200 rabbits seized from
‘deplorable’ conditions

But, what REALLY happened?

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A chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon exists between the news reports and the reports of rabbit breeders in Colorado familiar with the situation. We at Raising-Rabbits were so non-plussed, we decided to post the story on Raising-Rabbits, send our questions to the Jefferson County (CO) sheriffs and to the Editor at 9news.com, and invite your comments.

You’ll find the link to the news story, the text of our letter to the news channel, and then your opportunity to weigh in on the story.

Our Letter to the Sheriff of Jefferson County

In the Wild West, this would have been called a lynching.

An anonymous tip led the Animal Control Officer to a breeder of show rabbits.

Coached by the House Rabbit Society which has no experience with the care of livestock rabbits, and in conjunction with the personnel at the Foothills Animal Shelter [who are coached by the House Rabbit Society], the Animal Control Officer removed 200 rabbits from the premises and placed them into truly deplorable conditions - conditions that would gray the hair of any reputable breeder of livestock rabbits.

According to the news reports, the animal control officer discovered dead rabbits and live rabbits among the 200 rabbits, rabbits without food and water, and cages sitting in piles of manure. The "shed" which housed this ‘deplorable’ situation was "warm" - 84 degrees, which was significantly cooler than the ambient temperature thanks to running swamp coolers. The article immediately planted the thought that the person was a "hoarder." (Maybe if she had 200 house rabbits...) It was also insinuated that the owner of the 200 rabbits may have no idea that she’s not taking good care of the rabbits. "I believe [rabbits] are harder to care for than people think," Jennifer Strickland, Director of Community Relations for the Foothills Animal Shelter, was quoted as saying.

Despite the egregious reporting and the absurd lines of reasoning (the breeder knows exactly how to care for her 200 rabbits), I’m trying to convince myself that it was simply a lack of education that led to this misunderstanding. On the other hand, the Coloradans familiar with the breeder, some of whom have been inside her barn and know the woman personally, are describing a railroading (their term).

But okay, let’s go with 'needs-education,' which is why I write.

As the owner/web-editor of www.raising-rabbits.com and a show rabbit breeder, let’s look at the details again from a level-headed perspective:

• Cramped conditions?
  If we’re talking the cages themselves, agriculture programs at universities such as the U of North Dakota specify acceptable housing dimensions for rabbit cages. Many show rabbit breeders (myself included) give more space than the minimums, because they take pride in their rabbits and because it costs less through minimized losses when they take excellent care of their rabbits.

  If we’re talking total number of animals, one must take into consideration the health of the animals, which the shelter personnel acknowledged was excellent. If the ventilation is great and the animals are healthy and not sneezing, then one cannot knee-jerk the assumption of ‘cramped’ when cage space is acceptable. (And by ‘acceptable,’ we mean according to experts in livestock rabbits.)

• No food?
  Well, I should hope not. Rabbits like to eat. If you leave food in front of rabbits 24/7, they will get fat. The House Rabbit Society is very familiar with fat rabbits because they overfeed them on unhealthy people-food, and then teach house rabbit owners how to end up with fat rabbits. We’ve read their articles on feeding rabbits inappropriately with people-food, which would definitely explain Ms. Strickland’s own assertion about the difficulty caring for rabbits. As a rabbit breeder, I had never heard of fat rabbits until I discovered there was such a thing as the House Rabbit Society. Most livestock rabbit breeders, including myself, feed their rabbits once a day, and expect any rabbit 5 1/2 months old or older to an have an empty feeder for more than 12 hours of every day.

• No water?
  Those familiar with the breeder state that she waters her rabbits twice a day. Any rabbit without water had not been without for very long. We can understand rabbits being ‘aggressively thirsty’ if they had accidentally knocked over their crocks. This is not a case of cruelty, however; this is a herd management issue. If the woman works during the day, we recommend that she set up an auto-watering system that can deliver water to each cage through tubing and valves, or purchase larger crocks or waterers.

• Dead rabbits in the rabbitry??
  Huh? The dead rabbits were in the FREEZER. It is our understanding that not one rabbit was dead in a cage, but that dead rabbits "in the single digits" were being removed from the freezer. The freezer is an appropriate place for storing butchered livestock rabbits for future consumption, by the family, by the pets, by rescued raptors, by the carnivores at the local zoo. This was misrepresentation at its finest. Why did not the Animal Control spokesperson know or report this little detail?

• 84 degrees?
  Half the breeders around the USA in this triple-digit July are wishing their rabbits were so lucky. 84 degrees is well within the comfort level of a rabbit, even an angora, when it is acclimated to the area’s climate.

• Cages deep in feces??
  I’m rolling my eyes, because yes, the ‘cages’ were sitting in their drop pans, but the 200 rabbits themselves were high and dry on wire floors - no contact with the manure. Was the manure deep? Then we suspect the breeder had plans to empty those drop pans soon, perhaps on the weekend when she was not working.

This woman isn’t a hoarder and she isn’t an animal abuser, not by a long shot. She is a show rabbit breeder of livestock rabbits, and this is a lynching based on trumped up insinuations.

The whole story would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

It should be evident that animal rights organizations are not experts in livestock rabbit care, including the House Rabbit Society [from whom the shelter gets its information], and therefore should not be consulted in this case. Why?

Because animal rights activists reject the term ‘animal welfare.’ Animal welfare presupposes the right of people to own animals. Such a presupposition puts the animal rights gang into full body shivers. They have one goal in mind -- to achieve a society where animals are not used at all. No farms, no pet dogs and cats, no zoos.

You don’t have to accept my word for it. This once-hidden agenda is now a very open one: http://noanimalsleft.org/node/13.

Here’s the irony of this animal abuse case: this breeder’s 200 rabbits were subjected to far worse abuse at the hands of the "animal rescuers." They stuffed the 200 rabbits in multiples into dog crates in ambient temperatures (89+F), where they literally sat in their pee and poo, and who knows whether bucks and does were mixed. Who knows if they bred willy nilly, or whether they injured each other.

And now the shelter is begging for donations of people-food to feed the 200 rabbits. If some of them don’t die of enterotoxemia, I’ll be surprised.

Even a cursory investigation could have brought to light the above information before the damage was done. We regret that the Animal Control Department allowed itself to be swayed by the jubilation of the House Rabbit Society finally "catching" its first victim of new animal cruelty laws recently passed. This is a travesty in a country where under normal circumstances, the accused is presumed innocent until proven to be guilty.

It is not that animal cruelty never occurs. We know that. But in the case of these 200 rabbits, it would have been far less expensive and a whole lot more logical for the County to have left the animals in place with the demand that appropriate measures be taken to correct the situation. It is a solution that would have offered genuine consideration of the rabbits’ welfare. The cost to have an animal control officer drop by once or twice to verify compliance would have been far less stressful to the animals and less costly to the County. In the meantime they could pursue their investigation resulting in whatever charges they felt appropriate, if any. Knee jerk reactions fueled by animal rights groups cost everyone money and heartache.

Please don’t be the posse behind a lynching party.

We recommend that this woman’s 200 rabbits be returned to her immediately, along with damages for the aggravation, to be paid by the shelter. The Animal Control Officer knows where she lives; he can check on her in the future if necessary.

Next time, consult the House Rabbit Society or Shelter personnel if the rabbits in question are house rabbits.

Respectfully yours,

Karen, web editor at www.raising-rabbits.com

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