Pet rabbits kept indoors are referred to as house rabbits. House rabbits typically have an indoor pen or cage and a rabbit-safe place to run and exercise, such as an exercise pen, living room or family room. Rabbits can be trained to use a litter box and some can learn to come when called.

Domestic rabbits that do not live indoors can also often serve as companions for their owners, typically living in an easily accessible hutch outside the home. Some pet rabbits live in outside hutches during the day for the benefit of fresh air and natural daylight and are brought inside at night.

Whether indoor or outdoor, pet rabbits' pens are often equipped with enrichment activities such as shelves, tunnels, balls, and other toys.

Pet rabbits are often provided additional space in which to get exercise, simulating the open space a rabbit would traverse in the wild. Exercise pens or lawn pens are often used to provide a safe place for rabbits to run.

A pet rabbit's diet typically consists of unlimited Timothy hay, a small amount of pellets, and a small portion of fresh vegetables. Rabbits are social animals. Rabbits as pets can find their companionship with a variety of creatures, including humans, other rabbits, guinea pigs, and sometimes even cats and dogs.

Animal welfare organisations such as the House Rabbit Society recommend that rabbits do not make good pets for small children because children generally do not know how to stay quiet, calm, and gentle around rabbits.

As prey animals, rabbits are alert, timid creatures that startle easily. They have fragile bones, especially in their backs, that require support on the belly and bottom when picked up. Children 7 years old and older usually have the maturity required to care for a rabbit.

Rabbits are herbivores who feed by grazing on grass, forbs, and leafy weeds. In consequence, their diet contains large amounts of cellulose, which is hard to digest.

Rabbits solve this problem by passing two distinct types of feces: hard droppings and soft black viscous pellets, the latter of which are immediately eaten. Rabbits reingest their own droppings (rather than chewing the cud as do cows and many other herbivores) to digest their food further and extract sufficient nutrients.

Rabbits graze heavily and rapidly for roughly the first half hour of a grazing period (usually in the late afternoon), followed by about half an hour of more selective feeding. In this time, the rabbit will also excrete many hard fecal pellets, being waste pellets that will not be reingested.

If the environment is relatively non-threatening, the rabbit will remain outdoors for many hours, grazing at intervals. While out of the burrow, the rabbit will occasionally reingest its soft, partially digested pellets; this is rarely observed, since the pellets are reingested as they are produced.

Reingestion is most common within the burrow between 8 o'clock in the morning and 5 o'clock in the evening, being carried out intermittently within that period.

Hard pellets are made up of hay-like fragments of plant cuticle and stalk, being the final waste product after redigestion of soft pellets. These are only released outside the burrow and are not reingested. Soft pellets are usually produced several hours after grazing, after the hard pellets have all been excreted. They are made up of micro-organisms and undigested plant cell walls.

The chewed plant material collects in the large cecum, a secondary chamber between the large and small intestine containing large quantities of symbiotic bacteria that help with the digestion of cellulose and also produce certain B vitamins.

The pellets are about 56% bacteria by dry weight, largely accounting for the pellets being 24.4% protein on average. These pellets remain intact for up to six hours in the stomach; the bacteria within continue to digest the plant carbohydrates. The soft feces form here and contain up to five times the vitamins of hard feces. After being excreted, they are eaten whole by the rabbit and redigested in a special part of the stomach.

This double-digestion process enables rabbits to use nutrients that they may have missed during the first passage through the gut, and thus ensures that maximum nutrition is derived from the food they eat.

This process serves the same purpose within the rabbit as rumination does in cattle and sheep.
Rabbits are incapable of vomiting due to the physiology of their digestive system.

Dutch:
This breed of rabbits were originally bred in Netherlands. The markings present on their body includes a white wedge down the face, round colored circles around the eyes, white markings on the hind feet and a line extending under the belly. Dutch rabbits make excellent pets, show rabbits and do rather well in the sport of rabbit hopping.

Himalayan:
This is a very old breed of rabbits that are very common in the Asian countries in the Himalayan Mountains. It is the most widely distributed rabbit in the world and is also known as by many other names like Chinese, Russian, Egyptian and the Black Nose.

 
They are delicately built and have a long body resembling a tube and are famous for their general temperament. They make excellent pets especially for the children and an ideal choice for a first time rabbit owner.

Lionhead:
This is one of the newest breed of domesticated rabbits and it was originated in Belgium. It is reported to be a cross between a miniature Swiss Fox and a Belgian Dwarf.

It has been so named because it has particularly long hair surrounding the face that resembles the mane of a male lion. The other characteristics include a round head and ears shorter than most breeds of rabbits.

English Spot:
This breed of rabbits is mostly white and they have a butterfly mark on their nose, colored ears and chains of colored spots along its sides including a herringbone stripe down its back.

English Spots are a very active breed of rabbits and require a minimum of two hours of running time everyday. They are generally docile and make good pets and also tolerate other pets like guinea pigs, cats and dogs.

Various varieties of domestic rabbits are bred through selective breeding or natural selection. At this article, I will list a few common breeds of rabbits that are recognized by the American Rabbit Breeders Association along with a brief description.

Rabbit Breeds

American: This breed was standardized early in the 20th century. The two categories available are the blue and white. The sub-varieties available under this breed are:

• American Fuzzy Lop: This breed was derived by breeding two Holland Lops each carrying a recessive wool gene. The rabbits belonging to this breed have lopped ears and their body is covered with thick wool.
• American Sable: The rabbits belonging to this breed have different levels of sandy (sable) coloring.

Angora: This breed consists of the oldest types of domestic rabbits that originated in Ankara, Turkey. The rabbits belonging to this breed are used for their long wool which is removed by shearing or plucking. The sub-varieties available under this breed are:

• English Angora: This breed has been derived from French Angoras and are gentle in nature but require a lot of grooming.
• French Angora: This breed has guard hairs on the surface and wool as an undercoat.
• Satin Angora: This breed is so named because of its extremely soft texture of its wool. These are very easy to groom and the wool they produce is very strong. 

Beveran: This breed consists of the oldest and largest of the fur rabbits. The color of their coats can vary from blue, white, black, lilac or brown. A rare variety in this breed is the Pointed Beveren which has the same color but have white tipped hairs.

Blue of Ham: This breed of rabbit was very popular during the first few decades of the 20th century but became extinct during the sixties. However, a Belgian breeder was able to recreate the rabbit by using off-springs.

Britannia Petite: This breed of rabbits weigh about 2.5 lb and are thought to have been derived from small wild rabbits. They have a wild temperament and are not suitable for pets. However, if handled properly these rabbits can be calm.

American Chinchilla: This breed of rabbits are bred for their meat. They are a hardy pet and do not require regular grooming. They have a medium length body which is slightly curved. Their ears are straight and erect. These rabbits are also good breeders and on an average their litter consists of 7 – 10 babies.