In January, IHRS saw a listing on Petfinder.com for several rabbits from an abuse/neglect case. One volunteer went to the rural eastern Illinois shelter to evaluate their rabbits: they had been found abandoned, living in feces piled feet high, surrounded by many dead rabbits. After being impounded at the shelter for months awaiting the outcome of the court case, they now were able to be adopted.

We generally work with shelters in cities that house the rabbits singly, indoors, and only otherwise have dogs and cats or sometimes a guinea pig. But this shelter kept the rabbits in a hutch in a barn in gendered groups. Simply by being fed, their situation was certainly improved over the neglect they had faced.

But the rabbits were in sorry shape. Most of the males had been fighting with each other. One was so injured he looked like a little Frankenstein – one eye was either missing or completely abscessed over, and his sides were a mess of wounds. Another rabbit had a fresh bloody bite wound on his rear. The rabbits were licking each other’s injuries and trying to jockey for food and position in the small hutch, the floor matted with moldy droppings – and shelter staff claimed they had just been scrubbing to prepare for our arrival.

The females were in better shape, presumably because they weren’t fighting as much.  Still the Dutch looked like she might fall over, the Californian had an infected eye, and the mini-rex had a wound on her ear. Some of the male rabbits had white discharge from their noses, which meant even though many were friendly, we couldn’t take a rescuing them for our Petco adoption program – we didn’t have the foster spaces to quarantine them for as long as treatment might take.

We did take a beautiful Flemish Giant female, planning a vet check to determine her health. It went well – Elise had bite wounds over her body, terrible ear mites, and her whiskers were chewed off, but she could be treated. Hoping other rabbits at the shelter would also be in relatively stable health, we took a group of five volunteers (including one of our vets) a few weeks later to triage the bunnies and help as many as possible.

We found 16 rabbits at the shelter and left with 12, most heading to rescue, but some were euthanized. The “Frankenstein” gray dwarf was supposed to have been helped to a better place when we visited the first time, but the shelter never got around to it, declaring he was “happy.” (!) Because of that, we decided it would be in the rabbits’ best interest to take any who were similarly ill and suffering. One rabbit had a bite wound to his penis shaft. Dr. Becker couldn’t tell if urine was coming out where it was supposed to or through the hole in the side, so she took “Daniel” back for surgery. Another rabbit had terrible sores on the bottoms of all four paws. Rabbits were sticky with urine, covered in bites, and suffering from ear mites, abscessed testicles, upper respiratory infections, and the like.

After trimming nails and treating for mites, we made the difficult decision to leave behind four males (two minilops and two minirexes). We had already overburdened our foster care network taking many adoptable rabbits we had not planned for, all requiring quarantine. We left the rabbits separated in two breed specific groups in the hutches, hoping that the reduced numbers of rabbits (originally nine males in one hutch and seven females in the other) would reduce the fighting, although you can only expect so much from unaltered rabbits in a stressful environment. We left very frustrated by the lack of caring on the shelter’s part – some of this came from our differences in backgrounds and philosophies on rabbits as companion animals, but they were not receptive to even our vet’s expert opinion on which rabbits needed treatment and why they couldn’t be kept in groups like they were. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to not consider disfiguring infection or animals so ill they are nearly falling over a problem – either you’re clueless or cruel.

The volunteers were emotionally drained from this experience, but we helped 13 rabbits get out of the miserable hutches. Volunteers have quarantined and fostered these rabbits and now Iris, Roberta, Veronica, Daniel (his surgery was successful!), Chloe, Joshua, and Elise are all waiting to be adopted . Two other rabbits went to Red Door Animal Shelter in Chicago. It’s gratifying to see Elise doing binkies during her Bunny 500 in the living room, tossing pillows off the sofa, and hanging out with the dog. Most shelters envision bunnies having such a wonderful life – but this experience taught us that not all Societies are as “Humane” as we would like.