Any advice on keeping a 'house bunny'?

In My Humble Opinion
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10YO mudgirl got a bunny today. She has a rabbit cage outdoors (her last rabbit died :frowning: ) and I’m thinking seriously about letting this one be a ‘house bunny’. She (the rabbit) seems very sweet, docile, friendly. She’s young.

I understand they can be litter trained (which of course would be necessary!), but we have a cat. Would the cat try to ‘hunt’ the rabbit, do you think?

How smart are rabbits? I was never allowed to keep them when I was young, so I don’t know much about them. We did get bedding and rabbit pellets. I know the rabbits like just about any raw fruits or veggies. Right now, she’s in the cage (but in the living room, because it’s raining tonight), and has a sliced apple in the cage with her. She has a dish of water, but really, I don’t even know if rabbits can drink very well out of a bowl. I’m guessing they don’t need water bottles (though we have one ready for her), since, if they did, wild rabbits would die of thirst.

What are your experiences (if any) with keeping a rabbit that freely roams the house?

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Pick up a copy of the book Rabbits for Dummies, or Google the ‘House Rabbit Society’ for info. Bowls work fine for drinking from. Check what fruits and veggies are ok at the sources I recommended; some aren’t healthy for them. Also, Timothy or orchard hay ( not alfalfa) is better than pellets.

Finally, rabbits will almost certainly chew through electrical cords and will need “proofing” with aquarium tubing, etc. The cat also may well try to hunt the rabbit, or may not.

Bedtime, will post more tomorrow.

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I will Google the website. Look forward to more info, and thanks for the heads-up on the electrical cords!

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My dad doesn’t trust his bunny not to get into trouble with wiring or the cats and such, so it spends several hours a day in a large “playpen,” which is several yards of wire fencing (1/4" holes) formed into a big circle. Buddy gets to hang out in the living room with the humans this way, and it makes him happy. Under it goes a felt-backed table cloth, fuzzy side up, which makes for easy clean up. The table clothes have a 3 week or so life expectancy, though, because bunnies like to dig - but they’ll stop for a while if you squirt-gun them like a naughty cat.

Let me ask him tomorrow for a url to the page he bookmarked about bunny treats and toys. I had no idea that rabbits play, but they really do. Off the top of my head favorite toys include paper towel rolls and newspaper. They really enjoy tearing paper up, and then running around with it hanging from their mouths like streamers :slight_smile:

As for cats, one of ours (the one in my newest blog post) alternates from trying to swat at him and watching him with facination. Jealousy will be the problem, if you have one, because the cats know that you’re paying attention to the bunny.

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Do they make those “hamster balls” big enough for rabbits?

There was a Far Side cartoon where an older lady in pointy-framed eyeglasses is having a friend in, when she says something to the effect of “Oh, now, this is always so adorable. Here comes Bossy in her cow-ball.” And I didn’t get it at all, because I didn’t know they make these clear plastic balls, with breathing holes, that you can put your hamster or guinea pig in and then let him rove indoors at will.

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I let my hubby keep a house bunny: he arrived at about 8 week kitten-size and the cats adopted him! He would use litter box to pee… I taught hubby to use a carpet sweeper for picking up bunny pellets. Bunny slept with kitties in a pile and drank from the big water bowl. All was good…

until bunny realized what his testicles were for :eek::eek::eek:

please consider altering your bunny before he starts trying to mount kitties! they do NOT like it!

edit: coating electrical cords with hot sauce repels both bunnies and kittehs.

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Damn, kids sure are getting pregnant early these days.

(You young’uns will not get the reference.)

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Just go to YouTube and search for rabbits (or bunnies) and cats, there are tons of videos of rabbits beating up cats :slight_smile:

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Mum’s rabbit kept the cats pretty well in line. Far from becoming cat food (as I thought he would), he actually used to chase the cats around. Eventually he and one of the cats became pretty good friends.

I like Mum’s rabbit well enough but I hate that she keeps him indoors. Yes, he’s “litter trained”… but there’s always a little trail of pebbles where ever he goes. It doesn’t seem like he is able to control those. He chews through electric cords, as mentioned above, and most of Mum’s wooden furniture has bite marks in the legs. The remote control for the tv has had a few buttons chewed off when it was accidentally left lying on the couch. My daughter’s books that are kept at Nanna’s house are all frilled around the edges. You can’t leave anything cardboardy or papery anywhere that he might reach it or he’ll eat it.

I’m pretty sure you’re not insane so you’ve got one up on my mother there and perhaps the experience wouldn’t be quite so exasperating for your family.

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Random thoughts on rabbits:

Eating hay is supposed to be better for their teeth. A friend at work has a rabbit of the same breed as mine (Dutch rabbit) who refuses to eat hay - and refusing food for more than a couple hours or so is a very bad thing for rabbits, as their GI tracts can start “shutting down” which is an immediate vet trip - so she only has pellets and greens, and she needs her teeth trimmed at the vet. Mine have been (knocking wood) great on hay so far, and absolutely love their hay. (I like Petco’s timothy hay, it’s cut pretty short but not shredded tiny, and is baled together inside the bag making it nice and compressed.)

One of my rabbits would hold his own against any cat, but I’m not sure about the other.

House Rabbit Society link.

My rabbits are 7 months old; I’ve heard they might be fully (i.e., pooping also) litter-trained by a year, but that their bowel control isn’t so hot before then. Ours got the “wee in the litter box” concept at 10 weeks. Fortunately, their poop is really hard and dry; I get it picked up right away if they’re out but don’t freak about it being really icky like I would with a dog/cat/ferret. I just use vinegar in a spray bottle to clean up any urine messes that happen; if any stains the carpet (they have all kinds of natural dyeing compounds in it from the food they eat), I pull out an “oxy”-based carpet cleaner and that completely eliminates it - I’ve been using Woolite Oxy Deep Spot & Stain Carpet Cleaner lately.

Oh, litter - I highly recommend the unscented Yesterday’s News. The paper in it won’t block their intestines or get into nose/eyes like clay or clumping litter might if they try to chew it or otherwise scatter it.
Ours use a playpen like this, with a tarp-like bottom (to avoid nibbling at the bits of carpet that interest them) also available there or other websites. Since they’re getting bigger I’m considering getting a second one to connect together to let them really zip around without my supervision.

This is an awesome way to make a cheap, large cage. Get “stacking cube” wire mesh panels, zip ties, and some wooden dowels; I added a lid out of those panels to my cage since I expect my rabbits would like to explore out of the top and aren’t above hopping to do it. It feels flimsy while you’re putting it together, but once all the ties and dowels are in place, it’s great. I went to a hardware store and got a hunk of pressboard a bit bigger all around than the cage, some big caster wheels, and some L-shaped brackets. Casters on the bottom, brackets around the periphery, and zipties through the holes of the brackets and walls of the cage. This made it easily movable. I used additional panels to make the platforms, ziptied them all around to the walls, and used the dowels for support. I put cardboard panels over the floor and platforms, cut to fit, then bought a long hunk of indoor/outdoor carpet runner (with little to no pile, to discourage nibbling) and cut it to fit. It stays in place fine as is, without the need to clip it down. And I highly encourage the litterbox/hay bin method they use - I didn’t include the board with bolts so mine will occasionally foul their hay by sitting in it and weeing, but it cuts down on the mess of loose hay/poop.

One of my rabbits yesterday chewed into a PS3 controller cable; it was poking close enough to the playpen for him to reach out with his lips and snag it. My husband had a rabbit when he was little that chewed through a video game console cord leading to the TV. Fortunately that rabbit only got a little singed around his nose; unlucky rabbits could be badly injured or killed. And they’re very fast about lunging for cords (which I assume resemble nice stalks of some kind of food to them) - I was holding one of my rabbits on my lap and when I was distracted, he leaned his head over and snipped through the cord of the headphones I had on. At the hardware store I got some aquarium-style tubing by the foot, slit it down its length, and cut it to fit some cords that ran through various places I was letting them run in, just in case I couldn’t be right on top of them. Frankly, if I let them have more free-running room and opportunities, I’m going to completely block off the TV center and the computer.

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I forgot - bonding. When I got our rabbits, they looked nervous but not afraid. I spent a lot of time down on the floor on my belly, with them in their playpen, talking to them softly and not trying to grab them or touch them unless they came over for it. I also fed them greens, first just pushing the leaves through the bars of the cage, then opening up the playpen’s side and hand-feeding.

We have very friendly rabbits now. They each have their own particular personalities - one is very outgoing and boisterous, the other more shy and reserved. But both love petting (one pulls back from chin-scritching but is otherwise fond of being petted), especially down the nose, and they also lick our hands, put their paws up on the cage side/playpen side when they want attention, and are very interactive. The shy one isn’t so shy if he wants to check out what’s on our dinner plates! :eek: He’s literally crawled all over my husband trying to get at his food.

Oh, and check out the rabbit website for info on how to hold them. It’s rare, but a rabbit can even break his own back if he struggles really hard in just the wrong way or squirms out of your grasp if not held securely enough for the rabbit’s own feeling of security. We try to hold in the air/carry our rabbits as little as possible, as being prey animals, being carried really seems to invoke fear at times.

They do like sitting on our laps and being petted, and our outgoing rabbit will run between my husband and I, seeking out attention from both of us.

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I thought maybe this would be a bunny of the Playboy variety - advice would include things about jewelry and such.

Instead, I will quote Anya (Buffy the VS)

Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes
They got them hoppy legs and twichy little noses
And whats with all the carrots?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies
(or maybe midgets)

Brian

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We did exactly that to make a play area for our chinchilla. A large rectangle of Linoleum flooring with newspaper on it kept the carpet dry. We were quite happy with the results.

Yes. The rabbits I’ve known had superbly-developed cord-cutting skills, like it was some kind of martial art they’d perfected. I was following one once, three feet behind her, to keep her away from cords, and she hopped lazily past the TV, turned her head with a little casual flick without breaking her “stride,” and severed the TV’s power cord. She destroyed 9 cords of various types during the summer we were fostering her.

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Yeah, I almost swear mine did it intentionally because I wasn’t paying sufficient attention to him - he almost casually leaned over, a quick snip, and back to his original position. At first I thought iTunes had stopped running on my computer, then I realized something didn’t feel right and found the snipped wire.

This is the one who’ll headbutt his head under my hand if I’m scritching his chin and he decides he wants nose-petting instead, so I wouldn’t put it past him to try to identify my distractions and eliminate them. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Oh, and rabbits can be very, very smart. I had let the rabbits run around the living room after using their unfolded playpen and other items to block off forbidden (cord-containing) areas and the path to the rest of the house. One kept trying to get past the barriers to the TV/entertainment center, which was full of cords. Once he knocked the panels over by pulling on them with his paws and sniffed at what was past it (I snatched him up and quickly put up the barricade and tried to secure it), he was determined to get back there. He hopped up on an upright binder of instruction manuals, balancing on top of those and peering down into the ‘snakepit’ of cords behind the entertainment center, so I had to grab him again and stuff something else on top of the binder to block that route. Then he tried - unsuccessfully - to climb the DVD rack that was next to the binder.

For days afterward when in the playpen (which I put up near the entertainment center), he would take his paws and try to shake the side of the playpen that was up next to the entertainment center, because it had worked during their “run” when there were only a few panels of the pen there.

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We mixed up some tabasco sauce in water and put it in a plant sprayer. Spray the cords with it just before letting the rabbit out. The first time she tries to nibble on the cord, she will wish that she didn’t. That has pretty well cured our rabbit of cord-chewing.

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Mm, good plan. I may try a length of unplugged phone cord as a test object for mine. They tend to learn pretty quickly so hopefully that will do the trick - with frequent reapplication just in case.

I wonder if Bitter Apple spray might work as well. That helped discourage my ferrets from chewing. Tabasco might smell more ‘bad’ to them, I’m not sure.

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Be very careful about who you have one night stands with.

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The House Rabbit Society is fantastic, and just what you need.

I miss having a bunny so much! That said, they can be really amazingly destructive sometimes, and bunny-proofing can be a lot of work.

Regarding food: Take it easy on the fruits. They can generally have all the leafy veggies they want (or that you’re willing to give them) among the ones that are safe for them, but too much sugar or other carbs can cause problems. Many commercial foods aren’t good – generally the ones with extra stuff besides the gray-green pellets are suspect. Corn is a no-no.

Regarding smarts and personality: Rabbits are much, much smarter than most people give them credit for (and they also do some really stupid things). They also have a whole lot more personality than you’d expect. The sweet, docile, friendly bunny your daughter has today will probably stay friendly, but once she’s relaxed and comfortable in your home, may not always be purely sweet or docile – some bunnies throw attitude like you wouldn’t believe! My Bunny used to growl at our cats and our Sheltie. They were all scared of her. She was definitely the Alpha Critter in our house.

Relevant past threads:
Anybody have a house rabbit?
I’m calling the Sun - I think my bunny may actually be a goat!

Instructive humor:
The Bad Bunny List

ETA: Hot sauce was apparently one of Bunny’s preferred condiments.

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Rabbits are amazing indoor pets. They also have a much longer life expectancy. Outdoor rabbits have a general lifespan of 5-7 years. Indoor rabbits have a general lifespan of 9-11. That’s a huge difference.

My husband and I have a rabbit named Shion. He got her when he lived on his own (but we were dating and we both went to pick her) at an adoption event. She was already 2 years old, so she was past the bratty teenage phase (which rabbits do go through). The other huge bonus with adopting from a rabbit rescue? They already litter trained her. :slight_smile:

She’s 7 years old now and going as strong as ever. Each rabbit has a very distinctive personality (which is why it’s nice to get an adult rabbit; that way you know what their personality is. With a baby, it could change after the teenage phase) and hers is, “I’M INDEPENDENT BUNNY!!! Hello? Why aren’t you giving me nose scritches? I am going to sit here and bonk your foot until you pay attention!” :smiley:
She’s completely litter-trained, so she has her cage but it is always open. When she needs to use the bathroom, she just hops in and into the litter box, does her business (while eating hay), and then hops back out. She has the entire bedroom, hallway and office, which she shares with our dog when we’re home*. When we’re not home, the dog has the living/dining room and Shion has the bedroom/office and they’re separated by a baby gate.

She’s a smaller rabbit, about 4 lbs. She gets a measuring tablespoon of Oxbow rabbit pellets (those are the best quality, IMO) a day, unlimited timothy hay and water and then a variety of greens and veggies each night (probably a couple of cups worth).

Rabbits are much closer to dogs and cats, pet-wise, than they are to hamsters and guinea pigs. The problem is when people keep them in a cage all day. Would you be very active if you had to stay in a 7x7 room all day? :frowning: Let them have the ability to explore, though, and they seriously are amazing pets.

  • We just rescued our dog a few months ago and he loves the bun (though we don’t let them be together unsupervised. That’s just begging for trouble). He’ll love to chase after squirrels outside, but he understands that the rabbit is basically Little Dog. It probably helped that she was here first and we waited a few days to introduce them, so he already had smelled her around for awhile.