Book summary “Raising Hare”: summary

Introduction

European brown hares face severe population declines across modern landscapes due to intensive farming and shrinking habitats. You live in a world where human encroachment increasingly displaces wild species, leaving you detached from natural rhythms.

Rescuing and raising a vulnerable wild leveret reveals the intricate biology of hares and offers a path toward deep ecological awareness and personal stillness.

Chloe Dalton chronicles her accidental encounter with an orphaned leveret and explores the profound challenge of living alongside a wild animal without domesticating it. You will discover the journey from early rearing to behavioral observation and ecological disruption.

How do you care for a fragile wild creature while respecting its absolute independence? What does the hidden life of hares reveal about the damage wrought by modern agriculture? How can you cultivate a deeper ecological awareness through stillness and observation?

1. Natural History and Early Rescue

Rescuing a newborn leveret demands specialized care, strict stress reduction, and a deep understanding of hare adaptations.

Leveret birth and hiding

Hare mothers give birth in open fields without a burrow. They immediately leave their offspring hidden in tall grass to draw predators away.

During a harsh winter term lasting forty-two days, a mother hare forms a nest in tall grass and gives birth to a dark-colored leveret marked with a white star on its forehead. She conceals it in a dense tussock, obliterates her tracks on departure, and returns only under cover of darkness. One February night, the author encountered such a newborn.

The mother hare licked her newborn clean, shielded it, nudged it into a dense grass tent, and raced away before dawn to avoid leaving any traces of her presence.

Human intervention in the wild carries a high risk of maternal rejection due to transferred scent. Local experts explain that even if a displaced leveret is returned, its mother will reject it because it smells of humans. Furthermore, hares are notoriously difficult to raise in captivity, with stress and improper care frequently leading to death.

A local conservationist and former gamekeeper advised the author that hares cannot be domesticated and that he had never heard of anyone successfully raising a leveret.

Feeding and handling rules

Raising a captive leveret requires extreme caution regarding stress reduction, specialized milk substitutes, and careful feeding techniques to prevent choking or starvation. Because leverets have incisors that form an impenetrable barrier when closed in fear, you must introduce the feeding bottle gently at the corner of the lower lip. Feeding should occur three times a day using a lactose-free substitute like kitten milk, while minimizing noise and human handling.

The author used a small cosmetics bottle with a pipette and stopper, feeding the leveret warm kitten milk while it rested on her hand wrapped in a dust cloth.

You must follow specific protocols for this fragile process:

• Prepare a lactose-free milk substitute such as kitten milk.
• Sterilize the feeding bottle and check the milk temperature on your wrist.
• Place the bottle at the corner of the leveret's lower lip to avoid clamped jaws.
• Handle the animal as little as possible to prevent fatal stress.
• Feed three times a day instead of once to ensure adequate intake.

Hares possess specialized physical adaptations including agouti fur pigmentation, furry paw pads, and a nearly 360-degree field of vision for survival. Alternating bands of pigmentation on individual hairs create an agouti colouring that blends the animal completely into dead winter landscapes. Their paws feature thick fur on the soles for traction and silent movement, and their eyes are positioned laterally to provide a panoramic view of potential threats.

The author observed that the leveret's fur changed from a dark chocolate hue to spilt cream and fawn as it shed its coat, while its paws remained immaculate and thickly coated with fur. This includes sixteen toes meticulously cleaned by the leveret, and hind feet that eventually reach fifteen centimetres in ultimate growth.

2. Biology Behavior and Lore

Hares and rabbits belong to the same animal order, Lagomorpha, but are fundamentally different species that never interbreed and possess distinct anatomical and behavioral traits. While rabbits are smaller, rounder, live in subterranean warrens, and are aggressive toward hares, true hares are rangier, twice the size, lack burrows, and rely on shallow depressions called forms. Unlike rabbits, hares have never been domesticated as a species.

Hares possess extraordinary physical power, cryptic camouflage, and complex behavioral routines that set them apart from rabbits.

Mark Twain helped popularize the unflattering term jackass rabbit for American hares during his 1861 Nevada desert stagecoach journey, noting their preposterous ears and immense leaping ability. A European hare can reach a maximum weight of five kilograms, whereas the heaviest wild rabbit reaches two kilograms.

Hares possess extraordinary physical power and speed adaptations, enabling them to outrun numerous natural predators. A quarter of a hare's body consists of muscle, and its back muscles are significantly larger than those of a dog or horse when adjusted for body mass. Their resting heart rate is twice that of humans, beating up to 140 times a minute, which provides the necessary power for explosive escapes.

Ernest Thompson Seton's short story Little Warhorse portrays a captured hare surviving thirteen bouts against hounds before being set free, reflecting the legendary endurance of hunted hares. A fully grown hare reaches a top speed of fifty to eighty kilometres per hour, moving at thirty-seven body lengths a second with an average heart weight of one per cent relative to its body weight.

Hares versus rabbits

Refusing to name a rescued wild hare preserves its wild nature and respects its independence rather than reducing it to a domesticated pet. Friends and family repeatedly asked what the author would name the surviving leveret at ten weeks old, assuming it was a pet. The author developed an aversion to naming the leveret because giving it a name would proclaim it a pet and take away something essential from its wild spirit, keeping her ultimate responsibility fixed on preparing it for freedom.

Hares rely on cryptic behavior, specialized camouflage, and counter-shading to avoid detection by predators. They feature white stomachs and brown backs, a form of counter-shading that distorts their shadows and renders dark the parts normally illuminated by the sun. This camouflage helps them merge into patterns and textures, allowing them to remain invisible until a sudden escape is necessary.

The author frequently lost track of the leveret in the house because it seamlessly merged into the pattern of the carpet while tensed for a quick getaway.

Human culture and folklore project intensely contradictory attributes onto hares, viewing them as both sacred and profane, lucky and unlucky. Historically, hares have been associated with witchcraft, madness, perfidy, and bad omens, while simultaneously being revered as sacred deities, symbols of self-sacrifice, and creators of the earth in various ancient cultures and indigenous oral traditions. Seventeenth-century Scottish woman Isobel Gowdie reportedly recited an incantation during her witchcraft interrogation to transform herself into a hare, and a thirteenth-century poem listed seventy-seven names to ward off ill-luck from encountering one.

Hares possess a rare biological capability known as superfetation, allowing them to conceive a new litter while already pregnant. Described by ancient authors like Herodotus and Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago, superfetation enables female hares to carry two litters of leverets simultaneously, contributing to their ancient reputation for unbridled fertility and promiscuity. Hunters were likely the first to detect superfetation, noting that developing embryos could be found in a hare while older young were already being chased.

Cryptic behavior and grooming

The leveret performs a highly detailed and rigorous daily grooming ritual to maintain its sensory apparatus and physical readiness. The grooming sequence involves licking tawny paws, scrubbing the forehead, muzzle, and ears by pulling them down to the mouth with a forepaw, and vigorously cleaning the shoulders, flanks, and webbed toes to ensure complete cleanliness and remove debris. When soaking wet, the leveret would balance on its back feet and spin 180 degrees at high speed, spraying muddy water across the pale walls of the room.

3. Ecology and Human Impact

Intensive agricultural practices and modern infrastructure fragment home ranges and threaten wild populations.

Britain has lost over 80 percent of its hare population in a century. Because leverets freeze in place when threatened instead of running, they are frequently crushed by farming equipment, resulting in a mortality rate of up to 50 percent in their first twenty-eight days. Studies cited by the author show that only about a quarter of all leverets reach adulthood, making farming activity the leading cause of population drops.

Home ranges and barriers

A hare's home range spans between 21 and 190 hectares, which equals the relative size of 30 to 300 football pitches. This area requires them to forage across 15 to 20 kilometers, or 9 to 12 miles, at night. Human structures, walls, and roads create barrier effects that restrict movement, lower genetic variability, and cause fatal collisions. Brown hares are consequently one of the most frequently road-killed species in regions like the Czech Republic and Austria.

The author noted four dead hares within a stretch of less than a kilometer of tarmac on a main road near her home.

European hares and Arctic hares have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to navigate back to their home ranges when displaced across vast expanses. Hares transported in Poland traveled roughly 250 miles to return to their home range, and an Arctic hare in Quebec covered over 240 miles in forty-nine days.

Environmental disruption

The intensification of agriculture, frequent mowing, removal of hedgerows, winter-sown crops, and massive machinery destroy natural habitats and crush wildlife. Hares depend on crops for survival, which turns them into perceived pests.

The author's mother found a baby deer killed and decapitated by a silage cutting machine, with the mother deer returning to the spot for two weeks.

Modern farming relies on machines such as a combine harvester reaching sixteen feet tall, twelve feet wide, thirty feet long, and weighing fifteen tons. Constant machinery noise, heavy traffic, and unshielded permanent outdoor lighting interfere with natural rhythms, sleep, and navigation capabilities. Satellite photography shows Earth as a ball of light due to perpetual illumination of streets, buildings, and agricultural enterprises.

Treating wild animals presents profound ethical and practical dilemmas regarding captivity, stress, and pharmacological risks. Wild animals cannot be easily handled or transported without inducing fatal panic or shock. When the leveret injured its front paw, the vet could only offer a dog medication dosed by weight with no guidelines for hares, prompting the author to forego the treatment. At six months old, the leveret reached a weight of three kilograms.

When you care for a wild animal, you must follow specific rules:

• Weigh the wild animal if possible to estimate medication dosage
• Provide a quiet, safe environment for rest
• Ensure plentiful food and water to reduce the need for nighttime foraging

Deep engagement with an animal's simple, present-focused life can dissolve human restlessness, ease nervous tension, and realign personal priorities. Living alongside a creature with gentle rhythms and complete presence acts as a silent corrective to work-induced burnout. You might transition from prioritizing work calls during social gatherings to embracing silence, darkness, and waiting quietly for wildlife to emerge.

4. Maternal Instincts and Habitat Restoration

Wild hares demonstrate fierce maternal protection and trust, which can be supported through intentional habitat restoration.

Popular literature often describes hares as absentee parentism models that provide little care for their young, but observation reveals that mothers remain fiercely protective and engaged. Chloe Dalton watched the mother hare lunge at crows that came too close, successfully chasing them off her territory despite their larger size and formidable beaks. A wild hare can develop profound trust in a human environment, choosing to give birth to her offspring inside a house behind furniture. The author found a pair of newborn leverets hidden quietly behind the curtain in her office, perfectly dry and clean with no blood or afterbirth on the carpet.

Boxing and courtship

Haf behavior involves complex interactions that set the species apart from ordinary rabbits. Boxing hares were traditionally thought to be males fighting over territory, but it is now known that they are usually females fending off males. There are two primary types of fights: distance fights, where only the paws touch, and breast fights, where hares strike at the chest and face. Repeated touching by the male stimulates ovulation in the female.

Chloe Dalton observed an intense bout of boxing near her barn where great tufts of fur were visible flying in the low sun. Hares are capable of superfetation, a rare biological phenomenon where a second pregnancy occurs while a previous fetus is already developing in the uterus. Superfetation allows fertilised eggs to grow in the uterus alongside a developed fetus, potentially occurring after the thirty-fourth day of the first pregnancy. It is observed in roughly 13 percent of hare pregnancies.

Indoor birth and trust

Contrary to studies claiming mother hares only nurse once every twenty-four hours, observed mothers feed their young multiple times a night and carefully clean up afterward. Camera recordings showed the mother hare feeding her leverets at ten o'clock, two in the morning, and five in the morning. A doe hare has an average of 8 leverets in a year, and the newborn litter spent approximately 16 hours of daylight pinned in place hiding.

You can actively improve local biodiversity and provide crucial havens for wildlife by implementing specific conservation steps:

• Plant a mix of native saplings including hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, oak, hazel, and dog rose in a twin row.
• Wrap the base of each sapling in a transparent tree guard to protect against rabbits and hares.
• Allow hedges to grow undisturbed rather than cutting them tightly to preserve weed cover and food supply for wildlife.
• Scrape out accumulated silt from old farm ponds using a digger and add stones and logs at the edge for amphibians.

The author extended the existing hedge by planting nearly a thousand new saplings known as whips in a twin row, along with every six metres a taller specimen tree to grow into a spreading canopy. She also restored an old silted-up pond to attract deer and newts using a digger, adding logs and stones at the edge for newts.

5. Survival and Coexistence

Raising wild hares highlights the fragility of young wildlife against industrial farming and underscores the importance of unconditional freedom.

Stoats, buzzards, kestrels, and crows pose constant threats. The mother hare meticulously cleans, hides, and directs her young. The smallest leverets rely on freezing flat against the ground with ears pressed back rather than running.

The author watches a stoat slink through a fine crack in an old sheepfold wall, illustrating how easily predators can access previously assumed safe zones. A family of ten pheasant chicks hatched in a corner of the hedge. Twenty feet away, the mother hare waited in the grass.

Despite showing no external trauma or signs of illness, the youngest leveret rapidly loses muscle tone and vitality over a single morning, passing away quietly and leaving the mother and older leverets to alter their movement habits.

The author finds the smallest leveret lying flat and unresponsive in the courtyard grass. Despite attempts to offer milk, it fades away without a sound. This loss occurred at less than three months of life for the young leveret, while the mother hare was two and a half years of age.

Modern industrial farming practices, such as intensive potato harvesting, inflict catastrophic unseen destruction on ground-nesting wildlife and young hares. Large-scale harvesting tractors and automated farm machinery clear fields with ruthless economic efficiency, crushing leverets and ground birds that freeze in terror rather than fleeing from the massive equipment.

Following a potato harvest across a fourteen-acre field, the author discovers crushed juvenile hare remains and an injured buzzard with a broken wing. A disoriented leveret of two weeks old was found in the furrows.

Prompted by grief and curiosity, the author studies historical herbals, color classification systems, and field botany to identify the specific nutrient-rich plants and grasses that hares selectively forage for.

The author gathers field samples like burdock, chicory, yarrow, and wild carrots, sorting them on paper to map out the local plant life. Wild carrot was grown in Babylonian gardens in the eighth century BC, and a family herbal from the year 1810 references yarrow usage.

Following weeks of absence and mourning after the death of her offspring, the mother hare abruptly returns to the house interior, demonstrating deep-seated behavioral patterns and an unshakeable connection to familiar safe spaces. After a two-week absence following the harvest tragedy and leveret death, the author turns on the sitting room light to find the mother hare quietly staring into the fire.

Predator awareness and mortality

Older leverets develop sleek summer pelts and show great curiosity toward the human house, frequently climbing furniture, investigating doors, and engaging in high-speed chases, though they retain sharp startle responses to sudden close movements. Just before ten o'clock at night, the tiny leveret eased its way into the grass. The larger male leveret chews a football-sized hole out of a curtain lining and systematically pulls down long branches from the hedge.

As leverets reach four months old—the age at which leverets' muzzles and ears lengthen and pelts acquire a dusty tinge for winter—their physical features mature in preparation for winter. They display an innate hesitation when exploring the boundary between their human home and the wild. The male leveret spent nearly an hour perched on the wall, showing uncertainty and prevarication in every line of his body before dropping back down into the garden.

Hares engage in elaborate courtship rituals in the fields, characterized by chasing, vertical jumps, evasive maneuvers, and defensive swiping. A group of five hares gathered in the stubble at the edge of the cornfield where a female was courted by several males, eventually swiping one on the nose with her left front paw before darting away across the field.

Hares possess an endlessly inquisitive nature combined with a strong preference for routine and familiarity, provided they maintain a clear escape route. The female leveret slipped into the house alone to lounge for hours upon the sofa, extending a long back leg and furry paw over the edge with her whiskers twitching.

Philosophy of coexistence

Innately wild animals are best served through coexistence and maximum freedom rather than domestication, which attempts to alter their nature to fit human lifestyles.

The author realizes that keeping a wild animal requires providing the maximum amount of freedom possible to reduce stress, noting that the greater the freedom given to the hare, the more trusting she became. The author chose never to keep the hare in a cage, allowing her to come and go entirely on her own terms.

• Consider whether each animal has the maximum amount of freedom possible.
• Determine how to reduce the stress inadvertently caused to animals.

Autumn hedgerows, tall grasses, ponds, and wildflower margins support thriving populations of deer, barn owls, grey squirrels, and buzzards, reminding you of the harsh realities of survival and predation in the wild. Ten hares were counted loitering in pairs or lying singly upwind in an open field of freshly sown corn. The author encountered a buzzard feeding on a dead hare in the field, bringing a sharp realization of the mortality bearing down on all living things.

Through resilience and caution, a resident hare can survive multiple winters and hazards, achieving an unusually long lifespan for its species. The hare reached approximately three years of age, having survived three winters, three harvests, at least three litters to at least six leverets, and a serious injury.

Deep engagement with a wild animal reshapes human perception, fostering patience, a simplification of personal desires, and an appreciation for silence. The physical traces left by the hare in the house were minimal, limited to a smooth indentation in the carpet, six of her whiskers, and a few weightless tufts of fur, yet her emotional impact was immense.

• Be dependable in love and friendship more than in work.
• Leave the land in a more natural state than it was found.
• Take better care of what is to hand, seeing beauty and value in the ordinary.

10 Key Ideas

1. Hare mothers give birth in open fields without a burrow, immediately leaving their offspring hidden in tall grass to draw predators away.
2. Raising a captive leveret requires extreme caution regarding stress reduction, specialized milk substitutes, and careful feeding techniques to prevent choking or starvation.
3. Hares possess specialized physical adaptations including agouti fur pigmentation, furry paw pads, and a nearly 360-degree field of vision for survival.
4. Hares and rabbits belong to the same animal order, Lagomorpha, but are fundamentally different species that never interbreed and possess distinct anatomical and behavioral traits.
5. The leveret performs a highly detailed and rigorous daily grooming ritual to maintain its sensory apparatus and physical readiness.
6. Britain has lost over 80 percent of its hare population in a century due to farming equipment and agricultural practices.
7. A hare's home range spans between 21 and 190 hectares, while human structures, walls, and roads create barrier effects that restrict movement and cause fatal collisions.
8. Popular literature often describes hares as absentee parentism models that provide little care for their young, but observation reveals that mothers remain fiercely protective and engaged.
9. Modern industrial farming practices, such as intensive potato harvesting, inflict catastrophic unseen destruction on ground-nesting wildlife and young hares.
10. Innately wild animals are best served through coexistence and maximum freedom rather than domestication, which attempts to alter their nature to fit human lifestyles.