Hi folks,
Many of you know that for many years I raised and bred rabbits. Over all those years I made many friends at shows. Rick Cartheuser *pronounced cart-houser* was one of those friends. When I was breeding mini rex he was an inspiration and he was always taking top awards. People would marvel at how he achieved such beautiful coats in his rabbits, and what wonderful body condition. Last month Indiana animal care and control seized all of his rabbits. He is the Vice President of the Indiana Mini Rex Rabbit Breeders Club, and the President of the Indiana Rabbit Breeders Association. A neighbor complained about the smell from his barn. When animal control arrived they inspected things and told him he had a month to clean things up. Rick had nearly 400 rabbits. He had been in bunnies for over 20 years. He sells pet quality *rabbits that don't meet show criteria* to people for pets, from his home. If he has rabbits he needs to cull from his herd and he has exhausted all ways of selling or giving them away as pets, he sells them as feeders. (Yes I know we are all familiar with the feeder issue, but snakes must eat too, are snakes to be starved to death because they aren't cute and fuzzy, and cuddly like rabbits or mice?) Rick the person is a great guy, always willing to help folks out, teaching kids how to show their bunnies, and pose them the right way.
So why were his bunnies taken? A animal care and control worker, who never had seen a large scale show breeder's barn, and had only ever seen rabbits at pet stores, and few at the shelter, walked in and was appalled. He saw no water in bowls in the rabbits cages (because he did not know what a watering system looks like and didn't see the the spouts going into each cage providing clean fresh water, and the bowls were for veggies or treats) He didn't see food in their feeders attached to the cage (he did not know that rabbits are only fed one time a day, getting a ration of pellets, and a big handful of hay to mimic a rabbits natural eating habit of one large meal and then nibbling here and there throughout the day on grasses, he could have clearly seen that the rabbits were not being starved, even the vet that was there when they were seized said all were in excellent body condition and health)
The animal control worker saw yellow stains on the cage, and bunny poop on the dirt floor, and fur stuck to the cages... and assumed the cages were filthy ( Ricks cages are over ten years old, bought second hand from other breeders at shows to save money, over time when animals urine sits on the galvanized metal, the urine rusts the cages, as well as creating calcium deposits *much like that white stuff that builds up on your shower head over time, your shower isn't filthy, it just has calcium build up* You can scrub and scrub but the deposits rarely come off unless you use an industrial power washer, or soak them in CLR cleaner which leaves a residue that is unsafe for rabbits, so many breeders just live with the calcium build up and it looks icky, and has a yellow/white color, but it does not equal filthy.* Rabbits also shed their entire fur coats twice a year, you have lots of bunnies, it equals a lot of fur, and it gets stuck to the cages... again it is hard to get it off and many rabbit breeders have "Burn" parties each year, where you take the cages and using a blow torch burn the old fur off of them. Rabbits are territorial, especially male rabbits, and they often do territorial displays, where they spin around in a circle spraying pee and poop everywhere so bunny poop ends up on the ground, gets stuck to shed fur that clings to the walls, etc. Because show rabbits are not neutered, there is no possible way to stop this behavior and so it can make messes in your rabbit barn, and if the rack your bunny cages are on does not move and is stationary it is difficult to get behind the cages to clean. Rabbits eat hay, and they pick it up and scatter it all over the cage, and it falls through the holes in the cage wires, and sticks in the shed fur, and gets caught in the nooks and crannies of your cage racks, and is **** to get cleaned out. it adds to the icky look, but does not equal filthy. As for the smell, it does not matter what type of animal you keep, they all poop and pee, and those things smell, it does not matter how much you clean the pans under the cages, you will still have smelly poop and pee to dispose of, and most of us bunny people compost, yes the smell lingers, but if smell is such a crime are you going to shut down every dairy, pig farm, feedlot in the country? No, stinky smells are a reality of raising animals.
The animal control officer saw hock sores on the feet of a few rabbits and deemed that they were urine burns! (What this man failed to see/know were the pieces of board in each cage, because as rabbit breeders all know Mini Rex, and Rex rabbits have ultra soft thin puffy coats of closely curled fur, and because their fur is so thin, it gets rubbed off on cage wire floors easily, and that you put wood boards into the cages to give bunny a place to rest his feet, but even if you only have three rabbits, if they are mini rex or rex they will rub the fur off the bottom of their paws at some point.
In the first week of June is when Rick was visited by the animal care and control officer. He was told to get things cleaned up. Rick didn't have much money because he was unemployed, but got some new cages, made some phone calls to other bunny people to take some rabbits, he sold a few, moved some racks around to try and get behind them and clean, emptied all the dropping pans and cleaned them out, bought a big fan to circulate the air better, then at the end of the week he got a call, a trucking company was offering him a job... he was out of money, and needed more to complete the bunny barn overhaul so he had to take the job *some news reporters and rescue groups were spouting complete lies, he does not sell his rabbits to pet shops, he is not an evil back yard breeder just raising rabbits for money, he makes NO profit from raising rabbits at all, if he was he could have afforded to complete the barn cleanup/overhaul* So rick took the truck driving job, and long haul truck drivers are gone for weeks at a time, so he told his girlfriend to feed bunnies and left at the end of the first week of june *the same week he got the notice* to go work... and he was still gone working at the end of the month when they came and seized his rabbits...he found out they were taking them all away with a phone call.
The news reporters showed up during the rabbit seizure, and hyped and sensationalized whatever they could, saying the conditions were appalling, that "he had been warned before!" in the most dramatic way possible *the only warning he got was that one at the first of June* they said he had been given 30 days to fix things, and said nothing about him being gone nearly the entire time working. Then rescue groups like the House Rabbit Society chimed in, posting complete lies to completely blow things out of proportion, things like the rabbits had never eaten hay... had never been out of their cages...lived thier entire lives alone... baby bunnies were yanked from mothers unweaned to be sold to pet shops....just lie after lie...look at the cages, you can see where hay had been fed, the evidence is all over the cages, if you look you will see nearly every rabbit has a companion or two in the cage with them, and that mothers were in cages with babies clearly past weaning age. The reporters show the walls, the floors, and the cages and portray everything as criminal neglect... when as I explained above it is not, it looks icky but is not that bad. here are links to the news reports to see for yourself...
http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/marion_county/more-than-300-rabbits-seized-from-southside-home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nbnd685JMg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1upsansqZzg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv_AoG6OeHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMdH2lYRi18
They say over and over again that he had 30 days, but he really only had a week. His rabbits were healthy and in good condition, yet they still took them. They not only took his rabbits, they took every cage, nest boxes, feeders, everything... In one of the videos a reporter talks about fly strips hanging from the ceiling in disgust, why? he was employing a method of controlling the flys to keep them from the rabbits... you can't spray poison around rabbits, it would kill them, so he is to be made into a villain because he was doing something about the flies? In the third video the reporter points to a wall and says "Walls covered in dirt and feces on the floor" as I explained above, buck rabbits sling poo, and the stuff on the wall is shed fur covered in dust that was behind a rack of cages that was hard to move.
Imagine, a neighbor complains that you have rats, and someone who has never held or owned a rat and thinks they are disease ridden vermin walks into your house and judges you from the first moment... he looks at a male rat in his cage, and says "That rat has a yellow tail and smells like pee *as most intact male rats tend to look/smell like* oh and I see feces over there, he is living in filthy conditions...we are taking all the rats, and all the cages" how would you feel about that? you would be in shock, heartache, etc.
This is soo awful, and I feel so bad for Rick, his lifes passion just stolen from him... yes stolen, without even been given a real chance to do what they asked... and rabbit breeders are standing behind him, because who's to say that if one week we are sick and are not able to get out and clean cages, and a neighbor complains and then it takes a bit to get over our illness so we didn't comply in time and then bam! everything gone.