cm, rather than 20cm, perhaps to accommodate the slightly bigger bottoms of domestic rabbits (which we learn later will be the occupants rather than wild rabbits).

The cross section through the artificial warren, allowing observation of the rabbit inside through glass.

The warren leads out into a large ‘pen’ which is meshed over the top, providing much better security that the natural warrens top covering of brambles and rendering the rabbits completely safe from predators. They also replace the soil with sand “to reduce the chances of parasites” and there is no sign of grass only some gorse bushes, which by the speed the rabbits were tucking in will not last long! We aren’t shown/told about their feeding regime.

The artificial warren is certainly a brilliant design, I’d love one in my back garden! But, I can’t help but wonder if creating an environment to observe rabbit behaviour in which the rabbits can neither dig (the warren walls are concrete after all) or graze, two of the iconic rabbit behaviours isn’t a little bit limiting.

Sourcing ‘Wild’ Rabbits

When it comes to the inhabitants on the warren, we are told that the wild rabbits were too aggressive, specifically with other rabbits, and they were also “skittish and they were easily frightened”, so they have chosen to use domesticated rabbits with agouti colouring. Dr Sasha Norris, the rabbit advisor, justifies this by saying:

“Rabbits were only domesticated very recently and so inside each household rabbit is a wild rabbit waiting to come out. in fact a whole suit of genetic behaviours are in there and once put into a natural type situation they will express themselves”

I can’t help but thinking either the behaviour is so close they are interchangeable, or the behaviour of wild rabbits is significantly different enough to make them unsuitable – you can’t really have it both ways. I agree that domestic and wild rabbits are very similar in behaviour, but again, one of the dominant factors in rabbit behaviour is they are prey and in the wild this makes them hyper-vigilant and skittish – they need to be to survive. Most of our cottonwool wrapped domestic pets never learn to be scared, even Scamp, who is genetically a wild rabbit hasn’t got the sense to know when to be cautious e.g. he happily hoped up to a cat for a sniff.  Whilst that’s a desirable quality in a pet, it’s not very representative of wild rabbits. So we are observing ‘wild’ rabbits that can’t dig, graze and have no fear of/from predators.

The Warren Inhabitants

Ten of the domesticated rabbits (we later learn 8 females and 2 males) are initially introduced mid winter “to reflect the winter population of a small warren in the wild”. As you expect they immediately set about working out the hierarchy. We are told Thumper (orange tag), the dominate male, regularly chases Peter (purple tag), the other male, out of the warren.

The does also fight for dominance, in answer to “how do they display their power” we treated to a shot of a squirt of urine from dominate female Hazel. As Packham points out, a natural warren would be completely dark, so body posturing wouldn’t be visible. Stinky urine on the other hand works a treat and lands Hazel her choice of nesting chamber.

There is no particularly aggressive aggression shown, a little chasing but no actual fighting. It would be interesting to know if this is because there is plenty of space (the warren was built to house a larger population that the initial ten) or the rabbits are already used to each other and we weren’t shown their more serious attempts at working out the boss.

Breeding

They also quickly set about multiplying. We are told that after a quite relaxed period, at a certain point in winter everything changes, with a surge in hormones, with the warmth and security of a warren allowing rabbits to breed as early as January. Now, I don’t know how the rabbits lived before, but I would guess they probably weren’t subjected to the temperate and resource availability (amount of food) that help regulate when rabbits breed. So typically for rabbits, four weeks later the first litter is born (and I don’t imagine the seasons have anything to do with it).

There is footage of Hazel giving birth to five babies and minutes later leaving to go outside an feed, behaviour that is replicated by the other mums. A heat sensitive camera shows that the fur lined nest is incredibly good at insulating them allowing the mum to leave them rather than providing warmth. The kits constantly wiggle and rotate position each getting a turn at being in the middle.

Hazel nursing her babies – the white/light blue areas show heat.

When Hazel visits to nurse the babies, which she does only for a few minutes every twenty-four hours (made possible because rabbit milk is much richer than most mammals), the same camera also shows how well insulated Hazel’s own coat is with heat only escaping from her the ears.Whilst I don’t think there is any behaviour here not already well documented, the footage of the babies in the nest is excellent and certainly has the aww factor.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely an interesting look into rabbit behaviour, but I’m not entirely convinced how accurately it will portray wild rabbit behaviour, we’ll have to see what next week brings!

You can watch it on iplayer here and find out more about the series here.

Did you see it? What did you think?

I needed some hay pictures for an article on the diet section on my website, so I googled around for companies offering samples and sent off to The Hay Experts for their sample pack of six different hays. Having got the photos – which you can view here: Rabbits Diet – Hay and Grass, it was Scamp’s turn to taste test the hay!

Six different hay varieties, smells lovely!

The varieties under consideration were:

• Western Timothy Hay – “A quality US timothy hay: a mix of thin stem, seed head and green leaf.”
• Readigrass – “A short chopped and rapid dried grass. Green and rich in aroma and nutrition.”
• Oat, Wheat & Barley Hay – “Oat Wheat & Barley – “A yummy mix of coarse stem, broad leaf and seed head. Totally tasty!”
• Deans Meadow Hay – “A quality long stranded UK mixed meadow hay. Farm fresh and aromatic!”
• Green Oat Hay – “A mix of green leaf , coarse stem and tasty seeds heads. Fresh and aromatic.”
• Orchard Grass – “A sweet and very soft long stranded grass hay which is green in colour.”

Stop with the photos and start with the taste testing please!

Scamp stuck his head in the Western Timothy bag first, but I think that may have just been a case of stick head in closest bag and investigate. He then moved on to the Readigrass, which definitely caught his fancy.

So many different nice smelling bags, where do I start?

He gave it a good dig, nibble and look quite content to make the bag his new home.

A bag to hide in and it’s full of tasty stuff – best thing ever!

The two oat hays were definitely his second and third favourites. He couldn’t pick between them so had a good munch of each. When offered the Timothy and Oat strand by stand he picked the oat hay each time.

Nom, nom, om nom nom, om om nom.

He was less interested in the meadow/orchard hay varieties, but I get the impression he’d still be happy to eat them if the other varieties weren’t on offer at the time.

So that’s Scamp preferences! But as we know, what bunnies consider tastiest isn’t always what’s best for them.

My Thoughts

Feeling the hays, the meadow, orchard and timothy had much rougher surfaces, which are good for teeth wear – find out why here. The oat hays seems to have quite smooth stems and I’m not sure whether they’d be quite as good for that sandpaper effect.

Readigrass, has a higher protein level (around 12%) than the other hays (7-10%), so probably not good for feeding exclusively, though if that’s the only hay your rabbit will eat it’s certainly better than none. I’m very tempted to get some to feed alongside standard hay though as Scamp seemed to love the taste and it will be good for winter when fresh grass isn’t available.

I’ve always liked the idea of meadow hay because it contains a mix of grass varieties which, it seems to me, is more natural and would contain a wider mix of vitamins and minerals. Scamp usually has meadow hay and is quite happy to eat it so either he was keen on this particular variety or there was just too many other tasty foods to bother with it.

If I had multiple bunnies I would get bags/bales of several varieties and mix it together, but I don’t want to buy too much hay as it loses its vitamin content if stored too long. A small bag of readigrass or oat hay to go alongside his meadow hay might work for us though.

Wait, don’t put them away yet, are you sure I’ve tried this one?

Would your Rabbit like to try Hay Samples? (UK Only)

Making sure your rabbit eats plenty of hay is probably the single most important thing you can do for their health. So, I’m going to send one of you guys the same hay samples Scamp had (not literally – I’ll order you a set, Scamp would not be impressed if I gave away his). Just tell me a little about your bunny and his or her hay habits below and we’ll draw someone on the 7th to get the parcel. Sorry it’s UK only (though I’d still love to hear about your bunny) because some countries are a bit iffy about imports of plant matter.

Edit: Congratulations Esther you won the hay samples, I hope Doughnut, Cupcake, Eclair, Creampuff, Danish and Truffle enjoy their own taste testing.

Scamp quite likes a mat to sit on, unfortunately he quite likes to eat them too, and then he looks disgruntled because he can’t fit his backside on the bit that’s left.

We recently got a parcel packed with strips of brown paper …

and I got an idea… would it be possible to turn it into a new mat?

Only one way to find out!

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

I started by cutting it into three, giving long strips about 4″ wide, then cut those into 2′ long pieces. I then twisted the pieces a little to bulk them up.

Step 2: Pegging Columns to the first Row

I’m sure there are fancy weaving words for the across bits and the down bits, but I’m going to call them rows and columns. Lay your first piece out, that’s your first row, and then fold another pieces over it and secure with a peg, that’s your first column. Just twist the folded end with the column to keep it out of the way.

Then take another piece, fold it over next to the first and peg. And repeat! This is the edge of your mat, so add as many as you want your mat wide.

Step 3: Weaving the Paper into a Mat

Next it’s time to do the actual weaving. I used slightly longer pieces but the same width, and again twisted them a bit. Did you weave paper place mats in school? It’s exactly the same principle. You go over the first piece, under the second, over the third and so on under, over, under, over until you get to the end. Then you go back along doing the opposite – if you went over the ‘column’ piece last time you go under this and vis versa. It takes a bit to get into the swing of it.

When I ran out, I just twisted the old piece with the next piece to join it..

When you are happy with the size of the mat or you get to the end, just tuck it into one of the previous loops to secure it. Then it should look like this:

I suppose there is no reason you couldn’t leave it like that, nothing wrong with a rug with tassels!

Step 4 Dealing with Lose Ends

To finish it off, I just folded the ends back on themselves and tucked them under the loop above, like so:

You’ll need to do every other one and then flip it over and do the others, so they hold the last row in place.

At which point the pegs come off and it looks like this:

It took me about an hour, but I was making it up as I went along and taking photos to share with you so I think a bit of practice and it would be much quicker.

If you are following along, take a picture of your beautifully crafted mat at this point, you’ll understand why later.

Step 5: Testing

When I gave it to Scamp for testing, he hopped straight on and gave it a good sniffing…

Then I let him out for his exercise, before leaving him napping on his new mat whilst I ate my dinner.

Some suspicious noises later, it looked more like this:

Obviously I made it a little large and it needed adjusting.

Unfortunately he’s not great at knowing when to stop, so I imagine he’ll keep taking a little off the sides until there is nothing left to sit on. My poor lovely mat, at least I have pictures to look back on. And at least this one was free!

Most people are generally positive about animal rescue and adoption – adopt don’t buy and all that. It’s the feel good way to get a new pet, but when it comes to rabbits there are some really good reasons why you might want to go to a pet shop instead.

1. You have difficulty with decisions

One of the big issues with rescues is the amount of animals they have for adoption. If you go to a pet shop you’ll be presented a litter of half a dozen or so siblings to choose from, you’ll probably find mini lops, dutch or lionheads or some combination thereof. They’ll already be divided into boys and girls to help you pick. If you aren’t sure if you want a girl or a boy, that’s okay, pet shops aren’t great about telling the difference so really it’s like a fun game of lucky dip, with the possibility of a bonus prize (another half dozen for the price of one).

Go to a rescue on the other hand and be prepared to be overwhelmed. There will be big bunnies, little bunnies, black, brown, white, orange, blue and spotty bunnies. Bunnies with smudges and butterflies and droppy ears and upright ears and some half way in between. Honestly, you’ll probably have to spend a whole afternoon just cuddling them one by one to work out which one you want to take home.  Many rescues try to mitigate this problem by insisting you take two, but that doesn’t make narrowing down your choice much easier.

Edit: You can now get a poster (or t-shirt) of this image in my cafepress shop.

2. You only want to see babies (and not their mummies)

The overwhelming choices you’ll be subjected to at rescues aren’t just about breed, it’s also about age. Go to a pet shop and you’ll notice the rabbits are all small and a bit fluffy looking – these are babies.

Rescues actually have these too as they often take in rabbit mums, or rather rabbit mums and dads (hint: both are necessary for rabbit babies). But, they also have older rabbits – teenagers, young professionals (chewing’s a profession, right?), middle age couch potatoes (a.k.a professional couch chewers), and dignified oldies (in my day we ate the skirting boards and liked it). The trouble is if you accidentally adopt one of these you miss out on so much fun stuff… like litter training.

3. You don’t want to miss out on the teenage stage

You’ve probably heard rabbit’s can be litter trained, and that’s true, but it’s also true that litter training goes out the window for a few months during the transition from cute baby to old enough to neuter, a stage rabbit owners fondly refer to as ranging hormonal teenage rabbit (RHTR).

If you go to a rescue you’ll probably get issued with the already neutered option, this means you’ll completely miss out on the RHTR phase and really, you can’t call yourself a rabbit owner until you’ve been sprayed in the face with a jet of urine from a love sick RHTR. When you think about it, squirting urine 3-4 times your own height is a feat of skill worthy of Country-Of-Your-Choice’s Got Talent. Personally, I also think that the ability to scatter droppings over such a wide area should be appreciated for it’s artistic expression too, or maybe just for the fact the volume suggests rabbit’s insides have a Tardis like quality that deserves greater study.

4. You like noodles (a lot)

On the subject of neutering, one of the big differences between buying from a pet shop and adopting from rescue is the features that are included as standard. If you go to a rescue you’ll find neutering, vaccination and health checks included in the fee.

Your upfront costs are much lower if you go to a pet shop, where you’ll get a base model with none of these fancy extras included. Obviously you’ll still need to purchase these extras at a later date, you aren’t an irresponsible owner after all, and it will cost you more because rescues tend to get discounts and not pass on the full cost to adopters BUT everyone knows the best things in life cost you a fortune. You wouldn’t enjoy your bunny nearly as much if you hadn’t lived on noodles for two months to pay for the neuter after your rabbit’s Got Talent career didn’t pan out, right?

5. Your vet is very good looking

If your vet is single and attractive but you haven’t quite plucked up the courage to ask them out then obviously you want to maximise your chances by hanging out in the practice as much as possible (bonus tip: remove the hay from your hair before each visit). You might think rescue = second hand = more likely to need a tune up but, the trouble with rescues is they tend to health check, any on going issues will usually have been identified and babies grow up in nice surroundings which aren’t at all conducive to developing issues compared to the rabbit equivalent of puppy mills that supply pet shops.

Whilst there is no guarantee with any bunny, a young weaned too early pet shop baby is much more likely to have you strutting your stuff at the vet practice on a regular basis. Plus don’t forget all those extra features (neuter/vaccination) which will require a minimum of two or three vet visits. Go get um tiger!

As you can see buying from a pet shop has many hidden and under appreciated benefits. If you are trying to make the decision rescue or pet shop, I really hope this has helped you think over a few of the pros and cons. If anyone has any more points prospective owners should consider please add them to the comments below!

😉

Edit (2016): Obviously I’m not as funny as I think I am. For those that didn’t get it… no I’m not seriously suggesting getting an unneutered, unhealth checked, urine spraying, possibly sick (and may cost you a fortune in vets bills) pet shop rabbit is a better option than an adorable, neutered, vaccinated health checked, and available in a wide range of breeds and ages, rescue rabbit.

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