Hi everyone, my name is Claire and I'm a registered veterinary nurse. Today I'm gonna be discussing rabbit breeds and when looks can compromise health and welfare. So firstly, I do have a conflict of interest declaration.
So I would just like to declare that I do have a financial interest with the Rabbit Welfare Association and fund, and my affiliation to the organisation is that I am the editor of the quarterly magazine Rabbiting on. And I am also the advertising sales manager for Rabbiting on as well, and the Rabbit Welfare Association and fund will be mentioned throughout this lecture. Firstly, I just want to go over the learning outcomes that we're gonna be looking at throughout.
So we're going to look at which breed and breed types are more predisposed to health and welfare problems and that these rabbits don't necessarily need to be pure breeds, so we can be looking at lock types or brachycephalic types of rabbits. They don't necessarily have to be a specific breed. We'll look at the common health problems that are often observed with these particular breeds and breed types.
The welfare considerations and implications that may be encountered. The advice that we can be giving to owners who have certain breeds of rabbits to help them prevent problems. And what we can do as veterinary professionals as well.
Now, first and foremost. I love rabbits and I have loved rabbits for a very, very long time. I love watching them, I love watching their interactions with the their companion rabbits.
I love their distinct personalities, which are all individual, their behaviour and their mannerisms, and for them for simply being rabbits, and not necessarily for how they actually look. Now some appearance traits are certainly becoming a health and welfare concern where rabbits are concerned, and this is certainly beginning to increase. And we're not saying that all rabbits of a certain breed are going to be affected by the conditions that are being discussed here, and we're also not saying that other breeds of rabbit who may not fall into these extreme types are not necessarily going to be discussed.
But we are looking at the more common, problems that we encounter with specific breeds of rabbits who have had alterations to their appearance. And many owners are not aware of the potential related problems that are certainly seen in these breeds and breed types. Now breed related problems due to anatomical alterations are well publicised in dogs, so, you know, everyone is aware of the brachycephalic issues that French bulldogs, and other brachycephalic dogs can suffer from, and certainly when we see duckies with the elongated backs, but this is certainly less so in rabbits.
Our rabbit breeds. Now, rabbits have been around for a really long time, and they were first, introduced into the United Kingdom by the Normans. The showing and exhibition of rabbits, I mean, rabbits are taken to shows, they're exhibited, is known as the fancy, and this started more than 200 years ago, so this has also been around for over 2 centuries.
It is the British Rabbit Council, the BRC who oversee the breed standards within the UK and who specify how different breeds of rabbits should appear. There are over 50 recognised breeds and of that over 500 varieties, and that was from the British Rabbit Council. And they range in size, so we can have rabbits who are under 1 kg when they are fully grown, and those two are gonna be close to 10 kg when they are also fully grown.
We have different fur types and different fur lengths, so we can have fur that has been bred to be, longer and fur types that are bred to be shorter. We have the mix of the ear positions, we can have rabbits who have their ears upright, those rabbits who have their ears that have been locked, and we can also get breeds or cross breeds that have one, ear up and one ear down, or they may be partially locked as well. We can have rabbits who have overly small or overly long ears, and there are lots and lots of different mixed breeds of rabbits, and many pet rabbits are also a breed type rather than a pure breed.
So they may be a lop-eared rabbit, but they don't fall within the specifications for what a dwarflop or a mini lop or a French lop should be. So they are deemed to be a lop type, which is why throughout this lecture we have specified breeds or breed types as well. And there's no standard appearance for rabbits.
The only standard appearance that we have is in our wild rabbits. Looking at our wild rabbits and what Mother Nature created. The Mother Nature created wild rabbits to have upright ears.
They're open so that they can hear really, really well. They have pointed faces and they have a very near 360 degree peripheral vision, so they can see nearly all the way around them. They don't see particularly well right under their nose, and obviously they can't particularly see right behind their head.
They have short fur that is made up of two layers, so one layer is for keeping them really warm and the other one is for keeping them waterproof. So even if they are outside in the rain, that water isn't gonna soak through to the under layer. They're agile and they're swift, so they can run quickly, they can dart, they can change direction.
They're fastidious groomers, they like to keep themselves clean. When they're fully grown, they're approximately 40 centimetres in length, and they weigh between 1.2 to 2 kg.
So there isn't a huge variation as to how big they're gonna be or how much they're gonna weigh. And they rely hugely upon all of their senses to avoid predation, and they are predated upon by lots of different species, both on the ground and above the ground. And the importance of senses can't be understated, so wild rabbits need to be able to see and hear predators as early as possible.
This gives them the best chance of escaping and of avoiding predation. They need to be able to keep themselves warm and dry. They need to be able to run quickly and change directions, so if they have seen or heard a predator and they start running, they need to be able to to get somewhere quickly to change direction as well.
They need to be able to keep themselves clean and they need to be able to breathe through their nose effectively, so all rabbits, be that wild rabbits, pet rabbits or obligate nasal breathers, and they will breathe through their nose. They need to be able to dig out huge warrens to live in, and they need to be able to breed lots for survival of the species. Now, all except the last two are equally important for pet rabbits, so we don't want our rabbits to be breeding, so we must be recommending neutering.
And whilst pet rabbits don't need to be digging out large warrens, it is actually a natural instinct for them to be able to dig. So they should have access to dig, but they don't need to be able to, to dig out warrens to actually live in. That many of the alterations that we have seen in pet rabbits can affect the rabbit's ability to do all of the others.
When we're looking at what human intervention has created, so at the bottom we see a wild rabbit, fairly typical, they all look very, very similar, and these are the different variations that we have with. The pet rabbits. So do any of these resemble the rabbit below?
So we have, the long haired rabbits, we have just above that, we have the rabbit, Rex rabbit who's had the fur length shortened. Next to that, we have an English lo rabbit with the elongation of the lop ears. Following on from that, we have a giant rabbit whose body size has been dramatically increased.
Then we have a Netherland dwarf whose ears have been shortened and the body size decreased, and then at the bottom we have the lop-eared rabbits. So lopes and brachycephalic faces, overly long fur, those who have a tiny or a really enlarged body shape, these are man-made changes. And alterations should seek to improve the animal's welfare and not increase the chances of health and welfare problems from occurring.
So we have altered the ear shape and the ear length, so we have locked the ears, we have increased or decreased the ear length. We've altered body size, we've increased body size, and we've decreased body size, so in our giant rabbits and in our teeny tiny little Netherland dwarf rabbits. The fur type and the fur length has been altered, so we have our long-haired rabbits and we have rabbits who have been bred to have shortened fur, so notably rex rabbits whose fur often feels like velvet because it's missing the guard hairs.
We've created different shapes of the face and the different length of the face, so we've shortened and flattened the face in a lot of types of rabbits. And when we look at how rabbits are being bred, so if we're breeding for looks, then often health and welfare are gonna be taking a backseat because the priority is gonna be how these rabbits actually look. And to compound these problems even further, so some breeds of rabbits have more than one alteration, so they may have lop ears, they may have an overly large or an overly small body, and they may also have flattened faces, and the two.
That certainly spring to mind is going to be our mini and our French lots. So with our mini lops, we have the lop-eared rabbits. They're overly small body size, and they often have quite flattened faces.
And with our French lots, we have the flattened faces, the lop ears, but the overly large body. So we have at least 3 different anatomical changes going on there with these types of rabbits. Looking at the impression of cuteness as to what humans find cute.
So humans are naturally drawn to rounded baby-like faces, so by nature that is what the majority of of people find cute and appealing. Now wild rabbits, so the rabbits here on the left-hand side, they obviously don't have flattened rounded faces. The rabbit in the middle here is, is quite brachycephalic, so the face has been flattened, and then we get the rabbits, .
On the end, his ears have been locked, and it's more so the middle and the lop-eared rabbit who humans are naturally drawn to because they have this rounded like face and it's creating the brachycephalic and the lop ears that creates the rounded face. Now throughout this lecture, there is going to be several quotations from different rescues, up and down the UK rescues who take in lots and lots of different types and breeds of rabbits at different ages with different problems, who are often seeing these problems that are related to the anatomical and the breed changes that we see. So this rabbit rescue is a rescue in Hertfordshire.
And they have stated that whilst extreme breeds are bred to be more aesthetically pleasing, so hence we're changing the face shape, we're changing the body size, the ear position. Many of these rabbits suffer from lifelong discomfort and pain requiring ongoing veterinary treatments. And given the welfare implications, is the cost of cuteness too high?
And I think that's something that we need to bear in mind throughout the course of this lecture. And this is unfortunately a big and a growing problem. So the latest PDSA pool report, the one that was done last year in 2024, showed that there were around about 800,000 pet rabbits in the UK, and this is a slight drop from the 2023 report, which showed that there are just over a million pet rabbits, but this is still about 2% of UK adults who actually own a rabbits.
And in thinking about what rabbits you commonly see in practise, they are likely to be lop types, they are likely to be probably smaller rabbits with brachycephalic faces. And we really need to start now addressing the normalisation of these breeds, so that we can start addressing the problems that they more commonly suffer with. Now what breeds and what problems are we really talking about?
So the breeds that we are really focusing on is our lops, is our dwarf rabbits, our giants, those who have long hair, wrecks and English spot rabbits who have quite specific issue. And this includes cross breeds of these rabbits as well. And the problems that we see that is not necessarily conclusive include ear infections and ear-based abscesses, dental disease and dental abscesses.
We get naso lacrimal duct kinking and often blockages of those. Paid dermatitis, there are so hocks, we. Get fur matting and tears, especially in longer haired rabbits and also primary fur blockages as well in longer haired rabbits.
Osteoarthritis and any type of rabbits can certainly suffer with osteoarthritis, especially as they age or if there's any other concurrent. Health problems, but certainly we see osteoarthritis more commonly in some types of rabbits. Spinal disease, cardiac problems, respiratory disease, megacolon, and entropiium.
And some problems may certainly be breed line, so you can have rabbits who have genetic dental disease, and if these rabbits are certainly not bred from then you can breed out dental problems in that breed line, but we're not talking about breedline problems here, we are talking about actual breed problems. So firstly looking at lopes, so. It is estimated that between 36 to 57% of pet rabbits in the UK are lops, and that is from two different studies, one in 2016 and one in 2014.
And it is created by lopping over the vertical ear canal. So if we, I can see on this diagram here, there is a red line, and the red line would be where the ear is lopping over. And what it causes is these ear canals to narrow.
So we have this perfect creation for wax to build up because it simply can't escape. Wax can't go up the ear because there is a a kinking over of the ear. So what it does is it will follow the path of least resistance and it will head laterally out of the canal under the skin and at the location of the bend of the ear.
And this causes infections. It can cause ear-based abscesses. It can cause the rabbit to become deaf, and it is often causing rabbits to be in constant pain, and they may not show signs of being in pain.
They may still be hopping around, they may still be eating, but rabbits are going to hide pain for as long as they possibly can because they are, preyed upon by so many different animals. We can have dental issues often associated with the head shape, solopid rabbits often have quite flattened brachycephalic faces, so they are very, very prone to getting dental problems as well. So this image here just shows a lop-eared rabbit that is superimposed onto a rabbit with a more normal shaped head, and we can see how flattened the face is compared to the elongation of the other rabbits and also the ear position where that's held as well.
So this is another rabbit rescue. These ones are based over in Cambridgeshire, and they have stated that the mini los, these are really small rabbits, the ones that have the brachycephalic faces, the lop ears, and the small body shape, are the worst for ear and teeth issues. I think we've only ever had one who did not have an ear issue, and that was probably because he never showed actual symptoms, so we did not CT scan him.
If we had, we probably would have found an asymptomatic issue. I sigh with relief when I see an older rabbit with upper ears and a pointed nose of a medium size and normal fur type. So even rabbits who aren't showing actual clinical signs of having anything wrong with their ears, if they are a lop-eared rabbit, then this rescue has certainly found that they have likely got some form of asymptomatic ear disease going on.
Now our English lops, so our English lops, have the same issues as the lop ear rabbits that we've just discussed, but they also have other issues as well. Now their ears have been bridged to be up to 70 centimetres long, so they trail across the ground. They're moving around, they're prone to getting soil, so they can get faeces, urine contamination on them.
They can cause traumatic problems. They can trip over their ears. They can have profound effects on their mobility, so they're not moving around as much as they normally would.
They can therefore become obese. In really, really cold weather, especially rabbits who have water bowls, they can suffer from frostbite, if the ears are dipped in water, they can get injuries and wounds to them as well. So lock ears are a lifelong, they're a life altering welfare issue and certainly those with excessively long ears, there are English lock rabbits here have added problems as well.
Now this ear length is of no benefit whatsoever for the rabbit. It hasn't been created to improve the rabbits welfare. It only seeks to actually decrease the rabbit's welfare.
OK, so e-based abscesses. So these are rarely found in rabbits with our ears. They're certainly much, much more common with our lopid rabbits.
They're often advanced before they're diagnosed. Rabbits are a prey species, so they are programmed to hide signs of illness and discomfort for as long as possible. Often the only outward sign that we see is gonna be a swelling at the base of the ear, but sometimes this isn't always present, and even if we do just have this swelling, it is often the tip of the iceberg and the infection is much, much more deep seated.
The infection is often present within the middle and the inner ear structures, and we can see on the CT scan here that there is fluid that has suddenly built up within the inner ear of this rabbit. And what we sometimes get is a development of a head tilt or facial asymmetry, whereby we get contracture of the facial muscles on the affected side, and this is often due to the facial nerve damage. Advanced imaging, so CT, and a treatment plan which often involves invasive surgery, such as a partial or total ear canal ablation and bular osteotomy, tends to be the only treatment plan and often euthanasia may be opted for.
So rabbit pus is thick, it's not easily removed, it doesn't drain, it can't be flushed, and it's very easy to leave some behind. And on this image we can see a rabbit that has a large ear-based abscess that's been clipped and prepped for surgery. This is a man-made problem.
So lopid rabbits are man-made, they're they're not locked by a natural cause. It is a painful condition, it is difficult to treat and cure, and it often goes undetected. And in our experience, lots are certainly prone to reoccurring ear infections and painful ear-based abscesses, and that's from the same rescue that quoted earlier, the one that's in Hertfordshire.
These are all different images of ear-based abscesses at different stages, so these two images here, these could potentially be missed by owners if they're not checking their rabbit's ears on at least a weekly basis, where the abscesses have started to burst through the ear. This one here is slightly more advanced. So this one's very similar to the previous one.
We certainly get head tilt as well, so rabbits can certainly have head tilts when they've got inner and middle ear disease and problems. And this one's fairly advanced on this rabbit, but certainly in the earlier stages, it is possible for owners to actually miss ear-based ear abscesses if they're not actually looking for them. And we just have a quote from a different rescue.
This one's in Bristol, and it states that the majority of the lock rabbits that they take into rescue have some degree of ear problems, whether that's a mild build up of wax that can be flushed out, or the more serious cases where the debris has caused infection and the rabbit requires complex ear operations. More often than not, the rabbits that we've had with ear disease have had both ears operated on. And lop rabbits are suffering hugely.
Now if you've ever had an ear infection, obviously you can imagine how painful that actually is, but imagine how painful it must be to produce wax that is building up to such an extent within your ear that is actually stretching your ear canal. And if you've ever had a ruptured eardrum, then you're also gonna have an idea of how very painful this condition actually is. And yet the rabbits that have this, they appear outwardly to be absolutely fine.
And they just do continue to suffer in silence until a point where they can actually no longer sustain that. So moving on to our dwarf rabbits, and these may or may not have lopes, what we're getting is these rabbits that are being bred for this really cute, shortened, flattened face, and the rabbits certainly at the bottom image here, has a very flattened, rounded face, which is again what, you know, most people we find appealing. It often causes though these convoluted nasolacrimal ducts.
We can get maoclusion and we can get these cheek tooth crowding as well, just simply because their faces are flattened so much. They still have the same amount of teeth, say 28 teeth, as what any other rabbit would, but there's just less space for them. And the dwarf and mini rabbits, they're enormously popular, so our Netherland dwarves, our mini lops and our lionheads are some of the most popular breeds that are kept as pets in the UK.
They weigh between 0.5 kg and 1.4 kgs when they are fully grown.
And if we think about sort of our teacup dogs, so when we're selectively breeding for the smallest and the most fragile animals, we are producing even smaller and weaker individuals when these rabbits are being bred from. And going back to one of the quotations from a rabbit rescue. So we take in many brachycephalic rabbits that have issues due to the shape of their skulls.
These can be dental issues such as 23 abscesses or those requiring regular molar bears. They are also more likely to suffer with incisor maleclusion. Deformed tear ducts make them more susceptible to recurrent eye infections.
Slightly protruding eyes mean they are more prone to painful ulcers. These images are just different images of dwarf types of rabbits, and we can see how flattened these faces are. The same with our lops, and these do have as I said, really brachycephalic faces, the teeny tiny little bodies, and we can see here how rounded these faces are made to be.
So the BVA did have a post and a poster up which again showed the extreme breeding of brachycephalic rabbits and that they are certainly may look cute, but flat faced rabbits often face a lifetime of painful health issues. What we're looking at is jaw abscesses, so these are difficult, they're often impossible to cure. They often require really quite radical surgery.
We're removing teeth, bone, leaving to heal via myupalization. We get the nasolacrimal kinked and blocked ducts, which causes this overflow of the tears, so we get the fur falling out from around the eyes, which causes really sore, painful skin infections, and these are often lifelong. Our incisor maleclusion, so these often require lifelong bing, or we can certainly look to be taking out the incisors.
Rabbits who have incisor maleclusion are much more likely to get molar maleclusion because of the way that the jaw is forced into an unnatural angle, so chewing is affected, therefore, and we get back teeth problems. And with rabbits being obligate nasal breed, they're so very, very similar to our bracky dogs. If any form of that is compromised, then we're gonna start to get respiratory problems with them.
But because rabbits don't naturally breathe through their mouth, it actually makes it even worse for rabbits. These are all just different images of rabbits who have issues because of the shape of their faces. So here we can see the image that the rabbit has lost the fur from around the eye because of the, nasolacrimal duct drainage that's draining over the eye and not from the eye down into the nose.
This rabbit here has really, really sore painful eyes. Again, these rabbits here have awful teeth as well. And these are lifelong problems, so once these rabbits start to get issues with the nasal lacrimal ducts, with their teeth, it is very, very difficult to actually affect a cure for these rabbits.
Our English spot rabbits, so these rabbits are certainly more prone to mega colon. It is commonly underdiagnosed and it's a genetic condition that affects the English breed rabbits, and it can occur in English breeds who have lop ears, those who have up ears, those who have long or short hair. And what it does is it results in food moving slower through the guts and it causes digestive issues, so we see weight loss with these rabbits and diarrhoea, which is often formed in cowpat consistency.
It is lifelong and unfortunately in many cases it is also life limiting as well. When rabbits are getting flare-ups of the condition, it is extremely painful for them. They often get really bloated abdomens, they, they go into gut stasis.
These rabbits are constantly hungry because they have difficulty in absorbing all the nutrients from their food. So they need to eat more than any normal rabbit would. They have a large abdomen, because of the peristaltic movement is reduced and the food is therefore retained in the GI tract for longer than what it normally would, and this is what gives them that bloated appearance.
And English spots, all those with similar markings often have mega colon disease. So those that are taken into rescue are often found to have these problems. And we can see from the image in this photo here, this rabbit has that really large potbelly appearance going on, and often that, you know, really kind of skinny muscle wastage along the back of the spine.
So their faeces are extremely variable, so they can often range from really large faecal pellets through to copious pasty diarrhoea, and we can see kind of what is often normally seen with these rabbits, so this kind of cow pat sort of formation. There's no consistency at all to actually the faeces, and it often gets worse as the rabbit gets older. And the painful episodes are identified by the gut stasis signs, and obviously gut stasis is a sign that there is a problem with something going on in the digestive system.
So we get a normal, really a reluctance to move or eat. They often groan because of the abdominal pain, and they'll often be pressing their abdomen on the ground as well. They can't get comfortable, so they'll be constantly weight shifting as well.
And pain is due to the distention of the secum. As the feed is accumulating in there, and it can therefore start to cause, you know, life threatening obstructions, certainly in severe cases as well. Faeces that are being produced may also have this mucus look to them as well, so they may be sort of coated in mucus.
And some individuals will leak, you know, liquid diarrhoea as well, which makes them certainly more prone to conditions such as fly strike in the warmer months of the year. Now moving on to our giant rabbits, so these rabbits can weigh anything from, you know, 5 to 10 kg, sometimes even slightly more to them, and it is their stature that makes them really appealing to, to owners to have. They're often too big though for their body to actually cope with.
So we get, certainly heart disease with these rabbits leading to sudden death unfortunately. We can have skeletal issues, so we can get osteoarthritis, sponylosis, and often these problems are massively underdiagnosed in rabbits, not just giant rabbits, but all rabbits in general. Husbandry problems occur as well, so it is quite difficult to be able to get accommodation that is large enough for these giant rabbits, so owners need to be able to be thinking outside of the box so that they're actually creating accommodation that's big enough for them.
Handling of them can certainly be difficult as well. And if they're mishandled, it's certainly really easy to injure them as well, just simply due to their size. So it's not common for people to be picking up dogs potentially of, you know, sort of 10 kg in weight, but with rabbits, owners often want to pick them up, and with giant rabbits, that can certainly be a problem.
We can have issues such as podo dermatitis, so we get the sore hocks as well, and that's simply because of the size of these rabbits and the sheer amount of weight that is having to be placed upon the hocks on them. They do unfortunately have a reduced life expectancy, so it's not uncommon for these giant breeds and not to live past sort of 4 or 5 years of age. And with our French lots as well, so not only do they have the large body size, but they are also more likely to suffer from the ear disease problems that we have previously discussed.
So giants, like all giant breed animals, suffer as their bodies are just too big. I have found the older ones are certainly more likely to suffer with arthritis. And spinal issues and arthritis can be a real issue with giants as they age.
These can cause pain and associated lack of mobility with aggravating muscle loss in their rear legs. But the stiffness may also lead to an inability to clean eyes and ears leading to further problems at the front end. Now, locks come in different shapes, different appearances, as I said they can have, you know, their lock ears as well.
So they may have lop ears, they may have, you know, one ear up, one ear down, there is no necessarily standard appearance. These are all just different breeds, and types of giant rabbits that we can see. Our long-haired rabbits.
There are several different long-haired breeds that exist, as well as lots and lots of different cross breeds as well. So there is our Angora rabbits, which comes as an English and French variation, we can get Jersey woollies. We can get cashmere and cashmere a lot, and some of our lionhead rabbits can also fall into this category as well.
So lion heads are supposed to only have that mane of longer fur, but sometimes you can get some lionheads who are born with long fur all over their body. And owners are often unable to keep on top of the grooming requirements that these rabbits need. They need daily grooming, and sometimes these rabbits are certainly taken on and the owner is unaware of the commitment that's gonna be required.
We get matting and associated injuries and infections, so they're much, much more prone to fly strike. They're more prone to get stasis as well with primary fur blockages from all the ingested fur that they're ingesting when they're grooming much more common. We can get clipper injuries, so the owners are trying to clip the rabbits, or cut fur, and their skin tears really, really easily as well.
It only takes a tiny nick and actually you can have a really large wound appear. You can get the infections, if there's no air circulating down to the skin because there's mats in the fur, and the skin starts to get infected. Mats around the eyes prevent them from seeing properly, so again we've already stated that these are prey animals, they need to be able to see prey that so that they're actually not predated upon.
We, it causes extreme stress as well, so daily grooming, which is what is required, so that we're removing all of the dead fur from down into the undercoat, is extremely stressful for these rabbits, so, but they do need it, so it is stressful for them to be groomed. They need, you know, daily grooming, clipping and handling as well. Hypothermia, so if they get wet, they don't have a water.
Proof coats the water is going to soak through, make them really, really cold, and the flip of that is also true as well. So in warmer weather they can suffer from hyperthermia, they can't sweat and they can't panto thermoregulate. Rabbits with long coats become severely matted very easily, and they require lots of maintenance.
They are often prone to eye ulcers and infections or entropion eyelids as well. When we have overly long fur, we now go onto the overly shortened fur. So our rex rabbits have these really short guard hairs, and when you're stroking a rex rabbit, it feels like velvet, you know, they feel like velvet when you're actually stroking them.
They're more likely to get polo dermatitis because they have a thinner layer of fur on the bottom of the feet. There are other factors that certainly, you know, can cause poo dermatitis as well, not necessarily just in rexes or in our giant rabbits. They're more likely to get entropiium.
So we see Rex rabbits who have entropium, and they certainly feel the cold more. So if owners are taking on rex rabbits, they need to be made aware that they need to potentially have slightly warmer accommodation for these rabbits over the winter months, especially if it's a really cold winter. And you can see here this rabbit has got really quite severepoido dermatitis that it's suffering from.
So not only has it started off on the hock, but it's actually started to spread further up the back of the foot because the rabbit has avoided placing weight on the sorbit right on the hock, so it's trying to alter how it actually stands. So when we're breeding for looks, invariably we're beginning now to compromise welfare, certain breed trades, so these are the lop ears, the extreme body size, be that small or large, the different fur types of rabbits with long or short fur, are making certain health problems far more likely to be seen. When rabbits have more than one breed confirmation trait, problems are gonna be intensified and increased.
So when we have over large lopi rabbits, overly small lopid rabbits, we're much more likely to get problems. And rescues are seeing these rabbits handed in, and often they're facing really quite substantial veterinary bills for the extensive treatment that is required. Breeding for further exaggerated looks is going to lead to more serious problems, and rabbits are gonna continue to suffer for how us as humans want them to look and not how Mother Nature intended them to look.
So what can we do? Well, education is always going to be key, so we need to make sure that we are avoiding using images of extreme breeds on any practise social media posts, on advertising that is going to normalise the appearance of these extreme traits, and many companies and charities have already taken this stance, so the RSPCA have and certainly the private Welfare Association and fund have. Get vets to discuss potential breed related problems that booster vaccinations, so the more owners are aware of what to look for, the sooner problems are gonna be detected and hopefully the easier they're gonna be treated, and the less that rabbit is gonna suffer.
So we need to get owners getting. Used to weekly ear checks, potentially ear cleaning, although that can certainly be controversial in rabbits and that will need to be on a case by case basis. Weighing rabbits, feeling along their jawline to make sure there's no lumps forming there so we can be.
Seeing if we're potentially, you know, creating dental abscesses, checking of their hogs for any sore areas, daily grooming for longer haired rabbits, and checking for mats, and that includes all over their body, so all under their abdomen, around their back end, making sure that, you know, high fibre diet is fed, that is hay and grass based so that we're keeping rabbits and especially giants and rex rabbits who are more prone to poo dermatitis at a really optimum body weight. Insurance, we, we need to advise insurance, so there's lots and lots of different companies now that are able to offer health insurance for rabbits. And always encourage owners to adopt from rescue centres, so the more rabbits that are being bred, the more the problem is going to continue and be amplified for these extreme, breed traits.
And rescues need good homes with informed owners, and they will go over everything that owners need to be aware of when owners are taking on rabbits of certain breeds. And longer term we need to get closer to what rabbits should be looking like. We need to have rabbits who have longer faces and noses.
We need to be reducing the brachycephalism in these breeds. We need to get back to a normal length of fur, so both long and short fares. We need to really start thinking about what benefit there is to having lock ears and thinking about, you know, rabbits having upward ears instead.
The normalisation of body size and taking rabbits back to a body size that is more normal. And if people are interested in promoting rabbits and helping rabbits, then the Rabbit Welfare Association is the UK's leading rabbit welfare charity. The charity arm is the Rabbit Welfare Fund, and you can certainly help, help rabbits by joining the Rabbit Welfare Association and fund, and practises can join and they can therefore apply to be.
A rabbit friendly practise and more information can be found on that link there. And just really to close, the rabbits with rabbit-y features are beautiful. So these rabbits here all have ears that point upwards.
They all have naturally shaped faces. They're of a normal body size and a normal coat type. So we need to think about size, face, ears, and fur.
So I'd just like to thank a few people before I finish, so I'd like to thank Doctor Emma Milne for her invaluable input and her campaigning. All the rescues for their use of their images and quotations and the PDSA for the figures from their pool reports and everybody for listening. Thank you.
