Why we rabbits are not supposed to live in cages

In our blog reading list we have a like you maybe have seen Marit Emilie's blog it's in Norwegian but we had to share this entry with you anyway (hopefully you will survive terrible translated Norwegian from Google Translate).

So even though he doesn’t live here, this entry will be about a 10 year old rabbit called Erling. He was just rescued from a life in a small cage that he had been living in his whole life. He's human was originally the children that lived in the house when Erling was a small bunny baby. It was fun in a while cause they loved him as long as he was a baby, even though he had to live in a small cage. But then the humans stopped coming that much, and in the end they even gave him away to someone else because they though it was a hassle to go out and feed him.

To be given away was actually really fortunate for him, because now he has gotten himself a loving family with two other bunny friends and he finally gets to live like everybun should: As a free-roaming house bunny that lives together with her or his humans inside.

But 10 years in a cage is not god for anybun and Erling had problems to walk after being let out of his cage. And x-ray pictures from Marit Emilie's blog shows what actually happens to you're muscles and your organs when living in a cage for so long: The pictures show (se link below) a comparison between Melis (Marit is Melis' human) and Erling, where you can see that Erling's muscles aren't able to hold his organs in place at all. 

You can read more and see the pictures here:

• Ti år i bur og effektene av et stillesittende liv (Norwegian)
• Ten years in a cage and the effects of a sedentary life (Norwegian to English by Google Translate)

Here Erling is getting checked and treated by vet called Heidi Stenstad (picture used with permission from Marit Emilie):

The most terrible thing about this is that mummy and daddy have told us that this is the usual way rabbits are living in Norway and the rest of the world. That's so terrible and sad! We only have to sit in a cage when we're going some were, and sometimes we have to be in a pen when someone is looking after us. And that's terrible enough even though our pen is bigger than the cage Erling lived in. Poor poor, Erling..