Are they living with their parents or are they adult women? If you can speak to their parents(s), explaining you have your own and show them some educational items, the parent(s) may be able to influence the girls.

If they are not children and you do not feel comfortable approaching them, I’d confide in your parent(s) to potentially talk with them.

I do recommend going to speak to them with your experience if you feel comfortable doing so. Above all, although you know their history, it’s important to be educational, not lecturing or abrasive, although it’s hard not to be that way. It won’t be taken well.

As Wick said, maybe speak to the caregiver(s) if they are children.

If things do get out of hand and you can see the poor thing physically deteriorating, perhaps it would be time to call the local animal welfare agency? I’m unsure of of the equivalent if you aren’t in Australia, but something like RSPCA will help put the rabbit in a much better environment.

I’d report the scumbags!

Call the SPCA or animal control folks in your area, right away. Many people don’t take kindly to having strangers telling them they’re abusing their animals, and probably won’t be as polite to you as they would be to someone with a badge.

So sad…. Def talk to the parents if they are young kids. If you are shy, maybe even write them a letter with your concerns.

I’m so very saddened for hutch bunnies. I’m not sure how the humane society works where you are, but here it is horrible and backwards. As long as the animal is getting food, water and has shelter, they won’t remove the animal, unless there is some very visible abuse.

I’m not sure casual examples will work if they’re the type who don’t realize what they’re doing is wrong. This isn’t something that can really be handled indirectly when there’s this level of abuse. The rabbit you’ve mentioned is literally starving, based on what you’ve mentioned about being able to count it’s bones. It likely doesn’t have time to wait for them to have an epiphany.

Someone has to be firm and blunt about it, whether you or asking your mom to bring it up (in fact, that might even work better if she’s close to them). Examples are good and information is good but this is the sort of thing you have to push someone’s nose into.

The rabbit sounds like he is serious danger. There’s no time for dropping hints or being polite and hoping they listen.

It could be a request for reciprocal grooming, attention, or food. Wick gets licking when he wants food and attention.

You can always report them anonymously, that way things won’t get awkward between them and your parents.

Please do! I can’t imagine any bunny managing off a small bag of hay for a few weeks, let alone two months.

Honestly, I couldn’t imagine my own two buns managing to squeeze more than a couple of days out of a small bag of hay. Hope you manage to win an improvement in that rabbit’s situation! (P.S. I do give them some oats, but only a small amount once daily as a treat.)

Honestly, my boys polish off 9 pounds of hay in 2 weeks.

I go to Tractor Supply (A local farm feed store down here in the South) and buy a compressed 40 lb. bale of Timothy and it lasts me 3-4 months. I keep it stored in an airtight Tupperware container.

It’s super cheap (In price, not quality) compared to those store bought 3 lb bags.  Here, they’re around $7 a bag.  I was going through 4 or more of those a month.  The compressed bale?  $15. And it lasts for months.

And my little boogers know when I open it (The whole house spells of Timothy) and come a running.

Posted By Rain on 12/08/2017 4:39 PM

It’s probably for food. They said that he finishes one oxbow package of Timothy’s hay( the small ones) in like two months. I’m going to be sure to take action and do something about this.

You mean the half kilo package? Mine would eat that in a few days. That’s absolutely disgraceful. Bun has probably only put weight on because they are shovelling oats into him. What’s going to happen when he inevitably gets serious dental issues? Please port it. Those brats don’t deserve a rabbit.

Posted By Bladesmith on 12/08/2017 9:35 PM

I go to Tractor Supply (A local farm feed store down here in the South) and buy a compressed 40 lb. bale of Timothy and it lasts me 3-4 months. I keep it stored in an airtight Tupperware container.

It’s super cheap (In price, not quality) compared to those store bought 3 lb bags.  Here, they’re around $7 a bag.  I was going through 4 or more of those a month.  The compressed bale?  $15. And it lasts for months.

And my little boogers know when I open it (The whole house spells of Timothy) and come a running.

You must be referring to the Standlee compressed (“Grab ‘N’ Go”) bales of compressed timothy hay at Tractor Supply. This is actually kind of funny, because over Thanksgiving, Friends of Rabbits alerted its bun adopters that there was a problem with toxic weeds possibly being in the farm hay they were currently selling, so they were going to switch to a new supplier. I went over to a fellow bunny owner that weekend to pick up some hay to tide Panda and Fernando over until I could get replacement hay from Friends of Rabbits the following weekend, and she gave me a sheaf of Standlee hay from her current bale (there’s a Tractor Supply store here in Manassas, VA). So I went to get the replacement hay that following Saturday, and guess what – I was given a bale of Standlee compressed!!!

Right now, I have it stored in two big plastic bins with the extras in several large plastic bags (there’s *that* *much* hay). They like it just fine and I think the texture is actually very good for P&F’s teeth, better than the hay I was feeding them before; the Standlee hay is VERY stalky and crunchy in texture.

Sometimes the best way to sort out things like this is to report them and not give your name, no animal should suffer, why do these kids have a pet if they can’t look after it, we had rabbits when I was little, but I was brought up with rabbits and how to look after them, rabbits need care, I would say be a voice for the voiceless and ring the animal welfare, is all you can do.

Posted By joea64 on 12/09/2017 9:23 PM

Posted By Bladesmith on 12/08/2017 9:35 PM

I go to Tractor Supply (A local farm feed store down here in the South) and buy a compressed 40 lb. bale of Timothy and it lasts me 3-4 months. I keep it stored in an airtight Tupperware container.

It’s super cheap (In price, not quality) compared to those store bought 3 lb bags.  Here, they’re around $7 a bag.  I was going through 4 or more of those a month.  The compressed bale?  $15. And it lasts for months.

And my little boogers know when I open it (The whole house spells of Timothy) and come a running.

You must be referring to the Standlee compressed (“Grab ‘N’ Go”) bales of compressed timothy hay at Tractor Supply. This is actually kind of funny, because over Thanksgiving, Friends of Rabbits alerted its bun adopters that there was a problem with toxic weeds possibly being in the farm hay they were currently selling, so they were going to switch to a new supplier. I went over to a fellow bunny owner that weekend to pick up some hay to tide Panda and Fernando over until I could get replacement hay from Friends of Rabbits the following weekend, and she gave me a sheaf of Standlee hay from her current bale (there’s a Tractor Supply store here in Manassas, VA). So I went to get the replacement hay that following Saturday, and guess what – I was given a bale of Standlee compressed!!!

 

Right now, I have it stored in two big plastic bins with the extras in several large plastic bags (there’s *that* *much* hay). They like it just fine and I think the texture is actually very good for P&F’s teeth, better than the hay I was feeding them before; the Standlee hay is VERY stalky and crunchy in texture.

My girls love the stuff.  If I leave the container open too long when cleaning, they hop right in and help themselves.

For heaven’s sake, one can go down to Tractor Supply (Bladesmith can confirm this) and get a huge 60-pound bale of compressed Standlee timothy hay for just $20. (I buy my hay from Friends of Rabbits to help support them.) I think you need to talk to the local SPCA/Humane Society. I would also get in touch with the Texas branch of the House Rabbit Society. You could consult the House Rabbit Resource Network in Austin (they’re the folks who sell these emergency first-aid kits for buns). I have a hard time getting how they can buy $1500 gaming computers but can’t spare $40 to go down to Pet Supplies Plus and get two big bags of timothy hay, even though the PSP store brand hay’s quality is so-so, but that’s not really the point right now.

I get the Standlee bale as well. I’ve had a couple of bales that weren’t that great, mostly made up of small bits of hay. But overall I’m happy with them. I don’t know what we would do without Tractor Supply, we get pretty much all of our pet supplies there (hay, litter, dog food, cat food for the cats, cat food for the ferret), except for the Oxbow pellets.

Do they actually feed him tiny amounts of hay or is it just that he won’t eat much of it? Considering the care he’s received so far, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had problems with his teeth and wasn’t able to chew his hay properly.