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1 Rabbit, 2 Rabbit, 3 Rabbit... 6?!?

A True Story

By Tiffany MichaelPublished 5 years ago 5 min read
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So one day my boyfriend goes to a pet store with a friend. He calls me and says I really want to get this bunny, it’s so sweet, and texts me a picture. After we both fall for this adorable fur ball, he finds out the bunny has been put on hold and is not available for sale. The following week, we decided to pay this pet store another visit to see if it had any more bunnies for sale. To our surprise they had a few including two Netherlands Dwarf rabbits that were 2-months-old. One male and one female. We had to have them! We purchased the whole shabang, large cage, bedding, food, Timothy hay house, food bowls, etc. As we drove home we decided on the name Marshall for the boy as we both love Eminem. After searching online I picked the name Lily for our girl Netherlands Dwarf. A few minutes after choosing both names I realized we named them Marshall and Lily like the couple on the popular TV sitcom How I Met your Mother. Although this was just a coincidence it was pretty cute and we decided to stay with the names. This was my first experience as a rabbit owner. As with any new project this day in age I hit the web to do some online research on how to best care for my new family members.

Only four days after we brought Marshall and Lily home we woke up to a tragedy. That morning I found that one of our new babies had passed away in the night. As the bunnies look so similar my boyfriend checked the gender of the surviving bunny and told me he thought Marshall was the surviving bunny. Later that day we brought our deceased bunny to the pet store and they let us exchange her for another rabbit. They had a new gray rabbit in stock and he was not a dwarf rabbit. They told us it was a boy and he was going to be big, somewhere in the range of 15 pounds. At the time he was so tiny, cuddly, and sweet, at only 2-months-old. I did not realize how big a 15 pound rabbit would be! After some online research I found out that we had just purchased a Continental Giant rabbit!

I enjoyed being a new rabbit mommy. Every day the bunnies got fresh lettuce, greens, carrots and fruits. I enjoyed them so much that one day I got the bright idea that we should get two more girl bunnies to go with our two boy bunnies and breed them. My boyfriend was not completely on board with this idea but he saw how happy the rabbits made me and I convinced him selling the babies would help offset the cost of owning the bunnies. So one day later that week, I came home after a long day at work and was surprised that I had two new female bunnies, a Lionhead & Mini Rex. At this point they were all still babies and not sexually mature so we were able to keep them all in the same cage. As they grew we realized it was time to expand their living space. We decided to separate them, the two does in one cage and the two bucks in the other.

Just recently we got the “boy” bunny Marshall who at this point was renamed Johnny and the “girl” bunny June AKA Lion out of their cages to play together. Up until this point we have not seen any actual intercourse between our rabbits, just playful exploration. We noticed that June was exhibiting the male role and Johnny was in fact not a Johnny! At this point we are realizing that we have had a boy rabbit in a cage with a girl rabbit the whole time and in addition to that we have no idea who is who and what is what gender! We are pretty sure after several successful copulations that Johnny has conceived but we had never seen Lion mount the other doe (female Rabbit) that he shared the cage with.

About one week later my boyfriend comes to me and says, “Wow there is a lot of fur all over May and Lion’s cage.”

I assured him that she was just shedding and we shrug it off. So a few hours later I am in the bathroom and I hear my boyfriend yelling “We have baby bunnies!” I halfway pull up my pants, rush out of the bathroom, and see two little newborn baby bunnies in the bottom of the cage that was originally supposed to be the house for two does. At this point we are all in shock. Originally I had decided I was going to hold off on breeding for a while. We intentionally separated the genders, or so we thought, so that we could choose when we wanted to breed them. As I had not prepared for this I quickly remove the buck (male rabbit) and made sure mama rabbit had everything she needed to care for her new kits (newborn rabbits). For now we are excitedly caring for our new additions and watching them grow.

Photo Collage by Tiffany Michael

So this is how two bunnies turned into six bunnies and possibly more. We think we know the gender of each adult bunny now. We know for sure we have two females and one male. The Continental Giant, named Hops, is still questionable. It can be difficult to tell the sex organs apart in a rabbit if the testicles are not exposed at the time of examination. Rabbits have the ability to pull their testical inside their abdominal cavity which can make it hard to determine gender if you are not aware of what you are looking for. Obviously, we are not rabbit professionals and it is not uncommon for a pet store to incorrectly assign genders in young rabbits. I am fortunate to have the space, time, and ability to care for my expanding brood but a word to the wise, keep all of your bunnies separate unless you are positive of the gender. Otherwise you will most definitely have an expanding bunny family!

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed my tale of the surprise bunnies.

Continental Giant AKA German Giant Breed

Meet our bunny family.

Hops (Continental Giant), Judy Hops (Netherlands Dwarf), May (Mini Rex), Lion (Lionhead), Pinky & Liberty (Mini Rex/ Lionhead mix)

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About the Creator

Tiffany Michael

As a woman, mother, spouse, granddaughter, addict, teacher & so much more I decided to share my life experiences. I love to write & hope to make a difference one story at a time. Enjoy & share! Instagram @tmbasketsandgifts

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