If you’re looking for a great pet for children consider a rabbit. They are nice and small and a child can comfortably sit them on their lap, they are cheap to buy, they are cheap to feed, they don’t bark at the neighbours and they won’t live as long as a dog or a cat so you’re not committing to looking after the rabbit once the children have left the house.

And you can keep your rabbit indoors or outdoors as you choose.

A rabbit is kept in a cage that is properly referred to as a rabbit hutch. A rabbit hutch has two main areas, an enclosed sleeping area where he can sleep warm and out of the weather and an outdoors run where he can do what rabbits do, namely run around.

As a general rule the rabbit hutches available in pet shops are too small for one rabbit, let alone more than one. They are very active creatures and need plenty of exercise and unless you’re rabbit hutch is quite large most are unable to exercise adequately in them.

If he is to be an outdoors rabbit you can exercise him in a rabbit run that you can build for him that is a protected area where he is unable to escape and can exercise. This is normally accessible from his rabbit hutch.

But if you wish it is also perfectly possible to keep your rabbit indoors by putting his rabbit cage in, say, the laundry, anti will be warm and dry there.

As always it is important to clean out his cage regularly, though of course this also applies when keeping the rabbit hutch outdoors.

And is important to remember not to put wire on the floor of the hutch as rabbits do not like walking on wire.

If you keep your rabbit indoors however it’s important to remember, just as for an outdoors rabbit, that he will need some play and exercise time out of his hutch every day.

This of course is part of the fun for the rabbit owner. If you have a room specifically dedicated to rabbit play, where you have provided your rabbit with a safe environment and plenty of toys to play with, this is ideal for exercising him each day.

And rabbits can also be house trained as well.

However before you allow your rabbit to play in his play area you need to do a thorough inspection because rabbits are very quick to disappear into holes, and can become stuck there. Do a full inspection of your rabbit play area for any dangerous holes.

Then populate it with fun things such as plastic pipes to play in and you and your rabbit can play, and exercise, to your, and his, heart’s content.