How it began
We created the Bunnymad blog in 2002, to chronicle the life of Neroli, our houserabbit. She recorded anecdotes of her encounters with our three children, from when each of them was born and entered our home – the world where she was ‘The Princess’.
Our children’s fascination with ‘Nelly’ motivated them, over the next few years, to each take their first crawls and then first steps towards her, and she frequently featured in their drawings and schoolwork. During those early years, she inured an utmost respect for all creatures, in all three children, and did indeed train her three ‘Baby Servants’ to become ‘good and proper bunny slaves’, as per her intention.
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| The Princess teaching Baby Servant |
Back in 2002, creating our first webpages and sharing photos was very different from how we post photos, videos, and rabbit tales online today! Here’s a glimpse of our website over twenty years ago:
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| Dijon and Mabel, 2011 |
We’ve shared our home (in Kent, England) with rabbits since 1998 – there were two other rabbits before Neroli’s arrival in December 2001; there were also childhood bunnies long before then. Here’s a page about our rabbits, past and present, highlighting welfare mistakes and showing our learning curve:
Bunnymad began as a way to share stories and photos of our bunnies’ antics, and to pass on the things we learned about living with houserabbits. We tried to show how to care for bunnies, and hoped we could enlighten others by showing how amazing our rabbits were, but mostly it was purely for fun.
Today, we recognise that it’s vital for people who understand rabbits to share their knowledge and convey their experience of living with rabbits – raising awareness of rabbits’ care needs and changing people’s perception of rabbits can have such a massive impact on rabbit welfare.
It’s vital that all rabbit guardians (and, just as importantly, prospective guardians) know how to provide appropriate rabbit care. Our care information pages correspond to the Five Welfare Needs, highlighting that anyone responsible for rabbits is required by law to provide suitable care:
We think the best way to understand what our rabbits need is to learn about their wild ancestor, the European rabbit. Rabbits were domesticated relatively recently, and so their nature has changed very little from that of their wild counterparts – our domestic rabbits have the same need for space, rabbit companionship, enrichment, and a diet of mostly hay/grass. The European rabbit thrives on living in large groups, sheltering in underground burrows, and grazing vast areas for most of its waking hours, yet, for thousands of pet rabbits, the reality is very different: they are kept alone, in a small hutch, and given a bowl of food twice a day.
Although we can’t replicate an extensive warren for our pet rabbits, or allow them access to acres of grazing, we can incorporate some aspects of the wild rabbit’s lifestyle when trying to provide the best care for our rabbits. Follow the link below to find out about these complex creatures:
We hope you enjoy your visit to Bunnymad.
We will update it
as often as possible, so do return to find out what
the bunnies have been up
to, see the latest photos, and watch our videos.
You can also see photos and
videos of our bunnies on their Instagram account!
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