Cottontails and domesticated rabbits can’t successfully interbreed, they dont belong to the same species and don’t have the same nr of chromosomes. In many places in the USA and Canada, domesticated European rabbits (i.e. same species as our house rabbits) gone feral have formed colonies.

It’s reasonable to think that these feral rabbits and their offspring are less wary of humans, although they seem to revert to “wild-type” after only a few generations. The brown (agouti) color is the wildtype color of European rabbits , they also have a white tail that looks like a wad of cotton. Feral rabbits tend to revert to this color, perhaps because it offers the best camouflage in the wild.

In for example Las Vegas, feral European rabbits multiplied so successfully that the authorities rather recently made an effort to exterminate them. Feral rabbits are considered a pest, partly because they undermine land with their warrens. Feral colonies can also become reservoirs of very serious rabbit diseases that are not native to the USA and that pose a threat to commercially farmed rabbits. In Vancouver, Canada, there’s recently been an outbreak of one of these dreaded diseases, rabbit hemorrhagic fever RVHD 2.

Catching these rabbits would be good, but if they are many, it’d be best to do it together with a no-kill rabbit shelter/rescue. In Las Vegas, many of the rabbits that would otherwise have been killed off were rescued.

Mini rexes don’t occur in nature, but wild black rabbits are sometimes seen, there is also wild type yellow color and of course albinism/leucism (partially white individuals).

Edit: Oh I think I was typing my post when you posted your reply. That’s a pretty bad situation I don’t really know how to help when it comes to these kinds of situations (I’m quite a conflict averse person), but hoping someone could chime in on any ideas.

Do you know the owner?

The first thing that needs to be prioritised is removing the original litter of 3 (who I assume are over 8 weeks now?) and separating them all. The original male also needs to be separated. Perhaps you could take on finding homes for those four?

That way, the litter of 9 can grow up with their mum, and hopefully someone can intervene and remove them at 8 weeks, and hopefully the litter she is currently pregnant with will be the poor things last pregnancy. Are there any rescues a bit further away you could contact?

Well it sounds like you’ve done all you can! Thanks for helping the poor things! <3 Some people are so irresponsible.

It turns out a guys wife brought home two rabbits and they breeded which turned into 5 rabbits. So he threw them out.

Ugh….people are horrible….

Are you sure there are no rescues in your area? Did you check the House Rabbit Society’s list? Thanks for doing what you can to help. I know it’s extremely difficult emotionally. I recently went through the same thing but with cats.

It really is a problem that it’s on this man’s property. Would he be negative to efforts at catching the rabbits? If he’s dumped them he could perhaps be happy to get rid of them altogether? A rabbit colony grows rapidly. Perhaps if someone were to ask him very nicely?

I think you are being wonderful for doing this. When you feed mama bun, you feed her kits as well, so that’s helping them too. It also means more food left to forage for the buns that are self-sufficient by now.

This Canadian rescue group is a very long distance from you, but maybe they could offer tips on how to deal with a situation like this. I know they have captured a large number of feral rabbits in their area.
http://m.facebook.com/Rabbitats/

That’s so awful. What a horrible man to dump them in the first place and then take away the food. This is exactly how huge rabbit colonies start. And then the people end up killing the buns because they are a “nuisance.”

I doubt they could offer much physical help, but possibly advice and maybe even foster homes, but there is a rescue called 10,000 Carrots Rabbit Rescue in Hants County.

I’m so sorry to hear this.

Is there a no-kill shelter that could take them if you were to catch them? Have you considered buying or renting a couple of live traps? That’s really the only thing I can suggest at this point.

And I sincerely hope the SPCA or animal control in NS is better than here. They are almost useless at protecting animals in NB.