Do I provide a nest box for false pregnancy?

Hi all!

So this morning I noticed some chunks of fur in Piper’s cage. I read that false pregnancy lasts 16-18 days, and today is day 17 from the day they got out together during the day (Skipper was neutered Feb 6, Piper is not yet spayed)

I’m thinking this is a false pregnancy right? Do I still give a nest box so she can go through the motions? Or will she just give up after a day or so?

Could be a false pregnancy. Sometimes Ive had some randomly nest at around this time, but are still pregnant anyway. She'll give up nesting in a day or so if its false pregnancy. In my opinion, you should not give a nestbox now, but still give it to her at 28 days, just in case.

Ok, that sounds like a good plan! Thank you!

You can give a nest box if you want, just to help keep the nest building mess more contained.

I did end up putting in the nestbox because she seemed so frantic and was trying to make the litter box into a nest, and I felt bad for her!
She’s now trying to move her entire bed into the nest box! It’s actually quite fascinating!

Just give her more hay. She will keep trying to gather materials to build the nest. So if she runs out of hay then she will start trying to gather other materials from her environment.

Yes, they can be quite the busy little buns when focused on their nest building.

I have put a huge amount of hay out for her but she’s now grabbed an entire puppy pad and also a little pillow from another bed. Can I give her something else fluffy? I feel like she is super stressed out and that makes me sad!

You might just have to remove the puppy pads and bed until she's settled down. You could give her strips of newspaper. I wouldn't want to give anything fluffy in case she were to ingest it.

It's just instinct driving her. She should settle down soon.

Well, we are on day 3 of Piper pulling fur. She is really dedicated to this! We started the bunny cam again to keep an eye on her. I’m starting to wonder if she is really pregnant, though I don’t see how that would be possible. Is there any way to tell the difference between a false pregnancy and a real one? I see no movement in her belly when she is laying down, and when I let her out of the cage she zooms and binkies like crazy. There’s just no way this can be real... right?

It can easily be a false pregnancy. It's not uncommon for spring to evoke this behavior in rabbits, fixed or unfixed. When it's happened with my spayed doe, she is a bun obsessed. She'll keep gathering and gathering, and constructing her nest, then all of the sudden it stops and she returns to normal.

That nestbox is much too large, if thats the same one you intend to use for actually having babies in. You'd want one where they can just barely fit and turn around. Anything larger than that and they are prone to hanging out in it - which can lead to stepping on babies and turning it into a litterbox (which is both a pain to clean and bad for the health of the babies).

She seems to be completely over the nesting instincts now- she’s hopping in the nest box to eat, and is generally behaving completely differently. What a fascinating experience!

SableSteel - I had never intended to have her get pregnant, we thought both our bunnies were girls, and then when we realized that was not the case, I had my husband build a nest box without really knowing what the size should be, I agree it’s huge! Then when she stared nesting behaviours, we just put it back in.

This experience has made me really want to see a litter be born though, but I’m not sure it’s a wise decision for me to try and get her a boyfriend at this point- there are already so many bunnies looking for homes around here.

Hope you will know for sure in a couple days, I just wanted to say I like how the area where she lives is organised, she must be very comfortable there.