Beloved Rabbits March Update

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This month Beloved Rabbits has taken in 15 surrendered rabbits and we've seen 20 hop off to forever homes.

Usually we try to focus on the positives for our update, but this month we'd like to raise awareness about the difficulties we - and many other rescues - are facing. In our experience, now more than ever there is a rabbit welfare crisis, and the demand is overwhelming - there are many more rabbits out there needing help than we are able to provide for. So far this year we've had 138 rehoming requests, which compared to this time last year when we had 98 requests, is a 45% increase!

We've also noticed that welfare conditions are worse, with the condition of the rabbits when they enter the rescue being generally poorer, and this has had a knock on effect on our vet costs. Due to this we've seen an increase from approximately £2k per month to £3-3.5k per month in vet fees.

We've also lost a number of volunteers for various reasons recently (for example they're no longer able to commit to travelling to our Bunny Bothy), and as we are reliant on our foster care network this hits us hard as every foster carer we lose means we no longer have that space to help bunnies in need. We've had a lot of interest in our foster care recruitment campaign however it is difficult to find applicants who meet all the foster criteria.

On the up side, we still have an active recruitment campaign running and an active team of volunteers dedicated to improving the welfare of the rabbits in our care. We also continue to have good successes with our adoptions, which we know other rescues have unfortunately been struggling with as the demand to rehome animals appears to have reduced generally.

We are delighted to share that Lewis Capaldi, who we previously nominated for rescue rabbit of the month, has been adopted and is settling in well and happily bonded to his new buddy!