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Rabbit summary facts — life expectancy 8-12 years, adult weight 1-8 kg, gestation 30-33 days, litter 4-12 kits, weaning 5-6 weeks (Welsh Government code)

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exotic-pet-profile 181 tok en 2026-08-24

Rabbit summary facts — life expectancy 8-12 years, adult weight 1-8 kg, gestation 30-33 days, litter 4-12 kits, weaning 5-6 weeks (Welsh Government code)

Source: Welsh Government, “Code of Practice for the Welfare of Rabbits” (© Crown copyright September 2009; 2021-02 gov.wales edition), issued under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Crown copyright, re-used under the Open Government Licence v3.0 with attribution. All bullets below are exact verbatim substrings of the cited source_file and C1-substring verified.

This topic records the 'Summary rabbit facts' reference block of the Welsh Government code: names for males/females/kits, herbivore and prey-species classification, life expectancy, adult body weight, pregnancy length, litter size and weaning age.

Claims

  • Males are called bucks and females are called does. Baby rabbits are called kits.
  • Specialist have continuously growing teeth, produce soft droppings (caecotrophs) which they normally eat and hard waste droppings.
  • Prey species have many predators e.g. owls, buzzards, foxes, dogs and cats.
  • Life expectancy: 8 to 12 years (can be longer).
  • Adult body weight: 1 to 8 Kg (this varies with breed and sex).
  • Most litters will be born between 30 to 33 days. Litter size: 4 to 12 (average = 7) kits in a litter. The size of the litter depends on the breed of the rabbit. Generally smaller dwarf breeds will have litters of 2-4, medium breeds will have litters of 4-6, and larger breeds will have litters of 6-10.
  • Weaning age 5-6 weeks.

Sources

Code of Practice for the Welfare of Rabbits
Source document: Code of Practice for the Welfare of Rabbits (Welsh Government, Crown copyright September 2009, 2021-02 edition)
Welsh Government (Llywodraeth Cymru)retrieved 2026-08-04

Verification file: pdf-raw/welfare-codes/rabbit_welfare_code_wales_2021.txt