Comfortable quarters for laboratory rabbits (1997)

Gunn-Dore, D.

Abstract

Valuable recommendations for rabbit-adequate housing and handling conditions. The traditional standard-sized single cages currently used for housing rabbits are inadequate to satisfy the animals' behavioral and physiological needs. Group housing arrangements, preferably in well-structured floor pens with straw bedding and individual nest boxes can overcome these shortcomings. Group-housed rabbits express a considerably enhanced behavioral repertoire compared with singly caged rabbits. They are truly rabbits, because they can hop, leap, sit up on the hind legs in rabbit-fashion, hide in 'burrows', forage with other conspecifics, groom each other and sham-burrow in the substratum before lying down. In situations where a rabbit has to be caged alone, access to a refuge area and objects for gnawing and playing should be provided. A single caged rabbit must never be kept in social isolation but should always be able to have visual and possibly also olfactory contact with other rabbits.