Rabbits are amazing, but they do have some behaviors that are a little destructive. It’s not uncommon to find that they chewed into an important wire or dug into the corner of your carpet. Luckily there are some tried and true ways to bunny proof your home. You can make sure your rabbit doesn’t end up in any dangerous situations, and help keep your home safe from your mischievous rabbit.
The goal of rabbit proofing is to keep your rabbit safe, protect your belongings, and give your rabbit more productive ways to use their natural instincts. Without all three of these aspects, you are going to continue to face challenges with your indoor rabbit.
You’ll need to go through your home and look at it from a rabbit’s perspective. Get down on your hands and knees to look around and see what dangerous or destructive behaviors your rabbit will be able to get into. With a little foresight and preparation, you can keep your rabbit from chewing on wires, digging into your carpet, and just being a little troublemaker. I’ll be going through the common rabbit bad behaviors that are destructive to homes, so you can learn from my mistakes and bunny proof your home.
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What is Rabbit Proofing?
Rabbit proofing, also called bunny proofing, is when you go through your home to:
- Prevent destructive behaviors of your rabbit
- Keep your rabbit safe
- Give your rabbit fun alternatives for chewing and digging
The goal is to allow your rabbit to exercise or roam free without having to keep a constant watch on them. Sometimes you only need to rabbit proof the room where you let your rabbit out to exercise. But you can also choose to rabbit proof your whole house so your rabbit has more space to be free and join the family.
If you’re going through this guide and find ideas that will be useful for you, check out my list of items I use to bunny-proof my own home. I have links to the products that I found useful, so you don’t have to go searching for some of these obscure items.
Rabbit proofing tips:
- Wire Biting
- Block off areas with a lot of wires. Locate wire-heavy technology in a room where your rabbit is not allowed, or put up a fence or blockade to keep your rabbit away. The other option is to keep your wires off the ground. You can set up hooks along the wall and behind furniture to make sure your wires are lifted and your rabbit can’t get to them.
- Cover your wires. Cover any wires that your rabbit can reach with some plastic split loom tubing. This has honestly been a life saver (wire saver?) for me. For one, rabbits are much less likely to bite into thicker tubes. And two, if your rabbit does go for the tube, it will take them time to chew through the plastic cover to the wire inside. This gives you time to notice your rabbit’s behavior and replace the plastic cover.
- Carpet Digging
- Cover the corner of the room. Put something down to cover the corners of rooms and around doorways since these are the most common areas for rabbit digging.
- Plastic mats are going to be the most durable way to prevent your rabbit from getting at the carpet. But you can also use smaller bath mats or even just plain old cardboard.
- Baseboard chewing
- Use cat scratcher mats. A solution that I have used with my bun is those flexible cat scratcher mats. I attach them to the wall using command hooks.
- Block baseboards with wooden planks or cardboard. A solution that I’ve seen mentioned on some old forum posts is buying planks of wood and attaching them to your baseboards. You can set up a row of flattened cardboard boxes against the wall. It’s not the prettiest solution, but it gets the job done.
- Set up a fence around the perimeter of your room. Use a number of those DIY storage cubes, and linked them up (using zip ties) in a full perimeter around the room.
- Block access to baseboards with furniture. Creatively place your furniture against the walls so that it blocks your rabbit’s access to the baseboards.
- Digging under furniture
- Block off the area under furniture. You can use DIY storage cube fencing to block the gap along the bottom of your furniture. Use zip-ties to connect the panels together, and use command hooks to attach the fence to the walls or furniture.
- Put plastic mats down under furniture. Like with carpets at the corners of a room, you can also deal with this scenario by putting plastic desk mats down underneath your furniture. For any piece of furniture that you can’t or don’t want to block off, this will work well to keep your rabbit from destroying the rug.
- Bunny-Proofing other dangerous objects (cleaning supplies, poisonous houseplants, candles, human foods, etc.)
- The best and easiest way to stop your rabbit from accessing these items is to keep them behind closed doors or out of reach. So keep cabinet doors closed and put food on countertops that your rabbit can’t hop up to.
- If you have a really smart and determined rabbits, install a childproof lock on your cabinet doors
- Rabbit proofing books and papers
- Put anything you need easy access to on the top shelves, and make sure your rabbit can’t reach them.
- Get some plastic bins that will fit on the lower shelves and pack them with the rest of you books.
- Don’t leave any important bills laying around in a place your rabbit might be able to reach it.
- Rabbit proofing electrical appliances (heaters, fans, etc.)
- Put them behind a gate or put them up on a ledge
- Never leave your rabbit unattended when they have access to a fan or space heater.
Distract your rabbit with safe chewing and digging options
After you’ve made sure your rabbit can’t get at anything dangerous, it’s time to give them alternatives. Digging and chewing are natural behaviors for your rabbit, so you need to give them an opportunity to use their natural instincts without being destructive.
Chew toys
Chew toys are great for distracting your rabbit and also keeping their teeth trim and healthy. Rabbit chew toys can be anything from wooden toys, to cardboard toilet paper rolls, or even applewood sticks. You can make your own chew toys using cardboard toilet paper tubes and other items you can find around your house.
If you are having difficulty finding toys that your rabbit actually likes to play with, I recommend this online store called Small Pet Select. I found this shop about a year ago and have been really impressed with the quality of their products. I got a variety of toys from what they had in stock so I could offer them to my rabbit and see what she likes best (she really loves their hay balls!).
I’ve come to really trust the quality of all the products I get from Small Pet Select and cannot recommend them enough. I’ve partnered with them to give you 15% off your order if you use the code BUNNYLADY at checkout!
Digging box
This is a way to make a safe place for your rabbit to dig to her little hearts content without destroying your home. Just find a box that your rabbit can fit into (could be plastic or cardboard, whatever you have available), and fill it with fun toys for your rabbit.
You could use crumpled up or shredded paper, some of their wooden chew toys, some toilet paper rolls, etc. Then hide some treats in the box to encourage your rabbit to dig in the box instead of your carpet. You’ll want to make sure you refresh the toys and treats in the box every now and then, but this is a happy way for your rabbit to partake in her natural behavior without hurting your house.
Tips and Tricks Newsletter
If you are new to caring for rabbits, check out the Bunny Lady bimonthly newsletter. Right after you sign up, you’ll receive a FREE pdf rabbit care guidebook. I put together a guide that goes over all the basics of rabbit care so you have it all in one place. Then you will receive tips and tricks about rabbit care straight to your inbox so that you know you’ll be taking excellent care of your new rabbit.
Recommended Products and Brands
Important: These are Affiliate links. As an associate to Amazon, Small Pet Select, and Chewy.com, I may receive a small commission from qualifying purchases.
The two brands that I use when buying food for my rabbit are Oxbow and Small Pet Select. These both have high quality rabbit products and are companies that care about the health of our small animals. If you are purchasing anything from Small Pet Select use the code BUNNYLADY at checkout to get 15% off your first order.
- Hay: Second Cutting Timothy Hay from Small Pet Select
- Pellets: Oxbow Garden Select Food for Rabbits
- Treats: Oxbow Simple Rewards
- Toys: Small Pet Select Natural Toys
- Enclosure/cage:A rabbit exercise pen
- Rabbit carrier:SleepyPod Mobile Pet Bed
Sources:
- “Rabbit Proofing.” House Rabbit Society, Mar. 1, 2013, rabbit.org/faq-rabbit-proofing.
- “Chewing.” House Rabbit Society, rabbit.org/faq-chewing.
- “Bunny proofing your home.” Long Island Rabbit Rescue Group, longislandrabbitrescue.org/bunny-proofing.
