About a week ago my sister and I noticed a black and white rabbit hanging around our backyard. One day while picking vegetables from the garden, the rabbit hopped up to my sister. We thought that it was obviously domestic because of it's color and behavior so we put it in our old guinea pig's cage until we found the owner. We asked around the neighborhood and someone said they had seen the rabbit around for over a week. After trying to find the owner for quite some time, we finally gave up and decided to keep it.
My first concern is that we have no idea how old our rabbit is. It's a dutch rabbit that seems to be full grown, if not maybe a little smaller. It weighs about 3 pounds (it was off on its own for a while and probably lost weight since it was only eating greens.) I heard somewhere that you can sort of tell by looking at how many blood vessels are in the ears. It looks like there are hardly any. It is quite lazy during the day and very hyper in the evening. My guess is that its around one years old but it could be younger or way older. What would you say?
Secondly, we aren't positive on it's s*x. I'm pretty sure its a girl though. We checked her bottom and there wasn't anything popping out. Also it seems she has a flap under her chin (dewlap) which are suppose to only be present with girls. Is she for sure a girl?
Also, we found a bump on her neck that was very strange looking. Turns out that it was a tick. We removed the tick with tweasers and washed the area with soap and water. Now there is a little bump there that seems to be a scab. Is she at risk for infection or disease? We are pretty positive it wasn't a deer tick.
We're still using our guinea pig's cage, which is 24 by 24 inches. We keep the door open at all times since the cage is in our screen porch. Since she is sleepy during the day she almost never gets out, but she still has the option. At night we keep the door shut and we're worried she needs more space but don't want to keep the door open since she may p**p and pee everywhere. Is all of this okay?
We started out using newspaper bedding but she kept ripping it up. We're keeping the bottom bare until she is litter box trained. Once she is potty trained we are going to put a square of carpet or fake grass in there. Is this plan okay?
Litter box training. We are using a shoe box top for now but will eventually upgrade to a real litter box. We put our hamster's care fresh bedding at the bottom and clean it out every 2 days. She's been peeing in the box for 2 days now without any accidents and will from time to time use it to p**p. Most of her p**p is everywhere else in the cage. We put all of the p**p into the litterbox and try to show her that she needs to p**p in there. We have a rack of timothy by the box but it isn't helping too much. Any help?
Our rabbit eats A LOT. She'll go through a little more than half a cup easily everyday and want more. If we keep filling the bowl it seems like she'll eat more than a cup. We are afraid to give her more because we don't want her to get really fat. Should we keep limiting her food to half a cup?
She prefers drinking from a bowl rather than a water bottle. Is this fine? Also, we fill her 3 inch wide 3.5 inch bowl 2-4 times a day. Is she drinking the right amount? It almost seems like too much compared to how much our large guinea pig use to drink.
If our rabbit is a girl should we get her fixed? I read that female rabbits almost always get uterine cancer if they aren't fixed. I also heard it makes them nicer and easier to potty train. Our cousins rabbit got fixed and she ended up dying a week later. Even though the success rate is extremely high we are still concerned. Also how much to get this done?
Any other advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. I know the best way to get these questions answered are to take it to a vet but we don't want to spend the money. So please don't say "take it to a vet." Thanks!
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